It's time to say goodbye to the Ubuntu 20.10 "Groovy Gorilla" operating system as it reached support end on July 22, 2021.
As recently announced by Ubuntu Canonical, the Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla version will not be supported with software and security updates from July 22, 2021. This means that if you are using Ubuntu 20.10, you should seriously consider upgrade to a newer version as soon as possible.
Ubuntu 20.10 was released nine months ago on October 22, 2020 and was the first version of the Raspberry Pi 4 operating system. It used the Linux 5.8 kernel and by default had the GNOME 3.38 desktop environment.
However, because it was not an LTS (Long-Term Support) version, Ubuntu 20.10 could only be updated for nine months, until July 22, 2021. After that date, Canonical ceased to have updates for Groovy Gorilla, which, over time, will become vulnerable to all kinds of attacks.
On July 21, 2021, Canonical released the latest security update for Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy Gorilla), so if you continue to use the distribution for a few more days or weeks until you are ready to upgrade to Ubuntu 21.04, you should be safe . However you should consider considering an upgrade as soon as possible.
Before upgrading to Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo), which has a newer kernel for better hardware support (Linux 5.11), and support for GNOME 40 and Wayland applications by default, you should get a backup.
Ubuntu 21.04 will be supported for another six months, until the end of January 2022, but Canonical will release Ubuntu 21.10 (Impish Indri) on October 14, 2021, with the latest GNOME series in version 40 by default, Linux 5.14 kernel and many other improvements.
George is still wondering what he is doing here….
