Ubuntu 23.10: What is Featured in Canonical's Latest Interim Release?

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Canonical's Ubuntu 23.10 release, codenamed Mantic Minotaur, has two major changes, primarily with its default and full installer options.

Canonical released Ubuntu 23.10, codenamed Mantic Minotaur, its latest interim release prior to the unveiling of the long-term support (LTS) versions.

This particular release does not stand out with any new bold features that can be identified at a mere glance. However, it does set up some very useful options and upgrades that should persist in Ubuntu for quite some time.

Canonical's Ubuntu 23.10 Release

The two biggest changes included in the Ubuntu 23.10 release come in the installer as it now defaults to a "Default installation." This is different from what the "default" was even just one release prior. It is described as "Just the essentials, web browser, and basic utilities," while "Full" is "An offline-friendly selection of office tools, utilities, web browser, and games."

The new "Default" has become similar to what "Minimal" used to be in previous versions while "Full" is intended for people who are offline, have slow connections or simply want as many options as possible right from the get-go, as per ArsTechnica.

Currently, the majority of people will not be saving much, assuming that they decide to install the update off of an ISO file. The one for Ubuntu 23.10 is 4.6GB, which is smaller than the 4.9GB ISO of Ubuntu 23.04. However, the file size could change as the company's staffers noted that they have bigger plans for provisioning and install options, which could make it into 24.04.

Users can also choose ZFS elsewhere in the installer as their primary file system. Additionally, there is an experimental option to set up Trusted Platform Module (TPM) full-disk encryption rather than simply relying on passphrases to encrypt disks.

After users actually go inside their desktops, what they would notice is the next big thing that Ubunta has upgraded, which is the App Center. Its software portal, which is still referred to as the Snap Store in some places, still places containerized Snap apps front and center.

But with the new update, it does so much quicker as the whole app has been rewritten in Flutter, which is Ubuntu's new default for desktop apps. The release also comes with a new security feature, the restricted unprivileged user namespaces, according to ZDNet.

What To Expect?

These will be controlled and regulated by AppArmor policies and the approach ensures that only authorized applications can access and utilize these namespaces. This would significantly reduce the associated security risks.

AppArmor is a Linux kernel security module that enables system administrators to restrict programs' capabilities by working with standard Unix/Linux Mandatory Access Control (MAC) permissions. It has been built into Ubuntu Linux since Ubuntu 7.10 in 2007 and has also been used in the SUSE Linux family.

The situation comes as Canonical decided to pull the ISOs of Ubuntu 23.10 and worked to re-spin them following user-submitted translations for the installer were found to contain hate speech.

The issue is that crowd-sourced user translations from a third-party tool were able to make their way into the Ubuntu packages while containing some "unspecified hate speech." This prompted the company to remove Ubuntu 23.10 images and work on correcting the translations before releasing the update again, said Phoronix.