Ubuntu 19.04, aka “Disco Dingo“, is now available on all eRacks systems.
Canonical – The company behind Ubuntu published its regular (non-LTS) version as Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) on April 18, 2019. The first Ubuntu 19.04 beta released on March 28. Other milestones during “Disco Dingo” development included feature freeze on February 21, 2019, UI freeze on March 14, 2019, and kernel freeze on April 1, 2019.
Up until this version, the codename of each Ubuntu release is traditionally made up of an adjective and an animal, both beginning with the same letter. But that’s only partly true this time – The word “Disco” is actually both a noun and a verb rather than adjective. A disco is a type of club or party at which people dance to music, often under lights.
A “Dingo” is a type of feral dog native to Australia and known for its sand-colored coat. Dingo dogs hunt alone or in cooperative packs. Inspired by the nature of the Dingo (which often sulks off when humans are around) the word has become informal Australian slang meaning ‘cowardly’, e.g., ‘he dingoes his way out of the date’.
Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo is only the second Ubuntu release to use the letter ‘D’, following Ubuntu 6.06 “Dapper Drake” (released back in the land before time, aka 2006).
Since Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) is a non-LTS version (not a Long Term Support version), it will be supported for 9 months until January 2020. If you need Long Term Support, it is recommended you use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS instead.
This article for Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) provides an overview of the release and documents the known issues with Ubuntu 19.04 and its flavors.
Since the release of Ubuntu 19.04, everyone is talking about its Desktop Version. We’re going to do something a little different. We’re going to start with the Ubuntu 19.04 Server version first. Let’s what’s new:
Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) Server Updates.
Every time Canonical releases a new version, it brings many new and noticeable changes. Each new version improves the previous one and strives to provide better user experiences.
Canonical made many changes on Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) Server – the following are notable:
QEMU
In Ubuntu 19.04, QEMU was updated to the 3.1 release.
Migrations from former versions are supported just as usual. When upgrading it is always recommended to upgrade the machine types allowing guests to fully benefit from all the improvements and fixes of the most recent version.
Qemu now has virglrenderer enabled which allows to create a virtual 3D GPU inside qemu virtual machines. That is inferior to GPU pass-through, but can be handy if the platform used lacks the capability for classic PCI pass through as well as more modern mediated devices.
For more details, see the QEMU 3.1 change log.
LIBVIRT
Among many other changes worth to mention is the ability to have GL enabled graphics as well as mediated devices to be configured while still being guarded by custom apparmor profiles generated per guest. This is required for the use of GPU based mediated devices as well as VirGL (mentioned above in the QEMU section). For bringing these changes libvirt was updated to version 5.0.
DPDK
Ubuntu includes 18.11.x the latest stable release branch of DPDK. The very latest (non-stable) version being 19.02 was not chosen for downstream projects of DPDK (like Open vSwitch) not being compatible.
DPDK dependencies were reorganized into more or less common/tested components. Due to that most DPDK installations will now have a smaller installation footprint and less potentially active code to care about.
For more details see the release notes.
SAMBA
Samba was updated to version 4.10.x, and one of the big changes here is python3 support. In Disco, samba and its dependencies are all python3 only now, with the exception of tdb. tdb still builds a python2 package, namely python-tdb, but all the others, including samba itself, are python3 only.
Open-VM-Tools
To run well integrated as VMware guest Ubuntu 19.04 comes with the latest open-vm-tools version 10.3.10. Details about the changes can be found in the upstream changelog
Raspberry Pi
Ubuntu 19.04 comes with an easy way of enabling Bluetooth support on the raspi3 Ubuntu-server preinstalled images. Install the Pi-Bluetooth package (now available in multiverse) with ‘sudo apt install pi-bluetooth’.
Please note that supported Pi devices which have Bluetooth (at the time of writing, the Raspberry Pi 3B, 3B+, and 3A+) can have either serial console or Bluetooth support enabled at any given time (not both). With the Pi-Bluetooth package installed, edit it at ‘/boot/firmware/config.txt’ and set ‘enable_uart=1’ to enable serial console, or ‘enable_uart=0’ to enable Bluetooth. The change will take effect after the next reboot.
Open vSwitch
Open vSwitch has been updated to 2.11. This updated Open vSwitch version has support for the kernel versions 4.16.x and 4.17.x. Also the following features can be found on this version.
- “mod-table” command can now change OpenFlow table names.
- The environment variable OVS_SYSLOG_METHOD, if set, is now used as the default syslog method.
- The environment variable OVS_CTL_TIMEOUT, if set, is now used as the default timeout for control utilities.
- OVN-SB schema changed: duplicated IP with same Encapsulation type is not allowed any more. Please refer to Documentation/intro/install/ovn-upgrades.rst for the instructions in case there are problems encountered when upgrading from an earlier version.
- New support for IPSEC encrypted tunnels between hypervisors.
- ovn-ctl: allow passing user:group ids to the OVN daemons.
- IPAM/MACAM add the capability to dynamically assign just L2 addresses
- IPAM/MACAM add the capability to specify a static ip address and get the L2 one and it is allocated dynamically using the following syntax: ‘ovn-nbctl lsp-set-addresses <port> “dynamic <IP>”.’
Please read the Open vSwitch release notes for more detail.
OpenStack Stein
Ubuntu 19.04 includes the latest OpenStack release, Stein, including the following components:
- OpenStack Identity – Keystone.
- OpenStack Imaging – Glance.
- OpenStack Block Storage – Cinder.
- OpenStack Compute – Nova.
- OpenStack Networking – Neutron.
- OpenStack Telemetry – Ceilometer, Aodh, Gnocchi, and Panko.
- OpenStack Orchestration – Heat.
- OpenStack Dashboard – Horizon.
- OpenStack Object Storage – Swift.
- OpenStack Database as a Service – Trove.
- OpenStack DNS as a Service – Designate.
- OpenStack Bare-metal – Ironic.
- OpenStack Filesystem – Manila.
- OpenStack Key Manager – Barbican.
Please refer to the OpenStack Stein release notes for full details of this release of OpenStack.
WARNING: Upgrading an OpenStack deployment is a non-trivial process and care should be taken to plan and test upgrade procedures which will be specific to each OpenStack deployment. For Upgrading successfully please make sure you read the OpenStack Charm Release Notes for how to deploy Ubuntu OpenStack using Juju. Or simply contact eRacks Systems’ experts for help.
There are many other changes on newly released Ubuntu 19.04 non-LTS Server. Please read the Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) non-LTS Server release note for more details.
Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) Desktop (And Kernel) updates.
Linux Kernel 5.0.0-8 “Shy Crocodile”
The Linux Kernel had its number bumped to 5.0.0-8 by Linus Torvalds, but not because of particularly noteworthy code changes. Usually, a significant number jump like this would echo an equally significant code or functionality change, but that isn’t the case. In an email to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, he explained:
“The numbering change is not indicative of anything special. If you want to have an official reason, it’s that I ran out of fingers and toes to count on, so 4.21 became 5.0.”
Torvalds went on to give a breakdown of the code changes in Linux 5.0:
This new kernel should be faster, too, as work was done to speed up the anti-Spectre and Meltdown code.
GNOME desktop 3.32
Ubuntu 19.04 ships with the latest GNOME desktop 3.32. This brings performance improvements, a host of bug fixes and some important new features. Beyond the visual changes, GNOME itself is faster and uses fewer GPU resources thanks to work done by both Canonical and the upstream GNOME team.
Of course, there’s a new wallpaper in latest GNOME desktop 3.32. But the first thing you’ll probably notice is a new icon on the desktop for your home directory. If you don’t like it, you can install GNOME Tweaks and use it to hide the home directory icon.
In keeping with modern “flat” design, the desktop’s top bar and launcher have solid-black backgrounds. The application menus have been moved back to each application’s window. They no longer appear in the toolbar. That’s a change in GNOME and not a design decision from Canonical. Some applications always kept their menus in their own application windows, which made the experience inconsistent. There were also some long-standing issues that were tough to fix. Now, that whole initiative has been canned in favor of a traditional menu placement—each applications menu is in the application’s own window.
Fractional Display Scaling (Possibly)
GNOME 3.32 includes support for fractional scaling, which is of interest to people with high DPI (Dots Per Inch) displays.
Unfortunately, in the modified version of GNOME supplied with Ubuntu, the fractional scaling settings are either hidden or not accessible to us. Eventually, a tool might allow access to these settings—or another means of accessing those settings will emerge from the user community. After all, they’re in GNOME.
Live patch for Reboot-Free Kernel Updates
Canonical introduced Live patch in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, only to remove it again in 18.10. It’s now back, complete with this new tab in Software & Updates.
Ubuntu 19.04’s Software and Updates app has a new tab called Live-patch. This new feature is intended to allow critical kernel patches to be applied without rebooting. For people using Ubuntu at home, on machines that get powered off frequently, requiring a power cycle to install a kernel update isn’t a hardship. If your Ubuntu computer is providing an external service or is hosting a website, it becomes trickier to try to schedule in the reboots.
New Icons and Visual Tweaks
The Yaru icon set has had a refresh, and new icons have been added to cater for more third-party applications. This icon set looks more coherent and slick. There’s evidence of attention being paid to the user interface all over. Files has had a facelift, and it looks crisp and feels responsive. That’s not a surprise.
Even the Terminal window has been polished up. The GNOME Terminal application has a new title bar with a prominent “New Tab” button and search icon.
The System menu has a new cogwheel Settings icon that replaces the old “crossed wrench and screwdriver” icon.
Application Permission Controls
GNOME’s Settings app now lets you control various application permissions. You can even choose whether or not each application can show notifications.
Night Light Improvements
The Night Light feature changes the hue of your computer’s display, reducing the amount of blue in the display illumination as the sun sets. You can now configure the schedule for the Night Light yourself. You can also select the color temperature—or “warmth”—of the display when Night Light is activated.
Updated Sound Controls
The Sound controls have been revamped. You don’t get more functionality than before, but the controls are laid out more conveniently and logically.
Raspberry Pi Touch Support
The bulk of the driver work in the kernel has been to graphics drivers, with enhanced support for displays ranging in size and capability—from the AMD FreeSync NVIDIA RTX Turing to the Raspberry Pi Touch Display. The Debian-derived Raspbian Linux already supported the Raspberry Pi Touch Display, but now you have the choice of using native Ubuntu with your Pi Touch.
There are many other changes as well. Some of them are mentioned below:
- Tracker is now included by default. This allows the desktop to keep track of recently used files and improves searching.
- Right click handling is now “area” by default. This allows both two-finger right clicking and clicking in the bottom right corner of the touchpad
- alt-tab handling now switches windows by default. Switching applications by default can be done with super-tab
- Preview order of windows in the dock is now static and based on the order in which the windows were added
- IWD can now be enabled for use with Network Manager. IWD is a new alternative to wpa supplicant and is in testing for consideration in the future.
- Installing Ubuntu Desktop on vmware will now automatically install the open-vm-tools package to improve integration.
- The Yaru theme has seen further refinement and updates and includes a new icon theme.
- Safe Graphics Mode. A new option is added to the Grub menu which will boot with “NOMODESET” on. This may help you resolve issues on certain graphics cards and allow you to boot and install any propriatary drivers needed by your system.
- The latest releases of Firefox (66.0) and LibreOffice (6.2.2) are available and installed by default.
Some of the Common New features and Updated Packages in both Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) non-LTS Desktop and Server Version.
Linux kernel 🐧
Both Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) non-LTS Desktop and Server are based on the Linux release series 5.0. It includes support for AMD Radeon RX Vega M graphics processor, complete support for the Raspberry Pi 3B and the 3B+, Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, many USB 3.2 and Type-C improvements, Intel Cannonlake graphics, significant power-savings improvements, P State driver support for Skylake X servers, POWER memory protection keys support, KVM support for AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization, enablement of Shared Memory Communications remote and direct (SMC-R/D), Open for Business (OFB), and zcrypt on IBM Z among with many other improvements since the v4.15 kernel shipped in 18.04 LTS.
Toolchain Upgrades 🛠️
Ubuntu 19.04 comes with refreshed state-of-the-art toolchain including new upstream releases of glibc 2.29, ☕ OpenJDK 11, boost 1.67, rustc 1.31, and updated GCC 8.3, optional GCC 9, 🐍 Python 3.7.3 as default, 💎 ruby 2.5.5, php 7.2.15, 🐪 perl 5.28.1, golang 1.10.4. There are new improvements on the cross-compilers front as well with POWER and AArch64 toolchain enabled to cross-compile for ARM, S390X and RISCV64 targets.
There are many other changes on newly released Ubuntu 19.04 non-LTS verson. Please read the Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) non-LTS release note for more or Disco Dingo Release Notes.
Get your system with Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) as pre-installed from eRacks Systems’ show room with Quote request. Or download Ubuntu 19.04 (Disco Dingo) directly from below.
Asif Raihan April 24th, 2019
Posted In: Linux, Open Source, Operating Systems, ubuntu
Tags: linux, Open Source, OS, ubuntu
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Ubuntu 18.10, aka ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish’, is available now on all eRacks systems.
Ubuntu 18.10 ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish’ supported with 9 months of security updates, bug fixes and select app upgrades. Users of it will be able to upgrade to Ubuntu 19.04 when it’s released in April, 2019.
When the release of a new version as Ubuntu 18.10 ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish’, the first question arrives in mind, “What are updated comparing with the current Ubuntu 18.04 LTS version?”
The most important update in ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish’ is, it has updated Linux Kernel. Ubuntu 18.10 has Linux Kernel 4.18. This Kernel version has some improvements for AMD and Nvidia GPU, USB Type-C and Thunderbolt, and performance optimizations in CPUfreq among several other features.
Another important thing is having faster installation and boot with new compression algorithms. Working with new compression algorithms like LZ4 and ztsd, ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish’ is supposed to have around 10% faster boot. The installation will be slightly faster as well. Which is definitely the good news for all Ubuntu users.
As always Ubuntu 18.10 will have this new GNOME version. Most of the visual and under the hood changes in GNOME 3.30 will be seen in Ubuntu 18.10 as well.
Taking cue from Fedora 28, Canonical is also working to improve battery life for laptops. Linux kernel has options to switch HDD controllers, USB controllers and other such devices to a low power state when not in use. This lowers the overall power consumption and thus improves the battery life.
Ubuntu 18.04 was supposed to have a new look with the community developed Community theme. This theme could not be completed in time for the 18.04 release. But Ubuntu 18.10 has it. The ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish’ has the Yaru Community theme installed by default, giving it a ravishing fresh look.
Some other changes in the Ubuntu 18.10 ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish’ are as follows:
- Support for fingerprint scanner.
- Startup time boost and XDG Portals support for Snap applications.
- 32-Bit support diminishing from flavors.
- UI and UX improvements to GNOME Software (possibility).
- DLNA support for connecting Ubuntu with DLNA supported Smart TVs, tablets and other devices.
- A new and improved installer (less likely to be completed before 18.10 release).
- Ubuntu Software removes dependencies while uninstalling software.
- Ubuntu Software will show a green verified tick for Snap applications developed by the owner of the brand. The same can be found on the recently redesigned Snap store website.
Ubuntu 18.10 ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish’ is a modest update compared to 18.04. The vast majority of notable improvements are tucked away out of sight, ‘under the hood’. Ubuntu 18.10 feels faster than 18.04, But you can’t “see” the changes that shape Ubuntu 18.10 ‘Cosmic Cuttlefish’, you almost certainly will feel them.
Asif Raihan October 24th, 2018
Posted In: Linux, New products, News, Open Source, Operating Systems, ubuntu
Tags: linux, New products, News, Open Source, operating system, ubuntu
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Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) has been released on 26th April 2018 following its planned release schedule. Canonical named this Long Term Support version with codename “Bionic Beaver”, where ‘Bionic‘ is an adjective meaning to have or use an artificial, typically electromechanical, body part. And a ‘Beaver‘ is large nocturnal rodent able to swim in water. Beavers are famous for building dams, canals, and homes along river banks.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver)
On 26 January 2018, Will Cooke (Desktop Engineering Manager) wrote in an Ubuntu’s Blog post about Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) as, “Bionic Beaver, the codename for the next Ubuntu LTS release, is due in April 2018 and will ship with both the traditional Xorg graphics stack as well as the newer Wayland based stack, but Xorg will be the default.”
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) Support lifespan
Ubuntu 18.04 is an LTS version, which means that the ‘main’ archive of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years until April 2023 from its release date April 2018. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will be supported for 5 years for Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, and Ubuntu Core. Ubuntu Studio 18.04 will be supported for 9 months. All other flavors will be supported for 3 years.
Compared with the previous Ubuntu LTS edition (Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS Xenial Xerus), there are a lot of changes in the new Ubuntu LTS release (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver).
Let’s see what’s new in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver release:
What’s new in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver)
Xorg will be used by default instead of Wayland
Ubuntu 17.10 used the Wayland graphics server by default. With Ubuntu 18.04, the default graphics server will change to Xorg. Wayland will still be available as an option, but Xorg will be the default, out-of-the-box one. The Ubuntu Desktop team decided to go with Xorg for its compatibility with services like Skype, Google Hangouts, WebRTC services, VNC and RDP, and more.
Xorg with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Ubuntu 18.04 minimal install option
Ubuntu 18.04 will use Ubiquity, the Ubuntu installer you’re probably already familiar with. Though the developers plan on implementing Subiquity, 18.04 will use Ubiquity, which will have a new “minimal install” option that you can choose during setup. Minimal install basically means the same Ubuntu, but without most of the pre-installed software. The minimal install option saves about 500 MB, and is only 28MB in size when it is compressed.
Minimal Install
CPU usage improvements and bug fixes
The most notable improvement will be in CPU usage. The Ubuntu Desktop team has greatly improved and reduced the CPU usage caused by Ubuntu 18.04. They’ve also fixed hundreds of bugs and made hundreds of other small improvements.
Software, updates and other tweaks
If you missed the Ubuntu Welcome tool you can still enable LivePatch via Software & Updates. Open Activities and search for Software & Updates.
Software & Updates.
From the Updates tab you can enable and disable Live Patch:
Enable/ Disable Live Patch
There are some other useful settings in GNOME Control Center which you might like to toggle:
GNOME Control Center
By enabling Location Services your clock can automatically switch to the correct time zone for where you are which is useful for frequent travelers. By enabling automatic error reporting crash reports will be automatically generated and uploaded. By collecting these error reports, Canonical can easily spot trends in common problems and make sure they work on getting the most common bugs fixed first.
Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop will have a new theme
Ubuntu 18.04 will ship with Ambience and it won’t use a new theme by default. The new Communitheme won’t even be installed. The Desktop team has decided to do this for various reasons, including bugs and lack of testing.
Luckily, you can still use the Communitheme, but you’ll have to install it yourself. The Communitheme can be installed easily via a snap, but you can always install it manually.
New Communitheme with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
GNOME Desktop Environment
Ubuntu started using the GNOME desktop environment with Ubuntu 17.10 instead of the default Unity environment. Ubuntu 18.04 will continue using GNOME. This is not a major change to Ubuntu, but GNOME has also done a lot of changes to their desktop environment, as well as new features. An improved dock, an on-screen keyboard, and more.
GNOME Desktop Environment
Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop will have a new app pre-installed
The new LTS desktop release will ship with a new app pre-installed by default. The app is GNOME To Do and it’s a very useful app for organizing lists, tasks, and more. You can prioritize them. color them, set due dates, and a number of other features.
GNOME To Do
Applications will be installed as snaps by default
They been planning on using snaps for a while, and they finally shipped GNOME Calculator as a snap instead of a deb. This is a test to help the Desktop team find and fix any bugs. They’ll later on move more applications to snap in the final release. Using snaps will make the process of installing and updating apps much easier. You can even install snaps on any distro and device.
Some New Apps
Some New Apps
New snaps are being added to the store all the time, and you can already download essentials like Spotify, Skype and Slack. You can browse the full range of applications via GNOME Software (click the Open “Software” now button) or access the highlights directly by clicking on their icon.
A Brand New Icon Set
A Brand New Icon Set
Open source icon project Suru has been incorporated into Ubuntu 18.04. These icons were originally seen in the abandoned Ubuntu Touch mobile operating system. Despite hopes to the contrary and a dedicated community project, Ubuntu 18.04 will not boast a fresh new look. However, while the Ambiance theme is hanging around, new icons are expected in Ubuntu.
Color Emojis
Color Emojis
Some tweaks will give you color emojis on versions of Ubuntu prior to 18.04 LTS, this is the first time they’ve been included by default. The emojis you’ll find in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS are the same open source emojis as found on Android. For many users, these will be familiar.
Ubuntu 18.04 will collect data about your system and make it public
Ubuntu 18.04 will collect data like the Ubuntu flavor you’re using, hardware stats, your country etc. Anyone can opt-out of this, but it’s enabled by default. What’s interesting about this is that the data they collect will be public, and no sensitive data will be collected. so most of the Ubuntu community supports this decision.
However, there is a potential security concern that you should be aware of. With Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Canonical intends to collect data from your computer. Though there is nothing personally identifiable in this data. Instead, it is to establish your computer’s hardware components, what version of Ubuntu you’re running, your location (based on your choice when setting up Ubuntu) and a few other things.
Collecting data about your system
This marks a change from Canonical’s previous attitude to this sort of data collection, but is understandable given how flakey figures are for Linux usage around the world. Crucially, this data collection can be opted out of; if you’re upgrading from a previous version of Ubuntu, meanwhile, you can also opt in.
Alongside these changes Canonical has made some noticeable upgrade on packages for Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver too. Some of them are as follows,
Linux kernel 4.15
Ubuntu 18.04 ships with a v4.15 based Linux kernel, enabling the latest hardware and peripherals available. The 18.04 kernel delivers new features inherited from upstream, including:
- CPU controller for the cgroup v2 interface.
- AMD secure memory encryption support.
- The latest MD driver with software RAID enhancements.
- Improved power management for systems with SATA Link Power Management.
- Linux security module stacking support.
- Support for signing of POWER host and NV kernels.
OpenJDK
As of 18.04 release, OpenJDK 10 is the default JRE/JDK. Once OpenJDK 11 reaches GA in September 2018, it will become the default in 18.04.
OpenJDK 8 has moved to universe and will remain available there for the life of 18.04, to provide migration time for packages, custom applications, or scripts that can’t be built with OpenJDK 10 or 11. OpenJDK 8 will be updated in 18.04 after Ubuntu 16.04 LTS reaches EOL in April 2021.
Security Improvements
In Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, gcc is now set by default to compile applications as position independent executables (PIE) as well as with immediate binding, to make more effective use of Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). All packages in main have been rebuilt to take advantage of this, with a few exceptions. Also, bolt and thunderbolt-tools have been promoted to main to provide security controls for Thunderbolt devices.
Default CIFS/SMB protocol version change in CIFS mounts
Since 17.10, the default SMB protocol used when mounting remote CIFS file systems via “mount.cifs” is changed to 2.1 or higher, depending on what is negotiated with the server.
At a glance change in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) Desktop Edition
- Wayland is provided as a Technical Preview and is expected to be the default display server in 20.04 LTS. To try it out, just choose Ubuntu on Wayland from the cog on the log in screen.
- The installer offers a minimal install option for a basic desktop environment with a web browser and core system utilities. Many official 18.04 desktop flavors are using this new feature too!
- Apps provided by GNOME have been updated to 3.28.
- LibreOffice has been updated to 6.0.
- Emoji now show in color in most apps. Keyboard shortcuts for the emoji input chooser are Ctrl+. or Ctrl+;
- Calendar now supports weather forecasts.
- Some utilities have been switched to the snap format for new installs. Snap apps provide better isolation which allows them to be upgraded to new stable releases during the LTS lifecycle.
- The Characters app replaces the older Character Map by default.
- The Ubuntu Software app allows easy switching between different channels for Snap apps.
- The ‘To Do’ app has been added to the default normal install.
- spice-vdagent is pre-installed for better performance for spice clients such as the GNOME Boxes app.
- The right-click method for touchpads without physical buttons has changed to a two-finger click instead of clicking in the bottom right of the touchpad.
- Although libinput is the default driver for mice and touchpads, it is now possible to use the synaptics driver with the Settings App. Support for the synaptics driver will be dropped in a future Ubuntu release.
- Computers will automatically suspend after 20 minutes of inactivity while on battery power.
- GNOME Shell now supports Thunderbolt 3.
Comparing with Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) & Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS (Xenial Xerus) the latest Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver Server edition’s packages are upgraded as well. Some of them are as follows,
Server installer
The next generation Subiquity server installer, brings the comfortable live session and speedy install of Ubuntu Desktop to server users at last.
Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver Server Edition Installer
Netplan.io
ifupdown has been deprecated in favor of netplan.io and is no longer present on new installs. Backend configuration on Ubuntu Server by default is provided by systemd-networkd.
LXD 3.0
LXD is the system container manager that ships with all Ubuntu servers. Ubuntu 18.04 includes the all new LXD 3.0 release, some of the highlights include:
- Clustering of LXD servers (one big virtual LXD)
- Support for NVIDIA runtime pass-through
- Remote transfer of custom storage volumes
- Extended /dev/lxd API inside the containers
- Support for port redirection
- Numerous improvements to the command line tools
A new external tool called lxd-p2c is also available to turn existing systems into LXD containers.
QEMU 2.11.1
QEMU has been updated to the 2.11.1 release.
Among many other changes, fixes around Meltdown/Spectre are included. Since fully utilizing these mitigations needs more than just an upgrade, it is recommended to read details at the qemu.org blog post.
QEMU in Ubuntu 18.04 now has rdma support enabled as over the past year much unification in the rdma-core project has occurred.
Migrations from former versions are supported just as usual. When upgrading it is always recommended to upgrade the machine types allowing guests to fully benefit from all the improvements and fixes of the most recent version.
libvirt 4.0
libvirt has been updated to version 4.0.
The packaging now builds libvirt storage drivers as pluggable libraries. This slims down the installation requirements but some drivers of less general interest will now be found in universe. On the other hand, that means that a few formerly integrated features like rbd or zfs now might require you to install the package after upgrade.
DPDK 17.11.x
Ubuntu includes 17.11.x the latest stable release branch of DPDK.
By the new Stable Release exception for DPDK future stable updates to 17.11.x will be made available to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
Open vSwitch 2.9
Open vSwitch has been updated to 2.9.
- NSH implementation now conforms to latest draft (draft-ietf-sfc-nsh-28).
- Ovs-vsctl and other commands that display data in tables now support amax-column-width option to limit column width.
- Added support to send IPv6 Router Advertisement packets in response to the IPv6 Router Solicitation packets from the VIF ports.
- No longer send packets to the Linux TAP device if it’s DOWN unless it is in another networking namespace.
Chrony
In Ubuntu 18.04 LTS chrony will replace ntpd as the recommended server for the NTP protocol. The comparison among ntp servers by the chrony maintainers may interest some users looking to see a high-level reason why this change was made. It does lack the rather new and not yet completely ready ntpsec, but otherwise is a fair analysis.
For simple time sync needs the base system already comes with systemd-timesyncd. Chrony is only needed to act as a time server or if you want the advertised more accurate and efficient syncing.
Going along with this change, ntpd has been demoted from main to universe. ntpd will continue to work but will only receive best-effort security maintenance. When upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS it is highly recommended to migrate to chrony if you had set up ntpd before.
Cloud-Init
The version was updated to 18.2. Notable new features include:
- VMware: support for 64-bit platforms and identifying OVF data source provided.
- GCE: Improvements and changes to ssh key behavior for default user.
- Azure pre-provisioning speed improvements.
- NoCloudKVM and EC2 tests now run in continuous integration.
- New cloud support: IBMCloud and HetznerCloud now have official data sources and OpenTelekom is now recognized by cloud-id.
- OpenNebula: Improve network configuration support.
- New cloud-init command-line tools available: status, analyze and clean.
- New ubuntu cloud-config modules for managing snaps and ubuntu-advantage services.
Curtin
The version was updated to 18.1. Notable features include:
- Add experimental zpool and zfs filesystem support, including ZFS on root.
- Add support for installing remote sources that are a filesystem image.
- Add pollinate user-agent configuration support.
- Improved device teardown of dirty devices to support re-deployment.
- Default config now automatically tars curtin logs upon error using new curtin collect-logs command.
- storage: accept filesystem mount options.
- Extensive integration test coverage and improvements.
MAAS
The version was updated to 2.4b2. Notable features include:
- Add audit logging.
- Add KVM pod support to create tags, select the storage pool, and compose machines with multiple storage pools.
- Add UI for DNS management.
- Add the commissioning template framework for HBA management.
- Add the commissioning template framework for Firmware Upgrades.
- Improve UI performance by performance.
- Improve MAAS’ backend performance.
- Improve the UI for the Settings.
- Add experimental support to configure zfs as the root filesystem.
- Switch to use Chrony instead of ntp.
SSSD
SSSD was 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.
Nginx
nginx was updated to version 1.14.0. New features include the mirror module, HTTP/2 push, and the gRPC proxy module.
PHP
PHP is updated to version 7.2.x.
Apache
Apache was updated to version 2.4.29. Additionally, HTTP/2 support is now enabled in 18.04 LTS.
landscape-client
landscape-client has been ported to Python 3 and is now available to install on the default image.
Ubuntu-advantage-tools
- New dynamic MOTD support for Canonical Livepatch. This indicates, at a glance, the status of livepatches when logging in on a console.
- New enable-fips-updates command to enable a special FIPS repository with non-certified updates for FIPS enabled systems.
OpenStack Queens
Ubuntu 18.04 includes the latest OpenStack release. OpenStack Queens is also provided via the Ubuntu Cloud Archive for OpenStack Queens for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users.
eRacks’ Custom Cloud Server system with OpenStack Queens and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS OS.
Note: Upgrading an OpenStack deployment is a non-trivial process and care should be taken to plan and test upgrade procedures which will be specific to each OpenStack deployment.
To make things easier, eRacks Systems offers Custom Enterprise Cloud Server with OpenStack Queens (or another cloud software according to custom request) and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS OS.
To download Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) select the desire install image or visit Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) official download page.
As with release of latest version of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver, we, the eRacks Systems (Open Source experts since 1999) offer latest Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) both Desktop or Server edition with our systems as pre-configured according to your custom quote…
Asif Raihan May 18th, 2018
Posted In: Open Source, Operating Systems, ubuntu
Tags: linux, Open Source, ubuntu
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Ubuntu 17.10, code named Artful Aardvark; I guess you already know that Artful means full of art or skill. And Aardvark is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. Colloquially, it is called African Ant Eater.
Nowadays Ubuntu become the world’s most popular desktop Linux operating system, and with its latest short-term support release, it’s clear Canonical want to keep a firm grip on the title.
‘Artful Aardvark’ (Ubuntu 17.10)
As release with Artful Aardvark (Ubuntu 17.10) in October 19, 2017 Canonical continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technology into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark marks an all-new chapter in Ubuntu’s already rich history. As always, the team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.
Ubuntu 17.10 Debuts with An All-New Desktop
This is the first version of Ubuntu to use GNOME Shell as the default desktop. ‘The HUD, global menu, and other Unity features are no longer included’. By choosing to drop Unity most of Ubuntu’s home-grown usability efforts also fall by the wayside.
Ubuntu 17.10 Desktop
In Unity’s place comes a bespoke version of GNOME Shell that is ‘customized’ to resemble something that’s superficially close to the Unity desktop layout. The Ubuntu 17.10 desktop uses a two-panel layout: a full-height vertical dock sits on the left-hand side of the screen, while a ‘top bar’ is stripped across the top.
The top bar plays host a new type of app menu, a calendar applet/message tray, app indicators, and a unified status menu for managing network, volume, Bluetooth and user sessions.
Ubuntu Dock
The new Ubuntu Dock is both a task manager and an application launcher. It shows icons for open and running software windows as well as ‘pinned’ launchers for user’s favorite apps.
Ubuntu Dock
The dock is also global; it displays icons/applications from all workspaces regardless of which one user is actually viewing.
Both the Ubuntu Dock and the top bar are semi-transparent, which adds nice visual presence. When a window touches either element the “dynamic transparency” feature kicks in to render both dock and top bar darker, making panel label contents more legible in the foreground.
Activities & Workspaces
The main “desktop” area remains a usable space on which user can place icons, folders and files.
Though there’s no longer a true global app menu, but the majority of apps place a small menu in the top bar bearing the name of the app in focus. These app menus contain a solitary ‘quit’ button at the least, or a full complement of options at most.
Activities & Workspaces
Workspaces are a common feature found on most modern desktop operating systems including Windows 10, so it’s a good thing that Ubuntu hasn’t ditched them. User can easily move windows between workspaces by clicking on a window and moving it on over the workspace.
Applications Overview
In Ubuntu 17.10 Applications are listed alphabetically, ordered into scrollable pages. User can launch an application by clicking on it, selecting it with keyboard arrow keys and pressing enter, or by touching it.
Applications Overview
After years of ‘footnote’ releases that brought only minor tweaks, the ‘Artful Aardvark’ brings all-out with change, ready to usher in the new era. Under the hood, there have been updates to many core packages, including a new 4.13-based kernel, glibc 2.26, gcc 7.2, and much more in Ubuntu Desktop. Let’s have a brief list view on some of those updates.
- On supported systems, Wayland is now the default display server. The older display server is still available: just choose Ubuntu on Xorg from the cog on the log in screen.
- GDM has replaced LightDM as the default display manager. The login screen now uses virtual terminal 1 instead of virtual terminal 7.
- Printer configuration is now done in the Settings app: Choose Devices and then Printers. The tool uses the same algorithms for identifying printers and choosing drivers as the formerly used system-config-printer, and makes full use of driverless printing to support as many printers as possible.
- The default on screen keyboard is GNOME’s Caribou instead of Onboard.
- Calendar now supports recurring events.
- LibreOffice has been updated to 5.4.
- Python 2 is no longer installed by default. Python 3 has been updated to 3.6.
- The ‘Rhythm box’ music player now uses the alternate user interface created by Ubuntu Budgie developer David Mohamed.
- The Ubuntu GNOME flavor has been discontinued. If a user is using Ubuntu GNOME, he will be upgraded to Ubuntu.
Note: Install gnome-session and choose GNOME from the cog on the login screen if user would like to try a more upstream version of GNOME. If any user’ d like to also install more core apps, he’d install the vanilla-gnome-desktop met package.
Not only the Ubuntu 17.10 Desktop but also, there are significant changes into the Ubuntu 17.10 Server version too. For the Ubuntu Server 17.10, the OS Version for the printing server has been increased to announce Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 ID mapping checks added to the testparm(1) tool. There are some ID mapping backends too, which are not allowed to be used for the default backend. Winbind will no longer start if an invalid backend is configured as the default backend. The others are as follows,
Ubuntu 17.10 Server
Qemu 2.10
Qemu has been updated to the 2.10 release. Since the last version was 2.8.
Among many other changes there is one that might need follow on activity by the user/admin: Image locking is added and enabled by default. This generally makes execution much safer, but can break some old use cases that now explicitly have to opt-in to ignore/share the locks by tools and subcommands using the –force-share option or the share-rw dqev property.
Libvirt 3.6
Libvirt has been updated to version 3.6.
LXD 2.18
LXD was updated to version 2.18. Some of the top new features of LXD 2.18 are:
- Native Ceph RBD support.
- Support for cloud instance types.
- Pre-seeding of the “lxd init” questions through yaml.
- New client library.
- Improved storage handling (volume resize, auto re-mapping on attach, …).
- A lot of small improvements to the client tool.
DPDK 17.05.2
Ubuntu 17.10 includes the latest release of DPDK that has stable updates: 17.05.2. This made it possible to integrate Open vSwitch 2.8.
Open vSwitch 2.8
Open vSwitch has been updated to 2.8. Though user need to specify dpdk devices via dpdk-devargs.
New BIND9 KSK
The DNS server BIND9 was updated to include the new Key Signing Key (KSK) that was published on July 11, 2017. Starting on October 11, 2017, that key will sign the root zone key, which in turn is used to sign the actual root zones.
Cloud-Init
The cloud-init version was updated to 17.1. Notable new features for cloud-init are as follows,
- Python 3.6 support.
- Ec2 support for IPv6 instance configuration.
- Expedited boot time through cloud-id optimization.
- Support for netplan yaml in cloud-init.
- Add cloud-init subcommands collect-logs, analyze and schema for developers.
- Apport integration from cloud-init via ‘ubuntu-bug cloud-init’.
- Significant unit test and integration test coverage improvements.
Curtin
The Curtin version is updated to ‘0.1.0~bzr519-0ubuntu1’. New features are:
- Network configuration passthrough for ubuntu and centos.
- More resilient UEFI/grub interaction.
- Better support for mdadm arrays.
- Ubuntu Core 16 Support.
- Improved bcache support.
Samba
Samba is updated to version 4.6.7. Important changes in the 4.6.x series are:
- Multi-process Net logon support.
- New options for controlling TCP ports used for RPC services.
- AD LDAP and replication performance improvements.
- DNS improvements.
There are many other changes too. We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document caveats, workarounds for known issues, as well as more in-depth Release Notes.
Users of Ubuntu 17.04 will be offered an automatic upgrade to 17.10. As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.
Remember, here at eRacks, we offer pre-installed Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark with our new systems either directly from the OS dropdown, or by custom quote.
Asif Raihan October 25th, 2017
Posted In: Debian, Linux, Open Source, servers, ubuntu
Tags: linux, New products, Open Source, OS, ubuntu
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Linux Mint 18 is now available!
Based on Ubuntu 16.04, which was made available in April, this release of Mint is based on the LTS release of Ubuntu, rather than following the twice-yearly updates – and will have only incremental changes and updates over the next 2 years – thus being more stable and predictable, and avoiding any potential instabilities introduced by the biannual Ubuntu upgrades.
So Mint 18 should now be available in all the eRacks product dropdowns – if you don’t see it on the model you want, please contact us and we’ll fix it or give you a custom quote with Mint 18.
As always, contact us at info@eracks.com for any inquiries or questions regarding the Mint 18 release, or any of our products, and what release we recommend for you and your unique needs.
j
admin August 3rd, 2016
Posted In: Linux, Mint, News, ubuntu, Upgrades
Tags: 18, linux, Mint, sarah, ubuntu
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With the recent release of Mint 17.3, eRacks now offers this new operating system on servers, desktops, and laptops. Just select it from the drop-down menu when customizing your computer.
Aaron January 5th, 2016
Posted In: Linux, Mint, ubuntu, Upgrades
Tags: linux, Mint, sarah, ubuntu
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Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf is now available on all eRacks systems.
Ubuntu 14.04 is also still available, as it is a Long Term Release (LTS) with a longer support window.
As always, if you want a different release, or even a beta, alpha or “Daily build” release, we’ll be happy to accommodate – just place it in the “Notes” field when you place your order or request a quote.
j
joe November 2nd, 2015
Posted In: Linux, ubuntu, Ubuntu 14.04
Tags: linux, ubuntu, Werewolf, Wily, Wily Werewolf
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The latest Linux Mint release, Mint 17 “Qiana”, is now available on most or all eRacks systems.
Either the Cinnamon or Mate editions, or KDE, XFCE, Debian (LMDE) are also available.
Most or all of our dropdown OS choices have been updated, but if you don’t see what you’re looking for, please ask us by email: http://eracks.com/contact_us and we will add it or give you a custom live quote.
UPDATE June 30th, 2014: All Mint17 installations are now V2.
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2662
admin June 18th, 2014
Posted In: Mint, News, Operating Systems, ubuntu
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Ubuntu 14.04 is now available. 
Fremont, CA (PRWEB) April 24, 2014
This latest Ubuntu 14.04 release is now available on most or all eRacks systems.
eRacks today announced the latest release of a new operating system – Ubuntu 14.04 which is now in the OS dropdowns on most or all the systems.
Most or all of our dropdown Operating System choices have been updated, but if you don’t see what you’re looking for, please ask us by Email: info at eracks.com OR http://eracks.com/contact_us and we will respond promptly.
Regards,
Dennis
eRacks
Dennis April 24th, 2014
Posted In: News, Operating Systems, ubuntu, Ubuntu 14.04
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