Tecseek Technology


April 29, 2022 | [REVIEW] Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)

Before we even installed Ubuntu 22.04, the Jammy Jellyfish, we were pretty excited.

Development focus for Jammy has been stability, mainly because it's a long-term support (LTS) release and developers refrain from being too experimental with LTS releases.

Still, it offers plenty of new stuff.

When looking around the office to see what hardware we could install it on we decided to try dual-booting it on a HP laptop which had Windows 11 already installed.

We installed Jammy alongside Windows 11 using a standard dual-boot configuration with all settings left at default.

Boot times for the live system were impressive, suggesting to us things could only get better once it was installed on real hardware.

The installation process was simple and fast, thanks to Ubiquity.

Because of the dual-boot environment we were installing we expected the entire process to take much longer.

Jammy resized the hard disk into a 60:40 configuration, leaving the larger chunk of the disk allocated to the existing Windows 11 instance and the smaller chunk being allocated to the Jammy installation.

Windows installations typically consume hard disk space much more aggressively than Linux, so the 60:40 allocation seemed reasonable to us.

Automated hard disk reallocation from inside Ubiquity was flawless and the operating system was installed in a ridiculously short amount of time.

So short in fact, that it shook our confidence that it had completed properly.

Before diving into Jammy we performed a basic boot test, to make sure both Windows 11 and Jammy had both been detected by the GRUB boot loader.

Both were detected and booted with no issues.

Completing a dual-boot installation with Jammy is simple and fast, and we think there really is no excuse for anyone to claim that dual-booting is too difficult in a modern era of Windows and Linux.

We often experience driver issues with Linux and the Realtek Wi-Fi adapter inside this particular laptop.

Jammy installed the open-source driver but the proprietary Realtek driver is available.

We found the open-source driver works without any issues on Jammy so we left it as is.

Jammy ships with a Linux 5.15.0-25 kernel installed but can be immediately updated to 5.15.0-27.

GNOME 42.0 is included, running on Wayland by default.

The core shell environment underneath it all runs Bash 5.1.16.

X.Org is included if that's what you prefer to use, however, it's time we get real about Wayland.

Wayland is stable and now works on a large amount of display hardware.

We believe any complaints about deficiencies of Wayland are unjustified.

The screenshot tool has been greatly improved.

After pressing the Print Screen key you now have the option to choose between a selected portion of the screen, the entire screen or selected window.

All of these options were available already but have received some very welcome usability improvements which takes full advantage of them.

There's also a screencast option too for recording screen activity for demonstrations, if that's your thing.

While it's not a feature we find particularly useful we understand there are many that will, so they will welcome the addition we're sure.

The screenshot tool changes are welcome but if you're looking for a great third-party tool which offers even greater options, consider something like Flameshot.

The software selection Jammy ships with is standard and follows what has become common practice with most mainstream Linux distributions.

This is where third-party and niche Linux distributions should be commended, by stepping up and offering users additional software and tools not shipped with the mainstream distributions.

Packages like GIMP, Emacs and Vim we believe should be standard in any Linux distribution.

As anyone should expect, they are absent from Jammy.

It's too quick and easy to install packages in Linux these days and it makes any complaint moot.

Firefox 99.0.1 ships as the default browser.

You will find a video package is included but you might have to think about installing some extra codecs, depending on what you are trying to play.

We don't personally like the default video package and prefer something a bit more focused, perhaps something like VLC media player.

Music lovers will find Rhythmbox installed, but as with videos you might have to install the required codecs before any of your songs can be heard.

Aesthetically, Jammy looks awesome!

It ships with Light mode enabled by default but that is easily changed to Dark mode, which we recommend.

Inside the Appearance settings you will find a color palette which allows you to change the theme accent.

We like Dark mode with the orange accent but you can switch to whatever works best for your own eyes.

Having the choice to change the theme accent is a welcome addition.

Desktop icons placement can be changed too.

The default option is Bottom Right but you can change to any corner of the display.

The dock is a little chunky and in our opinion still uses too many pixels by default.

This is easily fixed by reducing it to something like 32, or even less.

You can also change the position of the dock, bumping it to the right or shifting it to the bottom.

We recommend installing the GNOME Tweaks tool to add some extra options you won't find included as part of GNOME.

That is easily done by running:

   $ sudo apt install gnome-tweaks

The best thing we've found so far about Jammy is its raw response times - it is just so nimble!

Everything from navigating inside GNOME to file management and performing intensive tasks - Jammy doesn't miss a step.

We are running Jammy on very modest hardware with an AMD CPU and 4GB RAM.

Considering most modest systems now have at least 8-16GB RAM, these are extremely thin specifications.

Jammy uses about 700MB of memory post-boot.

After a few tasks are performed and the cache is triggered it bumps idle memory use to somewhere between 900MB-1GB.

For a modern Linux operating system of this high caliber, these are very good numbers on such modest hardware.

Jammy has everything you could want from a Linux operating system, plus more.

It impressed us in every way.

People love to hate the Ubuntu-brand and no matter how good a particular version is they will never give it credit.

It's fanboy mentality which we don't have much time for, to be frank.

With two decades of Linux experience in our pockets we are beyond that kind of thinking.

This version will put the fanboys on notice, with Jammy setting a new benchmark for desktop Linux.

Tecseek Technology

Written by Chris McGimpsey-Jones.


Updated April 30, 2022, for minor fixes.



© Copyright 2013-2023
GC Media Publishing Management
ABN: 98 317 740 240