This is most definitely the strangest spring in a very long time, but one thing that's arrived right on schedule is the latest version of Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu 20.04, Focal Fossa, as this release is know, is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which means Ubuntu's parent company Canonical will provide support through 2025. 

The LTS releases are what Canonical calls "enterprise grade", and tend to be conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies. The interim releases, like last year's Ubuntu 19.10 are where the company tends to experiment. Perhaps not surprisingly, Canonical estimates that 95 percent of all Ubuntu installations are LTS releases. Which is to say, this is a big update that the bulk of Ubuntu's user base will be upgrading to eventually.

The good news for Ubuntu fans is that this is a fantastic release. Ubuntu 20.04 has been very solid in my testing, and still manages to (optionally!) include support for some cutting edge new features like ZFS snapshots. There's also a major kernel bump, and considerable work has gone into improving and polishing the default Yaru theme.

Ubuntu 20.04 

##

## ZFS, Kernel and more

wireguard in the kernel.  Intel Comet Lake CPUs and initial Tiger Lake platforms

Continuing with what started in the Eoan release, Ubuntu Focal ships zfs 0.8.3. Compared to what was available in the previous LTS release, zfs 0.8 brings many new features. Highlights include:

    Native Encryption (with hardware acceleration enabled in Focal)
    Device removal
    Pool TRIM
    Sequential scrub and resilver (performance) 

I suspect many readers didn't notice that zsys isn't part of ZFS.
The ZFS filesystem has had snapshots for over a decade.
Zsys is a new management layer created at Ubuntu.

Zsys is probably a nice step at making ZFS more accessible and in creating utilty by automating usage of some features. But, ZFS on Linux was already extremely useful before zsys and not all distros provide zsys. 


## Desktops - GNOME 3.36

Refreshed Yaru theme 🎨

    Light/Dark theme switching

ew lock screen design.
New system menu design.
New app folder design.

Smoother performance, lower CPU usage for window and overview animations, JavaScript execution, mouse movement and window movement (which also has lower latency now).

10-bit deep colour support.
X11 fractional scaling



## Raspberry Pi

Since the release of Ubuntu 19.10 Raspberry Pi 32-bit and 64-bit preinstalled images (renamed to raspi) support the Raspberry Pi 4 platform out-of-the-box. With this, our images now support almost all modern flavors of the Raspberry Pi family of devices (Pi 2B, Pi 3B, Pi 3A+, Pi 3B+, CM3, CM3+, Pi 4B).