Ubuntu releases 18.04 LTS ‘Bionic Beaver’

Canonical Ltd. which is a UK-based computer software company has released the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 'Bionic Beaver' after months of alpha and beta testing. The LTS (Long Term Support version) of the Ubuntu operating system, and is said to be a more refined version of the Ubuntu 17.10 for the most part. The latest version still makes use of GNOME desktop environment in place of Unity. There are also a number of changes made under the hood which makes this latest release different from its previous versions.

Like the earlier alpha/beta tests which the company did on its platform has already shown that the Ubuntu 18.04 doesn't be any user-end changes, unlike its previous version. However, there is one major under-the-hood tweak which the users need to note. The Ubuntu 18.04 is the first version of the distro which is based on Linux Kernel 4.15, which was released earlier this year after a delay after a long delay for which Linus Torvalds has blamed Intel for failing to provide a proper fix for the Meltdown/ Spectre vulnerabilities.

Some of the other changes in the latest version of the Linux include fast and improved boot process and enhanced security. The new update also brings Xorg back to the platform and it will be serving as the default server after the introduction of Wayland on Ubuntu 17.10. It is also worth noting the fact that even though Wayland is available still as an option, however, it is not default anymore. There is some good news for the emoji lovers as Canonical is now promising native support for colour emojis, that means the inconsistent emoji support which we have seen in the previous iterations of Ubuntu will no longer be visible.

With the latest version of Ubuntu which is 18.04, Canonical will start collecting system usage data which will include information regarding the device manufacturer, the CPU model, the system time zone and installed packages. The users will be allowed to opt-out of the data collection, however, it will not be turned on by default, so the users who are not comfortable with sharing information will have to turn it off manually before getting connected to the internet, which is similar to that of Windows.

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This being an LTS release, Ubuntu 18.04 will receive updates till 2023. As per Canonical, the other two LTS versions that are supported currently will receive updates until April 2019 (Ubuntu 14.04) and April 2021 (Ubuntu 16.04). Further, the company will end the support for Ubuntu 17.0 by end of July 2018, so users need to upgrade their devices to the latest version 18.04