After its release Ubuntu 21.04 “Hirsute Hippo” last week, it was time for Ubuntu developers to focus on the next big release of the popular GNU/Linux distribution, the Ubuntu 21.10.
After the release of Ubuntu 21.04 (Hirsute Hippo), will come Ubuntu 21.10, which was named by Canonical "Impish Indri". They also published the release plan, stating that the development of Ubuntu 21.10 will begin on Thursday, April 29, 2021, with the upload of the toolchain.
Of course, development will be based on the current release, i.e. Ubuntu 21.04, and according to program release the Beta version will arrive for public testing on September 23, while the final version is scheduled for October 14, 2021.
During the six-month development cycle, two Ubuntu Testing Week events are scheduled for July 1st and August 26th so the community can try out the upcoming version.
Other important dates include the Feature stages Freeze and Debian Import Freeze on August 19th, Kernel Freeze stage on September 30th, and Final Freeze and Release Candidate on October 7th.
Of course, it's too early to talk about the new features we'll see in Ubuntu 21.10, but Canonical has already revealed that GCC 11 will be the default system compiler and that the upcoming release will ship withcase GNU C Library 2.34, GNU Binutils 2.37, and LLVM 13 by default. Ubuntu 21.10 could be powered by Linux Kernel 5.14.
Canonical also revealed a while ago that Ubuntu 21.10 will be a test release for the upcoming new Ubuntu installer desktop, written with Flutter SDK, to be more stable for the next LTS (Long Term Support) release, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, coming in Spring 2022.
Ubuntu 21.10 will also be a beta version of the GNOME 40.x desktop environment. As you know, Ubuntu 21.04 bypassed the GNOME 40.x desktop environment and released a hybrid desktop environment that has GNOME 40 applications and the GNOME 3.38 shell.
