#ubuntu2504 — Public Fediverse posts

Ubuntu 25.10 will use Dracut

While Ubuntu 25.04 is still ongoing development, there has been progress in switching from initramfs-tools to Dracut. Those tools both handle initrd generation for booting into the Linux kernel in preparation for the full system boot. The Ubuntu engineers are working hard to migrate such tool to Dracut to ensure better bootstrapping by reducing hard-coded logic as much as possible.

Initially, Ubuntu 25.04 would have used Dracut as the initrd generator, but the work wasn’t complete yet, so the Ubuntu engineers have delayed the migration to after Ubuntu 25.04 gets released so that the next version of Ubuntu uses Dracut completely.

However, you have an opportunity to try out Dracut in Ubuntu 25.04 when it gets released. This is so that you can provide feedback to the Ubuntu team about your experience with the Dracut integration.

Ubuntu 25.04 will be the last version that uses initramfs-tools as the default initrd generator, with the October release of Ubuntu being the first version that uses Dracut. This is going to be exciting news for the next year’s Ubuntu LTS release that will be out in the next April.

#2504 #2510 #Dracut #Initramfs #InitramfsTools #Initrd #news #Plucky #PluckyPuffin #Puffin #Tech #Technology #Ubuntu #Ubuntu2504 #Ubuntu2504Plucky #Ubuntu2504PluckyPuffin #Ubuntu2510 #update

This version of Ubuntu started the development with one of the most significant changes ever done. This time, it’s about compiler optimization level used on Ubuntu packages by default. When this version of Ubuntu had started its development, the mailing list entry said the following:

* perl 5.40 and haskell / ghc 9.6.6 already migrated to the releasepocket, to avoid entanglement with other transitions.* dpkg-buildflags defaults to -O3 instead of -O2. This might require changes in package builds. Please be aware that we already build with -O3 on ppc64el, so look for possible packaging adjustments.

While the Perl one is irrelevant in this blog post, the second entry in the toolchain changes is interesting. The default build flags for all Ubuntu packages that are determined by dpkg-buildflags have been changed so that -O3 is being used as a default instead of -O2.

This means that all future builds for all Plucky Puffin packages will be more optimized. Because of this, the build times will increase, but that doesn’t affect the end user. As a result, the packages that are built with the third optimization level will be faster than before, which means that your computer will be faster the second you upgrade to 25.04.

However, the binary size for the packages will be bigger, and there is uncertainty whether all packages benefit from this level of optimization that will be applied to all the packages. Furthermore, all builds and tests will be run, so expect delays. After that, when you test 25.04 during the development cycle, you should experience performance improvements.

On a side note, Perl 5.40 was released to Ubuntu 25.04, which brings several new features, new analyzers, and breaking changes, such as the :reader attribute for field variables, the breaking changes related to use VERSION declarations, the Infinity (inf) and Not-a-Number (nan) constants in builtin static class (module), the medium-precedence Logical XOR ^^ operator, the try...catch...finally block being a stable Perl feature, and stable support for multiple value iterations for the for loop.

Let’s see what Ubuntu 25.04 Plucky Puffin will offer as the next LTS, 26.04 RR, gets closer to the development period.

https://officialaptivi.wordpress.com/2024/11/04/ubuntu-25-04-plucky-puffins-packages-are-more-optimized/

#O2 #O3 #2504 #Acceleration #C #C_ #Computer #computers #GCC #GCCCompiler #improvements #Linux #LinuxUbuntu #news #Optimization #performance #Plucky #PluckyPuffin #speed #Tech #technology #Ubuntu #Ubuntu2504 #Ubuntu2504Plucky #Ubuntu2504PluckyPuffin #Ubuntu2504Puffin #UbuntuLinux #ubuntulinux #update