Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" Official Images Now Available

Ubuntu 18.04, the Bionic Beaver release, is now available as Canonical's latest Long-Term Support (LTS) release.

Ubuntu 18.04 is mostly an incremental upgrade over Ubuntu 17.10 with updated packages, the switch back to X.Org session by default rather than Wayland, continued presence of Snaps, and a variety of minor user-interface updates. It's really not a big deal going from 17.10 to 18.04 besides the LTS extended support nature, but it is quite a change if upgrading from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. For that upgrade you now have the GCC 7 compiler, Unity 7 to GNOME Shell by default, and a wealth of other package updates.

There, of course, is also the Ubuntu hardware/software survey and other refinements.

I'll be running some more Ubuntu 18.04 comparison benchmarks on Phoronix in the days ahead.

If you wish to download Ubuntu 18.04 LTS right now, the images are finally up on releases.ubuntu.com.