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Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS 'Bionic Beaver' Beta 2 Now Available (betanews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu Linux 18.04 "Bionic Beaver" is almost here -- it is due on April 26. In the interim, today, the second -- and final -- beta becomes available. Bionic Beaver is very significant, as it is an LTS version, meaning "Long Term Support." This is important to those that prefer stability to bleeding edge and don't want to deal with the hassle of upgrades. In other words, you can install 18.04 and be confident that it will be supported for 5 years. In comparison, non-LTS Ubuntu versions get a mere 9 months.

There is plenty to be excited about with Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS 'Bionic Beaver' Beta 2, including the GNOME 3.28 desktop environment -- Beta 1 did not include GNOME at all. Of course, all the other DE flavors are available too, such as KDE and Xfce. The kernel is at 4.15, which while not the most current version, is still quite modern. Also included is LibreOffice 6.0 -- an essential tool that rivals Microsoft Office. Wayland is available as a technical preview, although X remains the default display server -- for now.

54 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. "Bionic Beaver" by Type44Q · · Score: 4, Funny

    Is it just me or does "Bionic Beaver" sound awfully similar to "Cybernetic Vagina?"

    1. Re:"Bionic Beaver" by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      Could have been worse -- Canadian Beaver

      /me ducks

    2. Re:"Bionic Beaver" by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Dunno, 'Canadian Beaver' isn't very, well, topical.

      "Bionic" has a much bigger potential audience - very cyber and all that - and just really sucks as a commercial product name.

      They must have picked up some old, ex Microsoft marketing execs ....

      "You'd make a grown man cry."

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    3. Re:"Bionic Beaver" by freeze128 · · Score: 2

      Why is it *IN THE SINK*?

    4. Re:"Bionic Beaver" by DeBaas · · Score: 4, Funny

      Is it just me or does "Bionic Beaver" sound awfully similar to "Cybernetic Vagina?"

      and you couldn't come up with a synonym which starts with a C, now could you?

      --
      ---
    5. Re:"Bionic Beaver" by datavirtue · · Score: 2

      This is the only version name I ever will remember besides "Ice Cream Sandwich."

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    6. Re:"Bionic Beaver" by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Is it just me or does "Bionic Beaver" sound awfully similar to "Cybernetic Vagina?"

      To keep with the theme I'm sure Ubuntu 22.10 will be called Katya Kazanova.

    7. Re:"Bionic Beaver" by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

      Is it just me or does "Bionic Beaver" sound awfully similar to "Cybernetic Vagina?"

      The in-house / development version name is "Jaime Sommers".

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    8. Re: "Bionic Beaver" by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      It's supposed to be an animal, so obviously the next version will be cybernetic cock.

  2. Nostalgia by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    I miss the days of Ubuntu Linux 18.02.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Nostalgia by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      7.04 was peak Ubuntu.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    2. Re:Nostalgia by Thelasko · · Score: 3, Insightful

      7.04 was peak Ubuntu.

      I'll have to disagree with you there. I started with Ubuntu version 7.04. There were a lot of bugs. Flash was a pain to get working, display drivers were a mess. I must have run the command "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" a dozen times to get it to work.

      10.04 was the best. Everything worked. Everything was in a logical place, with exception of the window controls, which you get used to. If you couldn't deal with the window controls, 8.04 wasn't bad either.

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    3. Re:Nostalgia by AvitarX · · Score: 2

      Maybe.

      I started Ubuntu with 7.04 (maybe that was the one I liked most even, I forget). I loved the 2 panel gnome 2, and it seemed to work great. Compiz worked well, and everything seemed good for me (flash and nvidia drivers).

      With 8.04 a hard-drive scheduling issue made it unusable, and I pretty much stopped using Linux as a desktop. I can fully imagine it got better, but I don't think I'll find a desktop I like more than gnome 2 of that era with compiz as a window manager. Also, it was a pretty exciting time to use Linux as highly customizable 3d desktops became a thing, the web was comfortably cross platform again, Open Office was a pretty good suite for free, and I was young, so everything was more exciting...

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    4. Re:Nostalgia by Thelasko · · Score: 1

      ow I didn't know about dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg, but in 7.04 the xorg.conf file was still static and I edited it all the time.

      Yes, reconfigure xserver-xorg was a wizard program that would edit xorg.conf for you. I edited xorg.conf a few times, but I only made things worse. I'd end up stuck with a black screen and cursor, and reconfigure xserver-xorg would bail me out.

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    5. Re:Nostalgia by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

      For desktop or server? When did they break those apart?

    6. Re:Nostalgia by afidel · · Score: 1

      Hehe, I started using Linux back when you had to download floppy images. My first commercial distro was Redhat 3.9. I recently installed Ubuntu 17.4 and was warped back to that Redhat install, the text based installer was almost unchanged from that 1996 experience. I also had another retro experience, the laptop I had bought for the project used a Realtek wireless card and apparently despite developing the chip in 2016 and shipping it to HP to include in 2017 model laptops they didn't give drivers to the upstream of the Linux kernel until November 2017. Had to install CentOS, use a cheap wireless card to get online, and update to a bleeding edge kernel build to get builtin wireless working.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    7. Re:Nostalgia by Shotgun · · Score: 1

      I've never understood the need for anything other than a text based installer for an OS. How often are you supposed to use it, after all?

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    8. Re:Nostalgia by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Text based installers are excellent.

      I was particularly fond of yast. Being able to configure just like my install was so amazing to me.

      Before that, I used to reinstall redhat whenever I got new hardware...

      The Debian text installer was pretty excellent back then too.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    9. Re:Nostalgia by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Desktop.

      They were split (wrt to install media) from the start, but server was basically just a minimal text based install (maybe it still is?).

      Eucalyptus is when I feel they started pushing server features as first class.

      But this is from memory, so salt grains and all.

      I still use the server, but the next one I do will likely be SUSE Leap, since it comes with netatalk 3.x, and will save me some compiling.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    10. Re: Nostalgia by c6gunner · · Score: 1

      Funny, I just upgraded to the beta from a functional install, and then had to manually edit xorg.conf because the automated tools thought everything was fine even though I was stuck with a text console.

      Changed one line for the nvidia driver and it started right up.

    11. Re:Nostalgia by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      I know! It was the single best version of Ubuntu released in the first half of 2007.

  3. Sean Connery by Thelasko · · Score: 1

    I've got to ask you about the bionic beaver. Gussy it up however you want, Shuttleworth. What matters is, does it work?

    You're sitting on a goldmine Shuttleworth!

    --
    One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  4. Re:Beta LTS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Jesus, are you a fucking idiot or something???

  5. Re:Beta LTS? by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

    How is the Beta going to be Long Term Support? It is a contradiction in terms.
    I know 18.04 once released it will be flagged as a Long Term Support product. But being that it currently beta. This particular version isn't expected to be supported.

    18.04 LTS is undergoing beta testing - in case anything is seriously bad before it's finally released. It's not the beta itself that is LTS, it's the final product. You're beta testing what will be 18.04 LTS.

    Though, it seems kind of late, I mean, it's April already and they're not at release candidates? Might as well call it 18.05LTS or 18.06LTS...

  6. Bionic Beaver by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    My first though was some mid/late 1970's naughty fan fiction between Steve Austin and Jaime Sommers.

  7. Re:Beta LTS? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    18.04 LTS is undergoing beta testing - in case anything is seriously bad before it's finally released.

    Apart from Gnome 3 and systemd, you mean?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  8. Re: More like Bionic Bastards by ArmoredDragon · · Score: 1

    If you're in an enterprise environment with a policy that you must have paid support available for everything, then your only option is systemd.

  9. Ubuntu Mate ?!? by denisbergeron · · Score: 1

    Ubuntu is going after Mint.

    It's a way to proof your bad idea with Unity!

    The funny part of the show, is that Mint is a lot more stable and have better hardware discovery than Ubuntu. They lost their leading in usuability, and not only because the strange UI !

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
    1. Re:Ubuntu Mate ?!? by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's a way to proof your bad idea with Unity!

      I'm not sure if that was a typo or really clever. But "proof" noun: a test or trial of something.

      Which is exactly what it was. It was a test to eliminate what was at the time an incredibly fucked up Gnome interface. Providing an alternative to that abortion was exactly the opposite of a bad idea. The fact that the Gnome guys came to their senses, and that upstream at that point has something that works makes dropping the project quite the humble move.

      Canonical have done this a few times already: e.g. upstart, and mir (although while dropping mir work in the face of Wayland I think this one was resource constricted given that Wayland is not prime time ready and the result was to drop back to X11).

      They lost their leading in usuability

      Debatable. Typically when I see someone on Slashdot complain that something is unusable it typically means: someone moved my cheese and therefor it must be worse. Usable is in the eye of the beholder, and if the beholder is beholding an OS running on a tablet than Unity was pretty much the *only* usable interface.

    2. Re:Ubuntu Mate ?!? by Mike+Van+Pelt · · Score: 1

      Typically when I see someone on Slashdot complain that something is unusable it typically means: someone moved my cheese and therefor it must be worse.

      There's some justification in this. Though sometimes, it seems like they're doing a Penn and Teller act, where the cheese is under one of the cups. Maybe. And not the clear plastic ones.

      Then, you find out the cheese (set tab titles in Terminal) isn't under any of the cups at all; Teller has eaten it while you were distracted by all the legerdemain. (Though, actually, that particular brain fart was Gnome's fault, which is why I switched to the Mate terminal.)

    3. Re:Ubuntu Mate ?!? by denisbergeron · · Score: 1

      I wasn't looking for a tablet running an ubuntu os, because these kind of thing even, if it was a expected product wasn't never a reality. but my touch tablet run Mint mint !

      --
      Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
    4. Re:Ubuntu Mate ?!? by wonkavader · · Score: 1

      i LIKE Unity. But nothing about Ubuntu compels you to use it. Run Gnome or KDE, or whatever.

  10. Don't look at me... by Locke2005 · · Score: 1

    I'm still disappointed they didn't use my suggested release name, "Masturbating Monkey".

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:Don't look at me... by SpankiMonki · · Score: 1

      That name is pretty offensive. You should be ashamed of yourself.

    2. Re:Don't look at me... by apoc.famine · · Score: 2

      They're only on "B" right now. If you'd suggested "Buggering Baboon" you might have had a shot. Be patient - M will come around again.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  11. So excited by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

    There is plenty to be excited about ... including the GNOME 3.28 desktop environment.

    'Cause I use Mate, not that GNOME 3 <expletive deleted />

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  12. Better for hardware by smartr · · Score: 1

    I'm very much looking forward to installing this. I recently put together a nice Machine Learning / linux workstation / build machine.... https://pcpartpicker.com/list/... And Linux pre 4.14 just flubbed pretty bad with the processor... https://www.phoronix.com/scan.... I got things working somewhat smoothly with Manjaro linux, but getting the CUDA support working was a total hack (currently GCC 6.3 is all they support, not 6.4, much less 7.3 and the arch linux "fix" is very much an admitted dirty hack), and getting Caffe 2 to compile right was turning into more work than it was worth ... http://docs.nvidia.com/cuda/cu... ... So yes, these problems are largely the fault of Intel and NVIDIA clutching their proprietary pearls, but I am looking forward to running a well supported and stable version of linux that can support and be optimized to the latest hardware that came out 6 months ago.

  13. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  14. Thanks Ubuntu! by Xenolith0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've said before in previous posts that I personally use Fedora, since my day job revolves around Red Hat based systems. But I LOVE Ubuntu. When I starting using Linux back in 1997 (I was late to the game), the community was toxic.

    The choices were basically Slackware, which, while a good distro the SW community really expected you to be a Unix god and was unwilling to provides helpful answers other than "gtfo n00b" and "go use windows".

    The other choice was Mandriva which had a better community but just the worst documentation. Which meant, you'd go to the community to ask for help, you'd get a response of "RTFM", which would have been fine, had there been a manual and/or if it had had correct information in it. (Yes, I know there were other distros at the time but those were the two big communities)

    So a lot of my time was spent reading/editing source code to learn how to use application which should have "just worked" in the first damn place. Now to be fair, I learned a ton because of that.

    Then came Ubuntu, along with its rich sugar-daddy. In came professional tech-writers documenting the system, documenting the applications, writing correct and updated how-to guides. In came professional coders fixing long standing bugs. And I watched many other distros die as they bled users to Ubuntu. Even if you dislike some of the design decisions Ubuntu has made over the years, they greatly increased the quality of the entire Linux ecosystem.

    Thank you Ubuntu devs for raising the bar!

    1. Re:Thanks Ubuntu! by Thelasko · · Score: 1

      Ubuntuforums was pretty amazing too. I haven't been to that site in years now.

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    2. Re:Thanks Ubuntu! by Teun · · Score: 1

      Indeed it was, but Kubuntuforums is more to the point.

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    3. Re:Thanks Ubuntu! by Thelasko · · Score: 1

      I didn't even know that was a thing.

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
    4. Re:Thanks Ubuntu! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      While the doc team may have been lead by professional tech-writers when Ubuntu started, it wasn't professionals that wrote the documentation. It was normal Joe's like myself that wrote a lot of the documentation. There was a well documented process and a structure we had to follow.
      Mostly we followed the kde-docs format of leveraging docbook and then kicking it out to HTML. There were two of us that wrote the docs for Kubuntu and we spent a lot of time rushing after feature freeze to make sure everything was current and up to speed. It was a giant roller coaster, especially if someone got a feature freeze exception and forgot to inform the docs team of a change.
      Feature Freeze kicked off a rush to get things done before Translation Freeze and then it was release party day...

      Those were the days

    5. Re:Thanks Ubuntu! by sad_ · · Score: 1

      what are you talking about? In 1997 you already has most of the distro's that are still around today; redhat (not RHEL), suse, debian, slack, etc. plenty choice!
      and let's not talk about the more obscure, now long forgotten distro's, like the first I tried - Ygdrassil.

      --
      On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  15. Re:The Linux Mint Foundation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Personally I've tried Mint and Mate a few times and always went back to Ubuntu. There was always something that either didn't work right or something else that ended up annoying me. Of course I don't use the default Ubuntu look, I've customized it to be some sort of OS X looking hybrid (another thing I could never get working in Mint). Now that I've customized it, I really like Ubuntu.

  16. And it also comes with X2Go in the standard Repo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Zippy, fast, responsive remote Desktops and Citrix-like Published Applications, all useable from the standard Ubuntu 18.04 repository, no more need to manually add a PPA.

    TL;DR: https://wiki.x2go.org/doku.php/doc:newtox2go

  17. Re:Wow, Yes, EXCITING! by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 1

    Ubuntu has hit industry and pretty much the only option from most companies for those that prefer .deb over .rpm.

    Companies usually target LTS and LTS-1 for this reason. Most of my tools are on 14.04 and 16.04. Knowing that 18.04 is coming and in beta means that I can get out ahead of the curve and figure out what's broken and what scripts I need to write to prepare for our migration.

    Knowing how we roll things out that may come 2019, but I can at least start preparing now in my 'down time'. Or I can sit on my hands until bossman says "We're moving to 18.04 LTS" and give them a deer in the headlights look and expect breakage like my peers.

    This is about as much news for nerds in industry as you can get.

  18. Re:Bionic Beaver by trailerparkcassanova · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I was thinking Lindsay Wagner. Hubba-hubba!!!

  19. In theory but not in practice by petes_PoV · · Score: 1

    In other words, you can install 18.04 and be confident that it will be supported for 5 years

    But if you install any third-party apps, there is little prospect that they will install on a 5 year-old system, if you feel the need to upgrade them during the LTS period. Even if you install all the fixes, patches and other stuff provided by the LTS supplier.

    And it is practically certain that some of your apps will require bug fix upgrades or security upgrades during that time. And once those (non LTS) apps start to require libraries or other dependencies that fall outside what the LTS system has chosen to provide as part of that 5 year support, then having an O/S that is "supported" - i.e. receives upgrades - becomes pointless.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
    1. Re:In theory but not in practice by jrumney · · Score: 1

      Actually the reverse is more often true. I still have a customized 14.04 VM around to run an embedded toolchain that "requires" 12.04. Customizing 14.04 was a matter of installing an old version of gcc which was still available for 14.04, just not the default. But bringing those customizions to 16.04 is a lot harder, so I just run it in a VM now.

  20. Re:Beta LTS? by wonkavader · · Score: 1

    Your post is marked flamebait and I personally hate all the nastiness against Ubuntu or, really, anything that moves or doesn't move on Slashdot.

    But YEAH. At least on the systemd, I agree with your sentiment. Ubuntu would be a much better distribution without it.

    I don't want to use gnome 3. Or really gnome anything. I like my systems simpler than that. But I can use KDE or even TWM if I want to. I'm not forced to use another distro because Ubuntu has gnome 3. Me running some other window manager doesn't affect how postgres or nmap or httpd runs. On the other hand, favoring systemd and not caring much about the development of init scripts has the potential to crap up anything I might do on Ubuntu.

    They need to drop systemd.

  21. Re:Ubuntu is heroic by wonkavader · · Score: 1

    I agree. And Charles Lindbergh was pro-Germany at the start of WWII. Give Ubuntu it's due for its great work, then hold Ubuntu to the fire on systemd. It's crap. They should remove it, so we can go back to focusing on their heroism.

  22. Re:Slashdot Alternatives? by Teun · · Score: 2

    Usenet, comp.misc

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  23. LTS beta by jrumney · · Score: 1

    The summary plays up the LTS status of this beta. But a beta version is of no interest to those of us that use LTS distros. The time to upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 will be around October when a round of bugfixes from the suckers on 6 monthly released has gone in, not 3 weeks (or 6 weeks in the case of the earlier hyped article about the first beta) before official release.