Canonical Releases Ubuntu 19.10 ‘Eoan Ermine’

Canonical has released Ubuntu 19.10 (Eoan Ermine), a new version of its iconic software that comes with upgraded hardware support and native support for ZFS.

The version comes “with a focus on accelerating developer productivity in AI/ML, new edge capabilities for MicroK8s and delivering the fastest GNOME desktop performance.”

The arrival of the new version comes as Canonical continues to push Ubuntu as an option for the cloud and data centre, as well other arenas such as IoT and industrial control systems.

Eoan Ermine

“In the fifteen years since the first Ubuntu release, we have seen Ubuntu evolve from the desktop to become the platform of choice across public cloud, open infrastructure, IoT and AI,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. “With the 19.10 release, Ubuntu continues to deliver strong support, security and superior economics to enterprises, developers and the wider community.”

So what does 19.10 offer? Well Canonical says it brings “enhanced edge computing capabilities with the addition of strict confinement to MicroK8s.”

It explained that strict confinement ensures complete isolation and a tightly secured production-grade Kubernetes environment, all in a small footprint. MicroK8s add-ons – including Istio, Knative, CoreDNS, Prometheus, and Jaeger – can now be deployed securely at the edge with a single command. This builds on existing snaps for edge gateways already available including EdgeX and AWS IoT Greengrass.

And Ubuntu 19.10 also supports the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B, which is the latest board from the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

And the new version also seeks to improve the economics of multi-cloud infrastructure, as it ships with the Train release of Charmed OpenStack – the 20th OpenStack release.

It said that live migration allows users to move their machines from one hypervisor to another without shutting down the operating system of the machine.

Meanwhile Kubeflow is now available as an add-on to MicroK8s for improved machine learning and AI capabilities. This should allow developers to quickly set-up and develop test and scale to their production needs. Kubeflow and GPU acceleration work out the box with MicroK8s.

Ubuntu 19.10 will also ship with NVIDIA drivers embedded in the ISO image to improve the performance and overall experience for gamers and AI/ML users with NVIDIA hardware.

And the new version still aims to deliver the most usable Linux desktop, as GNOME 3.34 offers the fastest release yet, even on older hardware. Canonical says that app organisation is easier with the ability to drag and drop icons into categorised folders, while users can select light or dark Yaru theme variants depending on their preference or for improved viewing accessibility.
Finally, native support for ZFS on the root partition is introduced as an experimental desktop installer option.

Ubuntu 19.10 is available for download here.

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