Ubuntu 20.04

This article covers changes which have been introduced with the update to Ubuntu 20.04 (aka focal fossa).

• The browser Chromium is no longer available as deb package, only as "snap" package. Snap is Ubuntu's (Canonical's) own container application format. For many reasons snaps are not usable for us, e.g packages are only available from the official store and updates are not controllable in any way. This maybe fine for home installation, but not in a managed enterprise environment. As a replacement we switched to the official Chrome build from Google. This is also not optimal, as you have to trust Google. You are free to use the default browser Firefox, which is completely build from open source.

• The login manager LightDM has been replaced with GDM. The is Gnome Display Manager, which is now required to have a working screen locking. This was already problematic in last release. On the other side GDM is hard to customize and not as lightweight as the LightDM.

• Notable applications:
  • Codium: the open source build of Visual Studio Code. This does not send telemetry to Microsoft and has the same functionallity. This was already installed in Ubuntu 18.04.