Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver: What’s new?

Introducing the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be released on April 26. It is Canonical’s seventh Long Term Support release, and it comes with several changes for the Ubuntu community. These include a slightly, darkish theme and X.Org Server as default display server instead of Wayland, which is used in the current stable release, Ubuntu 17.10, Artful Aardvark. Ubuntu 18.04 is still in beta and is not recommended for use on production systems or on your primary computers just yet.

For the lifespan, the ‘main’ archive of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years (until April 2023). However, support lengths for community supported Ubuntu flavors vary and will be announced later. It is powered by Linux kernel 4.15

Under the hood, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is powered by the Linux 4.15 kernel.  It includes patches for the Meltdown and Spectre security flaws. Various utilities are now offered in the Snap format like System Monitor, Calculator, Characters, and Logs, and there is a new automatic suspend timeout of 20 minutes for laptops.

Official flavors available:

1.Kubuntu – The Plasma 5.12 LTS series is the default in this version. Plasma 5 is the new generation of KDE’s desktop that has been developed to make it smoother to use while retaining the familiar setup. Kubuntu is recommended for regular users who want to help test by finding, reporting, and/or fixing bugs and for Kubuntu, KDE, and Qt developers.

2. Lubuntu – This release just features an LXDE-based ISO, to prepare for the LTS.

3. Ubuntu Budgie – concentrated on bug-fixing and smoothing off those rough edges the user community have found on a version before.

4. Ubuntu Kylin – the objective of this project is to create a variant of Ubuntu that is more suitable for previous Windows users all over the world.

5. Ubuntu MATE – more stable. More refined and improved to ensure that Ubuntu MATE offers what users want today and what they’ll need for the life of this LTS release.

6. Ubuntu Studio – It has been updated to provide an option to set the CPU governor to performance mode. This is important for recording.

7. Xubuntu – in Xubuntu, they remove the GTK Theme Configuration tool. It is no longer possible to override colors in all themes with a single application due to recent developments in GTK. It may return in a later release, but with limited functionality or theme support.

New features in 18.04

Updated Packages: Linux kernel 4.15

Network configuration: New since 17.10 and 16.04 LTS

The default DNS resolver is systemd-resolved and teaming support with libteam is available in NetworkManager.

SSSD: updated to version 1.16.x and its secrets service is now enabled. Previously it was disabled because it required the http-parser library which lived in Universe, but a successful MIR brought it to main so SSSD could link with it.

Landscape-client: It has been ported to Python 3 and is now available in the default server image.

Ubuntu-advantage-tools: a New message of the day support for Canonical Live patch. This indicates the status of live patches when logging in to a console and new enable-fips-updates command to enable a special FIPS repository with non-certified updates for FIPS enabled systems

Other base system changes since 16.04 LTS:

• The gpg binary is provided by gnupg2
• For new installs, a swap file will be used by default instead of a swap partition.
• Python 2 is no longer installed by default. Python 3 has been updated to 3.6.
• The installer no longer offers the encrypted home option using ecryptfs-utils. It is recommended to use the full-disk encryption instead of this release.