Named for the cow girl doll who first appeared in Toy Story 2. This release introduced for the first time the systemd init system as default. Two new architectures were introduced: arm64 and ppc64el and three architectures were dropped: s390 (replaced by s390x), ia64 and sparc. The Sparc architecture had been present in Debian for 16 years, but lacked developer support to make it maintainable in the distribution. The release included many security improvements such as a new kernel that nullified a whole set of security vulnerabilities (symlink attacks), a new way to detect packages which were under security support, more packages built with hardened compiler flags and a new mechanism (needrestart) to detect sub-systems which had to be restarted in order to propagate security updates after an upgrade.
On 20 October 2014 Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu 15.04 would be named Vivid Vervet. It was released on 23 April 2015. This was the 22nd Ubuntu release. Ubuntu 15.04 used systemd instead of Upstart by default. This release also featured locally integrated menus by default, replacing the previous default global menus. Silviu Stahie, writing for Softpedia, said about this release while it was in beta, "Ubuntu 15.04 is not an exciting release, but that it's only a surface impression. The truth is that it's an important upgrade, because some very important changes have been made, including the adoption of systemd. Users will notice that not too many visual changes have been implemented in Ubuntu 15.04, but that was to be expected. The team is transitioning to a new Unity version that is still not ready for general use, so it's easy to understand why Ubuntu 15.04 is not all that different from Ubuntu 14.10." This release included modest improvements in Intel Haswell graphics performance and bigger improvements for AMD Radeon graphics cards using the open-source Radeon R600 and RadeonSI Gallium3D drivers. In reviewing this release, Joey Sneddon, of OMG Ubuntu, said "Ubuntu 15.04 is yet another solid entry in the distribution's long release history. A dependable desktop operating system suited for end users but with plenty of convenient extras to woo developers with. Though the Unity 7 desktop is largely mothballed as work progresses on the new converged experience with Unity 8, the modest refinements received here buff the experience. Unity in Ubuntu 15.04 shines brighter, a glowing example of a desktop that 'just works' for users.". Jesse Smith of DistroWatch wrote, "One of the changes I was interested in exploring was Ubuntu's switch from the Upstart init software to systemd. In this regard I was pleasantly surprised. I find most distributions, when they initially make the switch to systemd, introduce bugs or, at the very least, break backward compatibility. Sometimes service managers stop working properly and network device names usually change. Even if everything works as it should, the administrator needs to adjust to systemd's approach to logging and adopt a different method of managing services. Ubuntu has taken an approach I like with regards to adopting systemd." He concluded, "on the surface, Ubuntu 15.04 does not bring many changes. There are a few cosmetic adjustments, but nothing major that desktop users are likely to notice. Most of the interesting work appears to be going on behind the scenes ... Ubuntu 15.04 feels very stable and easy to configure. This is an operating system that is virtually effortless to set up and run and I feel the Unity 7 desktop does a nice job of providing lots of features while staying out of the way ... All in all, I like what Canonical has done with Ubuntu 15.04. This feels like a small, incremental evolution for Ubuntu and Unity. The init switch, which has disrupted the users of several other distributions, goes largely unnoticed in Ubuntu and I think that is worthy of praise."
On 23 April 2014 Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu 14.10 would carry the name Utopic Unicorn. Version 14.10 was released on 23 October, having only minor updates to the kernel, Unity Desktop, and included packages such as LibreOffice and Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. The kernel was updated to 3.16 for hardware support (e.g. graphics) and has for security, full kernel address space layout randomization applied to the kernel and its modules, plus the closure of a number of information leaks in /proc. This version is the 21st release. Ubuntu 14.10 was officially characterized as a release that addressed "bug fixes and incremental quality improvements" and so it incorporated very few new features. Joey Sneddon of OMG Ubuntu wrote in reviewing this release, "Ubuntu 14.10, codenamed "Utopic Unicorn", is saddled with a modest changelog, composed largely of bug fixes, stability improvements and key software updates. All worthy, but falls a little way short of the "fresh ideas and new art" that should "raise the roof" – quotes from Mark Shuttleworth's "U" name announcement ... For the release taking place in the week of Ubuntu's 10th anniversary, this may all read like a bit of an anticlimax. No headline user features, no visual changes (bar a few new icons for the sidebar of Nautilus) – there's not even a new default wallpaper to look at...But on the flip side it's perhaps the most fitting release; the one that shows just how far Ubuntu has come in the past few years. Mature, dependable and sure in its own (Ambiance-themed) skin, buggy feature churn has given way to a sustained era of assured stability ... Ubuntu 14.10 is a rock-solid, hearty and dependable release. Perhaps more here than ever before. There's no getting away from the fact that it's an uninspiring update on paper, and is far from being anything approaching essential." Michael Larabel of Phoronix wrote, "At the end of the day simple end-users won't see much of a difference over Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, which is a bit sad given that this is the tenth anniversary release of Ubuntu Linux. For everyday Linux desktop users the many upgraded packages are great but there isn't too much more to celebrate about today on the desktop front. Scott Gilbertson, writing for The Register, explained, "I've been covering Ubuntu for seven of the release's 10 years and 14.10 is the first time I've had to dig deep into the release notes just to find something new to test ... If you needed further proof that Canonical is currently solely focused on bringing its Unity 8 interface to mobile devices, 14.10 is the best evidence yet ... Almost nothing Canonical develops has changed in this release – there isn't even a new desktop wallpaper. There are some updates to be sure, but they don't hail from Canonical ... The lack of updates isn't unexpected, in fact that's been the plan all along ... Desktop Ubuntu is currently in a kind of suspended animation, waiting on Unity 8 and Mir to be ready for its coming metamorphosis. The short story is that it makes no sense for Canonical to keep refining Unity 7 when it will soon be retired."
Mark Shuttleworth announced on 31 October 2011 that by Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu would support smartphones, tablets, TVs and smart screens. On 18 October 2013, it was announced that Ubuntu 14.04 would be dubbed "Trusty Tahr". This version was released on 17 April 2014, and is the 20th release of Ubuntu. Shuttleworth indicated that the focus in this development cycle would be a release characterized by "performance, refinement, maintainability, technical debt" and encouraged the developers to make "conservative choices". Technical debt refers to catching up and refining supporting work for earlier changes. The development cycle for this release focused on the tablet interface, specifically for the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets. There were few changes to the desktop, as 14.04 used the existing mature Unity 7 interface. Ubuntu 14.04 included the ability to turn off the global menu system and used locally integrated menus instead for individual applications. Other features were the retention of Xorg and not Mir or XMir, a Unity 8 developers' preview, new mobile applications, a redesigned USB Startup Disk Creator tool, a new forked version of the GNOME Control Center, called the Unity Control Center and default SSD TRIM support. GNOME 3.10 is installed by default. Point releases included 14.04.1 on 24 July 2014, 14.04.2 on 19 February 2015, 14.04.3 on 6 August 2015, 14.04.4 on 18 February 2016, 14.04.5 on 4 August 2016 and 14.04.6 on 7 March 2019. The release initially included Linux kernel 3.13, but this was updated to 4.2 with the point release of 14.04.4 on 18 February 2016. Point release 14.04.5, which provided the latest Linux kernel and graphics stacks from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, was intended to be the final point release for 14.04 LTS, but 14.04.6 was released on 7 March 2019 as a security-targeted update. Joey Sneddon of OMG Ubuntu noted that recent Ubuntu releases have received lower and lower amounts of mainstream press coverage and termed it an "established product that has, by and large, remained a niche interest". In reviewing Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in April 2014, Jim Lynch concluded: "Ubuntu 14.04 seems to be all about refining the Ubuntu desktop. While there are not a lot of amazing new features in this release, there are quite a few very useful and needed tweaks that add up to a much better desktop experience. Canonical's designers seem to be listening to Ubuntu users again, and they seem willing to make the changes necessary to give the users what they want. That may be the single most important thing about Ubuntu 14.04. It could be an indication of a sea change in Canonical's attitude toward Ubuntu users." Jack Wallin writing for TechRepublic termed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, "as polished a distribution as you'll find. It's cleaner, performs better, and is all around improved. Some users may say that this is the most boring release Canonical has unleashed in years, but I believe it to be one of the finest." Terry Relph-Knight of ZDNet said, "although there are no amazing 'must-have' new features in Ubuntu 14.04, it is worth upgrading just to get the latest LTS release with a more recent kernel and default applications." Scott Gilbertson of Ars Technica stated, "Ubuntu is one of the most polished desktops around, certainly the most polished in the Linux world, but in many ways that polish is increasingly skin deep at the expense of some larger usability issues, which continue to go unaddressed release after release." Normal LTS support continued until 25 April 2019, after which extended security maintenance is available to Ubuntu Advantage customers and as a separate commercial purchase, as was the case previously with 12.04. In September, 2021, Canonical announced that it would extend LTS support for the 14.04 and 16.04 to a total of 10 years, extending the support date for 14.04 until April 2024.
Ubuntu 13.10 is named Saucy Salamander. It was released on schedule on 17 October 2013. Consideration was given to changing the default browser from Mozilla Firefox to Chromium, but problems with timely updates to Ubuntu's Chromium package caused developers to retain Firefox for this release. Ubuntu 13.10 was intended to be the first Ubuntu release to replace the aging X Window System (X11) with the Mir display server, with X11 programs to have operated through the XMir compatibility layer. However, after the development of XMir ran into "outstanding technical difficulties" for multiple monitors, Canonical decided to postpone the default use of Mir in Ubuntu. Mir will still be released as the default display server for Ubuntu Touch 13.10. Ryan Paul of Ars Technica wrote that although 13.10 brings useful enhancements, it is "a relatively thin update". He also said "the new Dash concept is intriguing, but its usefulness is a bit limited"; and even though he thinks that universal Web search is potentially useful, he's somewhat uncomfortable with how Canonical joins it with local system searches. In a review of Ubuntu 13.10 Joey Sneddon of OMG Ubuntu criticized the new Smart Scopes feature, saying, "it's less of a help and more of a hindrance. With so many web services offering results for a search term – however innocuous it might be – the Dash ends up resembling a wall painted in unintelligible, irrelevant mess." Sneddon noted that internet search engines turn in more useful and better organized results and recommended selectively disabling individual scopes to reduce the noise factor. Jim Lynch of Linux Desktop Reviews described the release as "boring" and noted, "alas, Ubuntu 13.10 follows in the footsteps of Ubuntu 13.04. The big new desktop feature is Smart Scopes ... Beyond that there's not a whole lot that is interesting or exciting to talk about. It turns out that Saucy Salamander is one truly dull amphibian. Canonical really should rename this release to 'Snoozing Salamander' instead." Lynch described the Smart Scopes, "this is a very useful function, and it can save you a lot of time when looking for information. I understand that some people will regard this as a privacy violation, no problem. There's an easy way to disable Smart Scopes." Maria Korolov writing for Network World in December 2013 said of the release, "there is a benefit to be had in being able to search for files you own on both local drives and in cloud services such as Google Drive and Flickr. That's the idea behind Unity Smart Scopes ... The result is a cluttered mess. The first thing many users will probably do after installing Ubuntu 13.10 is to get rid of most of these results ... mixing generic Web results in with your own files is just confusing." In its year-end Readers Choice Awards, Linux Journal readers voted Ubuntu as Best Linux Distribution and Best Desktop Distribution for 2013. Support for Ubuntu 13.10 ended on 17 July 2014.
Named for the rubber toy penguin with a red bow tie. The release was frozen on June 30, 2012, very close to the Debian developers gathering in the 12th DebConf at Managua, Nicaragua. One architecture was included in this release (armhf) and this release introduced multi-arch support, which allowed users to install packages from multiple architectures on the same machine. Improvements in the installation process allowed visually impaired people to install the system using software speech for the first time. This was also the first release that supported the installation and booting in devices using UEFI firmware.
On 17 October 2012, Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu 13.04 would be named Raring Ringtail and said about this release "[In the next six months] we want to have the phone, tablet and TV all lined up. So I think it's time to look at the core of Ubuntu and review it through a mobile lens: let's measure our core platform by mobile metrics, things like battery life, number of running processes, memory footprint, and polish the rough edges that we find when we do that." The Wubi installer was dropped as of 13.04, due to its incompatibility with Windows 8 and general lack of support and development. Previously, on 29 October 2012 at the Ubuntu Developer Summit registration, there had been a discussion of redesigning Wubi for Ubuntu 13.04. Ubuntu 13.04 was released on schedule on 25 April 2013. In reviewing Ubuntu 13.04 Jim Lynch from Desktop Linux Reviews said, "I found Ubuntu 13.04 to be a slightly disappointing upgrade. While there are definitely some enhancements in this release, there's also nothing very special about it ... Alas, there's nothing in Ubuntu 13.04 that makes me want to consider it for use as my daily distro. Don't misunderstand me, there's nothing overtly wrong with Ubuntu 13.04 either. It installed and performed very well for me. Unity 7 also has some helpful and attractive updates that Ubuntu users will enjoy, and there are other things in this release that help improve the overall Ubuntu experience ... I suspect it is simply because Ubuntu has settled into a comfortable middle age, it works and it works very well for what it does." Support for Ubuntu 13.04 officially ended on 27 January 2014.
On 23 April 2012 Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu 12.10 would be named Quantal Quetzal. As this will be the first of a series of three releases before the next LTS release, Shuttleworth indicated that it will include a refreshed look, with work to be done on typography and iconography. The release takes its name from the quetzal, a species of Central American birds. Ubuntu 12.10 was released on schedule on 18 October 2012 and is Canonical's seventeenth release of the operating system. Ryan Paul, writing for Ars Technica, said in April 2012 when the name was announced "A Quetzal is a colorful bird that is common to Central America. The most well-known variety, the resplendent quetzal, is known for its beauty. The name is a good fit for Ubuntu, which aims to soar in the cloud, offer visual appeal without compromising function, and avoid smacking into closed windows." The Ubuntu Developer Summit held in May 2012 set the priorities for this release. They are forecast to include an improved boot up sequence and log-in screen, dropping Unity 2D in favor of lower hardware requirements for Unity 3D, wrap around dialogs and toolbars for the head-up display and a "vanilla" version of Gnome-Shell as an option. The release would likely include GNOME 3.6, Python 3 and the 3.5 Linux kernel.[164] It would ship with Python 3 in the image, but with Python 2 available in the repositories, via the "Python" package. The kernel will have the PAE switched on by default. In July 2012, development versions of Ubuntu 12.10 received a new combined user, session and system menu. This release also included Ubuntu Web Apps, a means of running Web applications directly from the desktop, without having to open a browser. It would use Nautilus 3.4 as its file manager, in place of the 3.5 and newer versions, to retain features deleted from later versions. In September 2012, Canonical's Kate Stewart announced that the Ubuntu 12.10 image would not fit on a compact disc, saying "There is no longer a traditional CD sized image, DVD or alternate image, but rather a single 800MB Ubuntu image that can be used from USB or DVD." However, a third-party project has created a version of Ubuntu 12.10 that fits on a CD. It uses LZMA2 compression instead of the DEFLATE compression used on the official Ubuntu DVD image. Also in late September 2012, it was announced that the version of Unity to be shipped with Ubuntu 12.10 would by default include searches of Amazon.com for searched terms. This move caused immediate controversy among Ubuntu users, particularly with regard to privacy issues, and caused Mark Shuttleworth to issue a statement indicating that this feature is not adware and labelled many of the objections "FUD" (Fear, uncertainty, and doubt). Shuttleworth stated "What we have in 12.10 isn't the full experience, so those who leap to judgement are at maximum risk of having to eat their words later. Chill out. If the first cut doesn't work for you, remove it, or just search the specific scope you want (there are hotkeys for all the local scopes)." Regardless, users filed a Launchpad bug report on the feature requesting that it be made a separate lens and not included with general desktop searches for files, directories and applications. The degree of community push-back on the issue resulted in plans by the developers to make the dash and where it searches user-configurable via a GUI-setting dialogue. Despite concerns that the setting dialogue would not make the final version of Ubuntu 12.10, it was completed and is present in the final version of 12.10. In the week prior to the stable release of Ubuntu 12.10 data-privacy advocate Luís de Sousa indicated that the inclusion of the shopping lens, installed without explicit permission of the user, violates European Directive 95/46/EC on data privacy. That directive requires that the "data subject has unambiguously given his consent" in situations where personal identifying information is sent. In reviewing Ubuntu 12.10 at the end of October 2012 for DistroWatch, Jesse Smith raised concerns about the Amazon shopping lens, saying, "it has raised a number of privacy concerns in the community and, looking over Ubuntu's legal notice about privacy does not provide any reassurance. The notice informs us Canonical reserves the right to share our keystrokes, search terms and IP address with a number of third parties, including Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and the BBC. This feature is enabled by default, but can be turned off through the distribution's settings panel." He also found that the dash provided very slow performance and that the release was "practically unusable in the VirtualBox environment". He summed up his experiences, "After a day and a half of using Ubuntu 12.10 it was an internal struggle not to wipe my hard drive and just find another distribution to review. During the first twenty-four hours Ubuntu spied on me, provided performance which was distinctly sub par, the interface regularly popped up errors (sometimes so frequently the first pop-up wouldn't have faded out of view before the next one appeared), the update notification didn't work and it wasn't possible to turn off accessibility features through the graphical interface. Adding insult to injury, the Unity dash kept locking up or losing focus while I was trying to use it and the operating system crashed more times than not while trying to shutdown or logout. Switching away from Unity to GNOME Fallback helped the performance issues I had experienced with the Dash, but it didn't remove the annoying pop-up errors and performance (while usable) still wasn't as good as I would expect. And what really makes me scratch my head is Ubuntu 12.04 worked really well on this same hardware." In early November, the Electronic Frontier Foundation made a statement on the shopping lens issue, "Technically, when you search for something in Dash, your computer makes a secure HTTPS connection to productsearch.ubuntu.com, sending along your search query and your IP address. If it returns Amazon products to display, your computer then insecurely loads the product images from Amazon's server over HTTP. This means that a passive eavesdropper, such as someone sharing a wireless network with you, will be able to get a good idea of what you're searching for on your own computer based on Amazon product images. It's a major privacy problem if you can't find things on your own computer without broadcasting what you're looking for to the world." Writing about Ubuntu 12.10 in a December 2012 review, Jim Lynch addressed the Amazon controversy: One of the desktop changes that some folks might not like is the web app link to Amazon.com ... This might come across as a bridge too far in terms of the outright commercialization of Ubuntu. And it is an eery [sic] reminder of all the garbage that gets installed on Windows PCs by default, by the hardware companies. Is this where Ubuntu is going? Will you someday boot into your Ubuntu desktop only to find tons of commercial crapware clogging up your desktop by default? I sure hope not, as it will be another reason for people to avoid Ubuntu. He concluded by saying, "Overall, Ubuntu 12.10 is a decent upgrade for current Ubuntu users. However, the inclusion of the Amazon icon on the launcher, and the discontinuation of Unity 2D might irritate some people." Support for Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal officially ended on 16 May 2014.
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) is Canonical's sixteenth release of Ubuntu and its fourth long-term support (LTS) release, made available on schedule on 26 April 2012. It is named after the pangolin anteater.[144] Previous LTS releases have been supported for three years for the desktop version and five years for the server version; this release was supported for five years for both versions, with support ending on 28 April 2017. Canonical continues to offer extended security maintenance to Advantage customers for an additional two years. Changes in this release include a much faster startup time for the Ubuntu Software Center and refinements to Unity. This release also switched the default media player from Banshee back to Rhythmbox and dropped the Tomboy note-taking application and the supporting Mono framework as well. Also, the window dodge feature has been removed from the Unity launcher starting with Ubuntu 12.04. Ubuntu 12.04 incorporated a new head-up display (HUD) feature that allows hot key searching for application menu items from the keyboard, without needing the mouse. Shuttleworth said that the HUD "will ultimately replace menus in Unity applications" but for Ubuntu 12.04 at least the menus will remain. Ubuntu 12.04 is the first Ubuntu release shipped with IPv6 privacy extensions turned on by default. Ubuntu 11.10 already supported IPv6 on the desktop and in the installer (stateless address autoconfiguration SLAAC, stateless DHCPv6 and stateful DHCPv6). Like previous LTS releases, 12.04 included point releases that bundled updates to shorten downloads for users installing the release later in its life-cycle. The point releases and dates were: 12.04.1 (23 August 2012), 12.04.2 (14 February 2013), 12.04.3 (scheduled for release on 22 August 2013, but actually released on 23 August 2013), 12.04.4 (6 February 2014) and 12.04.5 (7 August 2014). Jesse Smith of DistroWatch said that many people, like he, had questioned Ubuntu's direction, including Unity, but with Ubuntu 12.04 he felt that the puzzle pieces, which individually may have been underwhelming, had come together to form a whole, clear picture. He said "Unity, though a step away from the traditional desktop, has several features which make it attractive, such as reducing mouse travel. The HUD means that newcomers can find application functionality with a quick search and more advanced users can use the HUD to quickly run menu commands from the keyboard." He wrote that Unity had grown to maturity, while indicating that he was bothered by its lack of flexibility. He did notice issues, however, especially that the HUD did not work in LibreOffice and performance in a virtual machine was unsatisfactory. He concluded that Ubuntu's overall experience was "head and shoulders above anything else in the Linux ecosystem." Jim Lynch wrote "Ubuntu 12.04 is definitely worth an upgrade if you're running an earlier version. Unity is finally coming into its own in this release, plus there are other enhancements that make upgrading worthwhile. Ubuntu is getting better and better with each release. I was one of the Unity skeptics initially, but I've come to accept it as part of Ubuntu." Jack Wallen of TechRepublic, who had strongly criticized early versions of Unity, said "Since Ubuntu 12.04 was released, and I migrated over from Linux Mint, I'm working much more efficiently. This isn't really so much a surprise to me, but to many of the detractors who assume Unity a very unproductive desktop ... well, I can officially say they are wrong. [...] I realize that many people out there have spurned Unity (I was one of them for a long time), but the more I use it, the more I realize that Canonical really did their homework on how to help end users more efficiently interact with their computers. Change is hard – period. For many, the idea of change is such a painful notion they wind up missing out on some incredible advancements. Unity is one such advancement."
The naming of Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) was announced on 7 March 2011 by Mark Shuttleworth. He explained that Oneiric means "dreamy". Ubuntu 11.10 was released on schedule on 13 October 2011 and is Canonical's 15th release of Ubuntu. In April 2011, Shuttleworth announced that Ubuntu 11.10 would not include the classic GNOME desktop as a fall back to Unity, unlike Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal. Instead, 11.10 included a 2D version of Unity as a fallback for computers that lacked the hardware resources for the Compiz-based 3D version. However, the classic GNOME desktop remained available in Ubuntu 11.10 through a package in the Ubuntu repositories. Shuttleworth also confirmed that Unity in Ubuntu 11.10 would run as a shell for GNOME 3 on top of GNOME 3 libraries, unlike in Ubuntu 11.04 where it ran as a shell for GNOME 2. Moreover, users were able to install the entire GNOME 3 stack along with GNOME Shell directly from the Ubuntu repositories; to be presented with a "GNOME 3 desktop" choice at login. During the development cycle there were many changes to Unity, including the placement of the Ubuntu button on the Launcher instead of on the Panel, the autohiding of the window controls (and the global menu) of maximized windows, the introduction of more transparency into the Dash (and the Panel when the Dash was opened) and the introduction of window controls for the Dash. In May 2011, it was announced that Pitivi would be no longer part of the Ubuntu ISO, starting with Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot. The reasons given for removing it included poor user reception, lack of fit with the default user-case for Ubuntu, lack of polish and the application's lack of development maturity. PiTiVi will not be replaced on the ISO with another video editor. Other changes include removing Computer Janitor, as it caused broken systems for users, and the removal of the Synaptic package manager, which can optionally be installed via the Ubuntu Software Center. Déjà Dup has been added as Ubuntu's backup program. Mozilla Thunderbird has replaced the GNOME Evolution email client. All removed applications will remain available to users for installation from the Ubuntu Software Center and repositories. Support for Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot was officially ended on 9 May 2013.