Software company Canonical released the latest version of Ubuntu, version 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish” on April 21. For those who are unaware Ubuntu is an open source free Linux operating system for your computer. There are two releases of Ubuntu every year with 6 month release cycles and 9 months of support per release. Every other year however a Long-term support or LTS version is released.
This latest release is one of those LTS versions. The previous version, 20.04, was released in 2020. If it isn’t obvious Ubuntu releases are numbered by using year year, month month numbering, thus the current release is 2022.April or 22.04. Long-term releases receive updates for a period of 5 years so you can go for longer periods without upgrading to the next long-term version.
I have been using Linux as my daily driver for my computer since 2003. I started using Ubuntu in 2008, though I was testing it and using a derivative of it as early as 2007. Ubuntu was my daily driver from 2008 until 2015, at which point I switched to a Mac. If I hadn’t been in graduate school at the time I would still be using Linux as my daily driver, though I still use it quite regularly.
A few years ago I picked up a cheap Dell Latitude E6530 as a secondary laptop. I’ve been using it since 2018 as a backup computer for testing Linux distributions. Since then I have installed Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, and 21.10 on it and today I write from a fresh 22.04 installation.
My first impression is that I still miss the days of Ubuntu’s Unity interface. My second impression is that it runs as smooth if not more so than 20.04 did. I’m torn at this point. I’ve been tempted to return to another of my favorite Linux distributions, openSUSE Tumbleweed, or Linspire (the distribution that got me hooked on Linux nearly 20 years ago now). I’m going to give this version a solid test though, it certainly deserves a fair shake.
I’ll post more about this over the next few days. If you are interested in checking out Ubuntu though I encourage you do go to https://www.ubuntu.com and download it. My next post will go over basic installation.
