Ubuntu 23.04, Fedora 38 released
Two major Linux distributions released major new versions this week. First, Ubuntu:
There's a big user experience uplift courtesy of GNOME 44 and enhancements, and a brand new Ubuntu installer helps improves the onboarding experience.
Foundationally, Ubuntu 23.04 runs on the latest Linux kernel 6.2 release, ships Mesa 23.0 graphics drivers (with in-distro access to proprietary NVIDIA drivers for those who need them), plus updates all of the requisite tooling, toolchains, and programming packages developers need.
I'm curious to try the new installer if someone else adopts it (I have no need for Ubuntu), but other than that, this is a fairly small release that won't rock the boat too much.
Fedora Workstation focuses on the desktop experience. As usual, Fedora Workstation features the latest GNOME release. GNOME 44 includes a lot of great improvements, including a new lock screen, a background apps" section on the quick menu, and improvements to accessibility settings. In addition, enabling third-party repositories now enables an unfiltered view of applications on Flathub.
With this release, we've shortened the default timeout when services shut down. This helps your system power off faster - important when you need to grab your laptop and go.
Fedora is, in my view, the best desktop Linux distribution, and I use it myself on two of my three main PCs. So far, Fedora 38 doesn't feel like a major new release either, but just more of what you already know.