Canonical has released a new version of its Ubuntu distribution under the number 21.10, codenamed Impish Indri. This is a standard support release and will receive updates over the next nine months.

Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri uses the GNOME 40 desktop environment, which provides dynamic workspaces and support for touchpad gestures. The new version also received Firefox browser as Snap app. According to Canonical, the number of Snap packages published in the store has grown by 25%. Snap Store now serves more than 10 million systems daily. There is also built-in support for graphics applications in the Windows subsystem for Linux.

Ubuntu is developer focused. New versions of PHP 8 and GCC 11 are available on Impish Indri. PHP 8 was released in June of this year, and the most interesting feature is the inclusion of the JIT compiler. In theory, this should improve performance in certain situations. Ubuntu 21.10 also includes Apache Cassandra as a Snap package, and MicroK8s can be used to install Kubernetes quickly and easily.

Ubuntu 21.10 uses Linux Kernel 5.13, which brings support for Kernel Electric Fence (KFENCE). KFENCE is a new runtime memory fault detector designed for production environments. It allows you to reduce the load while still identifying the most common memory errors. It is enabled by default.

The new version of the Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri OS distribution kit for various systems is already available for download from Project official website.