What's New In Ubuntu 19.10 'Eoan Ermine'

Canonical has reached one more step close to an LTS release by releasing Ubuntu 19.10 ‘Eoan Ermine’. Eoan Ermine has been released with some new features and overall system improvements.

You can upgrade from short term release to test out the new distro. Though I don’t think it’s worth upgrading from a long term release to a short term release. If you are using an Ubuntu LTS, you can install Ubuntu 19.10 in a VM and continue to use LTS distro.

What’s New In Ubuntu 19.10

Support

Ubuntu 19.10 ‘Eoan Ermine’ will receive support for 9 months. After the support period ends, you will have to upgrade your distro.

Linux Kernel 5.3

The news distro is based on Linux Kernel 5.3 which adds support for several new hardware including AMD Navi GPU, ARM Komeda Display, and new ARM SoCs.

GNOME 3.34

Good new for GNOME lovers. Ubuntu 19.10 is shipping with the latest of GNOME, GNOME 3.34. The new desktop has improved performance and a couple of new features. The most notable change in GNOME 3.34 is the ability to group icons in the activities overview just like a smartphone.

GNOME 3.34 also adds improvements in the core applications such as music player, improved wallpaper and wifi settings, and the sysprof user interface has been redesigned for better monitor apps resource usage for app developers.

For more information on GNOME 3.34, watch the following video.

ZFS Filesystem support

Ubuntu 19.10 supports ZFS filesystem out of the box. You can directly create ZFS file system and partitions from the installer.

Access USB from dock

Small but a useful feature. Plugged-in USBs can be accessed directly from dock making it much easier to access for the user.

New Themes

Ubuntu users love the newly added themes Yaru and now their Light and Dark variants are also available in Eoan Ermine. One can install Gnome tweak tool to switch between the two themes.

sudo apt install gnome-tweak-tool

NVIDIA Drivers

Gone are the days of downloading NVIDIA drivers after Ubuntu install. The drivers are now available in the iso which means you can activate it right after the installation is complete.

Updated Applications

Besides the new features and improvements, the new Ubuntu comes with updated applications such as LibreOffice office suite, Firefox web browser, and Thunderbird email client.

Ubuntu 19.10 continues to make Ubuntu a solid Linux distro for all types of users. This release has set a base for the next LTS version. It will be interesting to wait for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

As I mentioned at the starting of this article, if you are thinking to upgrade to Ubuntu 19.10, you can easily upgrade from your existing Ubuntu installation. Though I do not think it is worth upgrading from an LTS version just to try out new features. To test it out, you can install it in a Virtual machine.

Upgrade to Ubuntu 19.10

Upgrading to Ubuntu 19.10 is pretty easy. Just follow these steps –

• Search for ‘Software and updates’ in dash and open it.
• Move to ‘Updates’ tab
• Set ‘For any new version’ for ‘Notify me of a new Ubuntu version’
• Close the window & open Software updater

The software updater should now check for updates and prompt you to upgrade to Ubuntu 19.10.