Canonical Releases Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
April 23, 2020

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.

Share this

Industry News

November 26, 2024

Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. has been recognized as a Leader and Fast Mover in the latest GigaOm Radar Report for Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPPs).

November 26, 2024

Spectro Cloud, provider of the award-winning Palette Edge™ Kubernetes management platform, announced a new integrated edge in a box solution featuring the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) ProLiant DL145 Gen11 server to help organizations deploy, secure, and manage demanding applications for diverse edge locations.

November 26, 2024

Red Hat announced the availability of Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) 8 on Microsoft Azure.

November 26, 2024

Launchable by CloudBees is now available on AWS Marketplace, a digital catalog with thousands of software listings from independent software vendors that make it easy to find, test, buy, and deploy software that runs on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

November 26, 2024

Kong closed a $175 million in up-round Series E financing, with a mix of primary and secondary transactions at a $2 billion valuation.

November 26, 2024

Tricentis announced that GTCR, a private equity firm, has signed a definitive agreement to invest $1.33 billion in the company, valuing the enterprise at $4.5 billion and further fueling Tricentis for future growth and innovation.

November 25, 2024

Sonatype and OpenText are partnering to offer a single integrated solution that combines open-source and custom code security, making finding and fixing vulnerabilities faster than ever.

November 25, 2024

Red Hat announced an extended collaboration with Microsoft to streamline and scale artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (gen AI) deployments in the cloud.

November 25, 2024

Endor Labs announced that Microsoft has natively integrated its advanced SCA capabilities within Microsoft Defender for Cloud, a Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).

November 21, 2024

Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.5, the latest version of the enterprise Linux platform.

November 21, 2024

Securiti announced a new solution - Security for AI Copilots in SaaS apps.

November 20, 2024

Spectro Cloud completed a $75 million Series C funding round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives with participation from existing Spectro Cloud investors.