Ubuntu Linux Will Finally Get A New Installer In 2021

For those about to Nuke and Pave, Canonical salutes you.

As a rabid distro-hopper with a ton of machines and bottomless curiosity, I’m 95-percent positive I’m way more critical of installers than most people. But the installer also happens to be a person’s first taste of a Linux distro.

It needs to be effective and intuitive. It needs to make a great impression.

16 years after debuting on Ubuntu (and later becoming the installer for dozens — if not hundreds — of additional distros), Ubiquity has certainly proven its worth. It does its job and does it consistently well. But Canonical believes it’s time to freshen things up with a refreshed Ubuntu Desktop installer.

“The current Ubuntu Desktop installer, Ubiquity, dates back to 2006. While still functional, Ubiquity hasn’t seen significant feature development for some years and due to its legacy is becoming cumbersome to maintain.” ~Martin Wimpress, Director Of Engineering, Ubuntu Desktop at Canonical

Wimpress, together with the Ubuntu Desktop and Canonical Design Teams plan to completely revamp the installer in 2021, but core work has already begun.

They’re targeting a preliminary release for Ubuntu 21.10 this October, with the ultimate goal of fully transitioning over for the next LTS (Long-Term Support) release in April 2022.

Canonical’s recent collaboration with the Flutter team at Google will yield rewards here, as the company will incorporate that work to design the frontend of the brand new installer.

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Creating a new desktop installer gives us the opportunity to revisit what features are most desirable to our community and enterprise customers.” writes Wimpress. “We have scoped the initial functional requirements, but welcome your feedback and contributions for the capabilities most important to you, your flavour, derivative or organisation.”

Get Involved

Here are links to the new desktop installer and associated technologies, taken from Canonical’s Discourse post.

• Ubuntu Desktop Installer 115
• Curtin 101 — the curt installer is a “fast path” installer designed to install Ubuntu quickly.
• Curtin documentation 8
• Subquity 71 — Ubuntu Server Installer & Snappy first boot experience
• Discourse https://discourse.ubuntu.com/c/desktop