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Ubuntu Changelog

What's new in Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo)

Aug 28, 2021
  • NEW FEATURES IN 21.04:
  • Updated Packages:
  • Linux kernel:
  • Ubuntu 21.04 includes the 5.11 Linux kernel. This includes numerous updates and added support since the 5.8 Linux kernel released in Ubuntu 20.10. Some notable examples include:
  • Better anonymous memory management to reduce swapping
  • New cgroup slab controller which allows sharing of slab memory between cgroups
  • Proactive memory compaction to reduce latency for huge-page allocations under fragmented memory conditions
  • Support for running BPF programs on socket lookups
  • FSGSBASE support to improve context switch performance on x86 processors
  • Support for using Intel SGX to create encrypted enclaves
  • Support for running SEV-ES guests under KVM to protect guest register state from the hypervisor
  • Support for extended attributes in NFS
  • fsync() performance improvements for ext4 and btrfs
  • Btrfs performance and data recovery improvements
  • io_uring restriction support to facilitate secure sharing of rings to less-trusted processes
  • virtio-fs DAX support to improve performance and reduce memory consumption
  • Intel Rocketlake and DG1 graphics support
  • AMD Vangogh, Green Sardine, and Dimgrey Cavefish graphics support
  • Toolchain Upgrades:
  • GCC was updated to the 10.3.0 release, binutils to 2.36.1, and glibc to 2.33. Python now ships at version 3.9.4, Perl at version 5.32.1. LLVM now defaults to version 12. golang defaults to version 1.16.x. rustc defaults to version 1.50.
  • In addition to OpenJDK 11, OpenJDK 16 is now provided (but not used for package builds).
  • Ruby was updated from v2.7.0 to v2.7.2, and rubygems has been extracted from ruby2.7 source and is provided as a separate package 64.
  • Security Improvements:
  • Secureboot on x86_64 (amd64) and AArch64 (arm64) have been improved to include SBAT capable shim, grub2, fwupd. For more details see this discourse post 142.
  • nftables is now the default backend for the firewall.
  • Ubuntu Desktop:
  • Added support for smartcard authentication (via pam_sss 143)
  • Wayland is now the default on most configurations, which features better security and performance
  • The desktop view now properly handles drag and drop interactions, e.g. dragging from/to the file manager
  • The power profile mode can now be changed from the settings (on configuration where there is proper kernel support)
  • Pipewire support is now enabled which restore working screen recording and allow better audio handling for sandboxed applications
  • The installer includes support for specifying a recovery key, which can be used to decrypt the disk if the password is forgotten
  • The Active Directory integration has been improved. User authentication with GPO enabled works out of the box after installation. It also includes a Group Policy client (ADSys) 309 to configure various settings from a central AD controller.
  • GNOME:
  • While the new shell version hasn’t been included yet in Ubuntu the applications have been mostly updated to their GNOME 40 versions.
  • Updated Applications
  • Firefox: version 87
  • LibreOffice: version 7.1.2-rc2
  • Thunderbird: version 78.8.1
  • Updated Subsystems:
  • PulseAudio 14
  • BlueZ 5.56
  • NetworkManager 1.30