Kubuntu is one of the most popular Ubuntu flavors out there sporting the stylish and very modern KDE Plasma desktop environment.
Kubuntu 20.04.4 LTS is the latest stable long-term release and will be supported for three years until 2023. This new release replaces the old LTS, namely 18.04, and it won’t feature support for i386 architectures (that was dropped previously in the 19.10 interim release).
New Qt and Plasma versions
One of the main changes of 20.04 LTS is that it ships with the Qt LTS 5.12.8 and Plasma 5.18 LTS. These combined should provide users with a smoother and more user-friendly experience for a longer time.
The new Plasma version features better integration, a completely rewritten notification system, a Night Color feature, a new visual software manager, a few changes in the System Settings section, etc.
Core changes and upgraded default apps
20.04 LTS ships with Firefox 75 which will receive further updates throughout the 20.04 LTS lifecycle. Thunderbird is now the default email client (replacing Kmail), and LibreOffice 6.4 is now provided by default as well.
Other app updates include Elisa (19.12.3), late-dock (0.9.10), KDEConnect (1.4.0), Krita (4.2.9), Kdevelop (5.5.0), and Digikam (6.4.0). Even though it’s not shipped by default, users can add Plasma Wayland sessions by installing the plasma-workspace-wayland package.
Another important change is the fact that support for KDE4 and Qt4 is no longer available.
Conclusion
One of the main benefits of this release is that it has very few official known issues. The new desktop environment looks the part, feels smoother, and should provide better responsiveness.
Overall, Kubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa is a very good distro for users who care about stability and want to use the OS until 2023. Kubuntu has always had good consistency in terms of how it runs and uses resources, and 20.04 is no exception.
