Canonical has just officialized its operating system Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver). Linux distribution is offered in several versions to address different environments ranging from PC to IoT via the cloud.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) is official, what’s new?
It took six months of development to complete this new LTS version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with the nickname Bionic Beaver is available for download. Long Term Support’s LTS contraction endorsement provides coverage for five years. Until April 2023, the distribution will benefit from maintenance with evolutions, bug fixes, improvements and security patches.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, minimal installation and a return of X.Org
As expected, new features are included as well as optimizations and modifications. For example, X.Org takes back its default display server place instead of Wayland, which was on the front page under Ubuntu 17.10. Canonical plans a transition to Wayland with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. In the meantime, this solution will be proposed as a kind of technical overview, available from the login screen.
The distribution offers a minimal installation option. It allows the installation of the operating system with only a few applications. We find the Firefox browser and a handful of classic utilities. Note that the graphical installation process has been revisited with the disappearance of some options and the arrival of new ones.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS takes advantage of a partnership with Microsoft to offer Hyper-V “optimized images”. They are supposed to speed up the Ubuntu desktop under the Windows environment. For cloud environments, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS cloud images come with hardware acceleration integration for Nvidia GPUs.
The desktop environment is provided by the latest version of GNOME. Specifically, all applications have been updated to version 3.28 except one utility. This is the Nautilus file manager still available in version 3.26.
On this point, the presence of GNOME 3.28 brings many changes as for example the support of Thunderbolt 3 by GNOME Shell. We can also mention the support of weather forecasts by the calendar, LibreOffice 6.0 as office suite by default, Firefox 59.0.2 as the Web browser or OpenJDK 10 as the default JRE / JDK.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, long live SNAPS
Canonical takes advantage of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to continue slowly the implementation of Snappy technologies. It allows reinforcing security while easily updates. So it is not surprising that several Snap format applications are present. GNOME Calculator, GNOME Characters, GNOME Logs or GNOME System Monitor. Ubuntu Software allows easy switching between Snap Store channels to popularize Snaps installations. Over 3,000 Snaps are now available, including popular applications like Firefox, Spotify, Skype, and Slack.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS offers support for color “emoji” in most applications and a new default driver for mice and touchpads is implemented. Finally, the distribution automatically “suspends” laptops on battery after 20 minutes of inactivity.
Although announced at the end of its life, the Linux 4.15 kernel is at the heart of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
The situation will change in the future especially with the publication of the first major maintenance, Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, It will take place this year. Finally, attenuations for the Meltdown and Spectre faults are in place.
These are just some of the new features offered by this new release of Ubuntu. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be available for download in the coming hours. In the meantime, you can retrieve different ISO here.
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