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With the release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) the Ubuntu Server Guide has received a major set of updates and has moved to a new location on the Ubuntu website. The new location makes it much easier to read and contribute improvements. There is a link on the bottom of each page that points directly to the corresponding Discourse page which contains the source for each page of the Ubuntu Server Guide.

The release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS was April 23, 2020. On the same day, Canonical added full support for Ubuntu Server 20.04 on all of the Raspberry Pis that we certify. Users can flash 20.04 to their Raspberry Pi knowing Canonical guarantees it will ‘just work’ and can make the most out of all of the new features added with 20.04. You can do this from our download page, or from the Official Raspberry Pi Imager tool.

If you have been using computers for some time now, you probably have fond memories of this or that piece of software from the past, an application or a game that was fun, useful and just plain great, but which isn’t available any longer.

The Ubuntu Server Live Installer, introduced with the release of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), provides a live Ubuntu Server environment along with a streamlined server installation experience. Building on guided installs for LVM, RAID, encrypted disks and advanced networking configuration (VLANs and bonds) the installer can refresh itself to the latest version during the live session.

It’s no secret that organisations have a love-hate relationship with data. Decision making can be unguided and market insights can be lost when organisations collect too little data. On the other hand, with large and active datasets, where requests number in the hundreds of thousands, maintaining database performance is increasingly difficult. One open source application, Apache Cassandra, enables organisations to process large volumes of fast moving data in a reliable and scalable way.

One of the most exciting security enhancements in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) is the ability to use the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) or Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) devices with SSH. By using a second authentication factor via a device, users can add another layer of security to their infrastructure through a stronger and yet still easy to use mechanism for authentication. Ubuntu 20.04 LTS includes this feature out of the box through the latest version of OpenSSH 8.2.

Outsourcing OpenStack operations can significantly accelerate the OpenStack deployment process. Although most organisations are successful with the initial roll-out of the cloud, many struggle to operate it effectively post-deployment. Under certain circumstances, a fully managed OpenStack can also be a cheaper option than the self-managed one. We have recently published a webinar in which we demonstrated a detailed cost analysis of both options.

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) was officially released on April 23. This is the latest Ubuntu Long Term Support (LTS) release, with security patches and updates available until 2025. If you are currently using an older version of Ubuntu, you may be interested in upgrading. In this tutorial, we will show how to safely upgrade from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver), the previous LTS, to the current one.

So, we’ve passed the first quarter of 2020. What have we learned? You don’t need us to tell you that, but robots are still cool As usual, this State of Robotics post discusses work the Ubuntu robotics team has done this past April, and some interesting projects we’ve seen in the community. Unfortunately, we had a total of zero submissions to be included this month, hopefully not a sign of the times.