You’ve crowned Ubuntu 19.10 as the best Ubuntu release of the past 10 years.
Yup, no my opinion but that of your fellow omg! ubuntu! readers.
Two weeks ago I put the 20 versions of Ubuntu released between 2010 and 2019 to a public vote – and in the end Ubuntu 19.10 came out on top.
Not that it was an easy win, mind.
The share of the vote was close among the top 3 entries; a mere 0.25% separated the winner (19.10) from runner up (16.04 LTS):
- Ubuntu 19.10 (22%)
- Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (21.75%)
- Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (20.53%)
Did “recency” play a part in helping Ubuntu 19.10 ‘Eoan Ermine’ win?
Perhaps.
Ubuntu 19.10 is (at the time the poll was conducted) the latest version and the one freshest in peoples minds. Trying to recall the pluses of releases prior requires a fair bit of head scratching, particularly if mining for memories of Ubuntu 10.10 and 10.04 LTS.
That said, the win is well earned:
When Ubuntu swapped Unity for GNOME Shell back in 2017 there was no guarantee that the implementation and integration of the GNOME desktop stack would be anywhere near as finessed and fine-tuned as it was.
In fact, many had been expecting the worst.
GNOME Shell has issues (performance related mostly) but once Canonical set its software engineers to work, things improved improved greatly — and not just for Ubuntu users, either.
And nowhere are those performance improvements more keenly felt than in October’s Ubuntu 19.10 release. It was a terrific one, arguably the best in many, many years.
For ‘Eoan Ermine’, upstream work on better performance and enhanced features combined expertly with downstream touches like USB mount support in the Ubuntu Dock and icons support on the desktop.
The success of Ubuntu 19.10 bodes well for the upcoming release of Ubuntu 20.04 LTS ‘Focal Fossa’, due for release in April 2020.
Eoan’s excellence aside, do spare a thought for the Ubuntu releases duking it out at the bottom of the poll.
The least loved version of Ubuntu this decade? That plaudit was earned by Ubuntu 13.10 which got a risible 5 votes.
I hope the ‘Saucy Salamander’ isn’t a sore loser!