Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Enters Its Feature Freeze

The Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" is now under its feature freeze. This marks the period now by which Ubuntu developers should be focusing on bug fixes rather than new features.

New features/packages still in the Bionic-Proposed repository will still be allowed in past this feature freeze deadline. There are a lot with 822 packages still queued for this proposed archive. Also, feature freeze exceptions will be granted for select new functionality deemed important enough still to land.

Longtime Ubuntu developer Steve Langasek communicated the 18.04 feature freeze today on ubuntu-devel-announce.

Coming up next week is the beta release for opt-in flavors, the UI freeze on 22 March, the final beta release on 5 April, the kernel freeze on 12 April, the release candidate on 19 April, and a goal of shipping this next Long Term Support release on 26 April.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is powered off a mix of GNOME 3.26~3.28 packages while using the X.Org Server 1.19 by default, Wayland is a log-in-time option, the Linux 4.15 kernel is powering this distribution, GCC 7.3 is the default system compiler, and Mesa 18.0 is providing the open-source graphics drivers for the party.