Month: May 2020

Enlarge / Did everyone know that a fossa is a cat-like, carnivorous mammal endemic to Madagascar beforehand? Anyone else first misread it as "Fosse" and think choreography?

This is most definitely the strangest spring in a very long time, with all sorts of event and hardware delays or outright cancellations. But one thing that has arrived right on schedule? The latest version of Ubuntu Linux.

Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa, as this release is known) is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, which means Ubuntu's parent company, Canonical, will provide support through 2025. The LTS releases are what Canonical calls "enterprise grade," and these tend to be conservative when it comes to adopting new technologies. The interim releases, like last year's Ubuntu 19.10, are instead where the company tends to experiment. Perhaps not surprisingly, Canonical estimates that 95 percent of all Ubuntu installations are LTS releases. Which is to say, this is a big update that the bulk of Ubuntu's user base will be upgrading to eventually.

The good news for Ubuntu fans is that 20.04 has been a fantastic release in our testing. This update has been very solid in day-to-day use, and it still manages to (optionally!) include support for some cutting-edge new features, like the beginnings of a tool to manage ZFS snapshots. There's also a major kernel bump, and considerable work has gone into improving and polishing the default Yaru theme.

Enlarge / Mitchell rides an oversized Donkey Kong machine in the Citrus Bowl parade. (credit: Billy Mitchell / Twitter)

In April of 2018, the Twin Galaxies video game scoreboard announced its finding that well-known classic game score-chaser Billy Mitchell did not achieve his Donkey Kong high scores on unmodified arcade hardware, stripping him of all his accumulated records in the process. Since then, Mitchell has oft claimed that he would fight the decision every way he could. And in September 2019, Mitchell and his lawyers said in a statement they would be forced to "resort to legal recourse" if Twin Galaxies didn't rescind its decision and reinstate Mitchell's scores.

But court filings obtained by Ars Technica show that Mitchell had already filed suit against Twin Galaxies in a Los Angeles County court as early as April 2019.

Mitchell's defamation lawsuit—misfiled as "William James Mitchell vs. Twin Galexies, LLC [sic]" and not reported in previous press accounts—has been slowly building to a planned July anti-SLAPP hearing, where Twin Galaxies will make use of a statute that lets defendants quickly strike down lawsuits that threaten "public participation." Twin Galaxies says in court filings that its statements regarding Mitchell's scores were not defamatory and that finding in Mitchell's favor "would have chilling effects on the freedom of speech."