DEVOPSdigest

Canonical announced the general availability of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, with a particular emphasis on security and performance.

"Accelerating open source globally is our mission. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is the new state of the art open source platform for the enterprise and the entrepreneur," said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. "We bring together thousands of contributors and the world's largest technology companies to make Ubuntu 20.04 LTS the standard reference platform for secure cloud and edge compute."

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS applies Kernel Self Protection measures, assures control flow integrity and adds stack-clash protection for systemic forward-looking enterprise security.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS also includes Secure Boot to protect against low level attacks and rootkits, often employed by Advanced Persistent Threat groups, and limits attack proliferation or ‘blast radius' with strict snap confinement of key exposed applications on the desktop and server such as the local Kubernetes package MicroK8s. To mitigate social engineering attacks, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS introduces Fast ID Online (FIDO) for universal multi-factor and passwordless authentication.

Canonical works with platform partners to anchor security for the operating system in the deepest possible fashion in modern hardware capabilities. "Ubuntu 20.04 LTS pushes the envelope with the latest developments in security and scalability, " said Robert Gomer, Director AMD Datacenter Alliances. "It adds native support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization with accelerated memory encryption designed for data-in-use protection as well as high-performance scaling for AMD EPYC processors with 256 threads and beyond."

WireGuard is a new, simplified VPN with modern cryptography defaults. WireGuard is included in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and will be backported to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to support widespread enterprise adoption. "Including WireGuard by default in all recent versions of Ubuntu means that users will finally have a great out-of-the-box secure tunnel on Ubuntu," said Jason A. Donenfeld, creator of WireGuard.

Ubuntu continues to be the OS of most public cloud workloads. Canonical recently launched Ubuntu Pro on public clouds, which broadens Ubuntu security maintenance to cover every single package in Ubuntu for a full ten years. Ubuntu Pro also includes FIPS and Common Criteria EAL to meet FedRAMP, PCI, HIPAA and ISO compliance requirements.

"We've partnered with the Canonical team to think of new ways to solve the security challenges of tomorrow, and are excited that Ubuntu 20.04 LTS is now available. In Google Cloud, Shielded VM hardening is enabled by-default on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, 18.04 LTS, and now on 20.04 LTS - and at no additional cost," said Nelly Porter, Lead Product Manager at Google Cloud.

"We're excited to partner with Canonical to bring the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS innovations across our toolchain -- from developers on WSL to scaling enterprise production deployments in Azure," said John Gossman, Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft Corp. "In this release, we've made it easier than ever to manage workstation environments and to enjoy the long-term stability and security of Ubuntu Pro for Azure across a wide range of compute options."

The new Windows Subsystem for Linux v2 in Windows 10 enables deep and direct integration of Ubuntu in Windows desktops and servers, both for cross-platform development and for sophisticated blended Windows/Linux production capabilities.

Ubuntu has become the platform of choice for Linux workstations. Canonical certifies multiple Dell, HP, and Lenovo workstations, and supports enterprise developer desktops. Machine learning and AI tools from a range of vendors are available immediately for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, along with 6,000 applications in the Snapcraft Linux App Store including Slack, Skype, Plex, Spotify, the entire JetBrains portfolio and Visual Studio Code.

Ubuntu is widely deployed as a Kubernetes host in public cloud and private infrastructure. It is also widely used for containerized operations in mainframe environments.