Ubuntu Linux 18.04 'Bionic Beaver' Beta 1 Now Available For Download

From a report: This week, Ubuntu Linux 18.04 'Bionic Beaver' Beta 1 became available for download. Ubuntu 18.04 is significant, as it will be an LTS (Long Term Support) version. As was the case when Unity was the primary DE, GNOME is not available in this beta stage. Instead, there are other flavors from which to choose, such as Kubuntu with KDE Plasma and Xubuntu, which uses Xfce.

"Pre-releases of the Bionic Beaver are not encouraged for anyone needing a stable system or anyone who is not comfortable running into occasional, even frequent breakage. They are, however, recommended for Ubuntu flavor developers and those who want to help in testing, reporting, and fixing bugs as we work towards getting this release ready. Beta 1 includes some software updates that are ready for broader testing. However, it is quite an early set of images, so you should expect some bugs," says Dustin Krysak, Ubuntu Budgie team member.

Re:

[Eythian]

How can something that doesn't exist be "alpha quality"?

Re:

[amalcolm]

Classy cunt?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want stable, you're going to have to wait until the final release on April 26th. This is a BETA release. The schedule hasn't changed.
FWIW, I've been running it on a PC with few issues since pre-Alpha, but YMMV.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bionic... [ubuntu.com]

This Beta is feature-complete and now the team is mostly focused on bug fixes and documentation.
Next Beta is April 5th followed by Release Candidate on April 19th, and final release on April 26th. Every release up until Final Release will have cautions abou

Re:

[Shirley Marquez]

But how can this qualify as a beta release if the primary UI isn't even included?

Re:

[Hal_Porter]

Wait for Code_of_Conduct Cunt. That'll be awesome.

so.. they've dumped unity..

[Anonymous Coward]

but the gnome they switched back to is not available to beta test for the first post-unity lts version? wut? are they saying "wait for 18.04.1"?

Re:

[thsths]

Yes, this is weird. What is the point of a beta if it is not feature complete? Surely you can only find bugs if the code is actually in there.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

if the summary and linked article are to believed: "ubuntu" (with gnome) isn't available; "kbuntu" (kde plasma) and "xubuntu" (xfce), are (along with budgie and mate desktops), for this release's beta cycle.

Re: so.. they've dumped unity..

[Type44Q]

I've found Mint to be more stable...

Re:

[Sesostris III]

I moved from Mint XFCE DE when that was no longer a supported option. I moved to Ubuntu 16.04 (with Unity) and have found that to be stable.

I'll upgrade to 18.04 at some suitable point, either via an upgrade or via a fresh install. It'll be interesting how they move from Unity to Gnome.

Now that I've moved away from Mint, I must admit I'm not that fussed about using it again.

Re:

[MachineShedFred]

I'm wondering if it's "not available" because they know it's horribly broken with certain families of GPUs. After all, the acrobatics you have to go through to get Gnome working on an Nvidia "Optimus" laptop with Ubuntu 17 isn't exactly straight-forward...

Really?

[ScentCone]

Bionic Beaver. That's what you're going with.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The perfect thing for sex-starved geeks!

Re:

[louden obscure]

Eventually debian will run out of toy story character names cept fer sid, and then what? Well it prolly won't happen in my lifetime but still...

Re:Really?

[KiloByte]

There are 64 names left in Toy Story 1, 2 and 3 -- and Toy Story 4 is coming soon. Thus, names get added faster than they are consumed; and even if Toy Story 4 gets cancelled, with one release per approx. two years, existing buffer will last us a good while.

Re:

[elrous0]

Bionic Beaver.

I knew a girl with one of those once. They had the technology and her parents really wanted her to succeed in Hollywood.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

I knew a girl with one of those once. They had the technology and her parents really wanted her to succeed in Hollywood.

It never stops working, when you want work. Plus it vibrates [youtube.com].

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[PixetaledPikachu]

Have they done 'Horny Horntoad' yet?

They went with Hardy Hardon.. I mean Heron for "H"

Re:

[AlanObject]

They went with Hardy Hardon.. I mean Heron for "H"

If you really want to see fireworks on /. just wait until they get to Sexy systemd.

Re:

[_merlin]

Are you named after an Ubuntu release? The started using imaginary animals with J, so I wouldn't put using pokemon past them.

Re: Ubuntu Linux 18.04 'Bionic Vagina'

[bill_mcgonigle]

Uh, no, women actually know about the different parts of the female anatomy. "Beaver", in the colloquial use, doesn't refer to that part.

Re:

[walterbyrd]

I agree that MATE is a great environment if you like Gnome 2.

But why have that systemd crap?

Re:

[Anne Thwacks]

But why have that systemd crap?

Systemd is the perfect excuse for why its not yet the year of the Linux desktop.

10.04 was my last Ubuntu distro

[walterbyrd]

10.04 was awesome. Back then, Ubuntu got better with each new release.

After that, Canonical ruined Ubuntu. First with the " Gnome 3 Unity" abomination, and then with systemd.

I use Calculate Linux now.

This is news?

[sqorbit]

A beta for one distro is news? Ubuntu has been falling in popularity according to many sources. This is a late release of only a beta. Why is this news?

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

I suspect that ANOTHER CRIPPLING BOMBSHELL HITS THE BELEAGURED UBUNTU COMMUNITY er I mean that the death of Ubuntu is greatly exaggerated. I've heard people don't like it so much for desktop use. I've never really noticed: as an FVWM diehard, all the "better" desktop distributions don't do much for me since I install FVWM first thing anyway.

I'm not a fan of systemd, but that's hardly unique to ubuntu to put it mildly. It's still pretty popular on servers and the LTS releases are generally pretty hassle free

Re:

[0100010001010011]

Ubuntu has mostly reached the point where it's boring and generally works.

Which means it's hit enterprise. The only alternative I've seen to Fedora and, at least where I've seen it, close to up to date.

It's the release Matlab and Nvidia target (my experience) as well multiple other companies.

Most will only support 2 LTS which means 14.04, the first "big" Ubuntu release into enterprise, is going to get deprecated. Which means life after April is going to be interesting.

Re:

[sconeu]

Yes, this is news. It's news for the original core audience.

Back when CmdrTaco ran the site, it actually had NERD NEWS, not this political BS.

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

Amen. More Linux, physics, and tech. And hot grits.

Re:

[Voyager529]

A beta for one distro is news? Ubuntu has been falling in popularity according to many sources. This is a late release of only a beta. Why is this news?

I agree that a beta release is a bit much for a headline. However, Ubuntu news is still worth keeping apprised of. It's lower on the Distrowatch download stats, for sure, but Ubuntu has a sizeable ecosystem around it. Everything from half-decent forums to Youtube tutorials, to the fact that downstream distros like Crunchbang, Mythbuntu, Blackbox, and Gallium, are groups impacted by new Ubuntu releases.

The good/bad part about rolling release Linux distros is that releases aren't necessarily released as a res

Re:

[Walter White]

Did you file a bug report? </snark>

Seriously, I installed 17.10 on my laptop, a Lenovo Y-50. Yeah, that's the one what that got the trashed BIOS from the kernel that came with 17.10. I updated the kernel wo one that fixed the problem, but it didn't leave me with a warm feeling about Ubuntu. And the 'fix' kernel doesn't work with ZFS because the DKMS kernel module build fails. I asked about this on 'AskUbuntu' and got one suggestion to check my DKMS configuration. It was a lot easier to just return to

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

I also miss middle mouse button copy/paste.

I hear some systems like to misconfigure that by default because Gnome at any rate thinks it's an "easter egg" and is determined to destroy everything good about Linux, preferring insteat a Windows 95^W XP^W^WOSX ripoff.

I assume you're on a laptop in which case synclient will beable to set the mapping of button 2 back to button 2.

One thing I did like about 17.10 was the ability to configure a 'start application' to run when I log in on the graphical desktop. I have

Re:

[Walter White]

I also miss middle mouse button copy/paste.

I hear some systems like to misconfigure that by default because Gnome at any rate thinks it's an "easter egg" and is determined to destroy everything good about Linux, preferring insteat a Windows 95^W XP^W^WOSX ripoff.

I assume you're on a laptop in which case synclient will beable to set the mapping of button 2 back to button 2.

I am on a laptop and synclient no longer works because they are using a different touchpad driver. I suppose it is a matter of time before this is the situation on Debian too.

One thing I did like about 17.10 was the ability to configure a 'start application' to run when I log in on the graphical desktop. I haven't figured out how to do that with Debian. Yet.

Which desktop?

Gnome Shell - the default (AFAIK) for Debian.

Re:

[serviscope_minor]

I am on a laptop and synclient no longer works because they are using a different touchpad driver. I suppose it is a matter of time before this is the situation on Debian too.

Yes! You triggered the correct memory. I've encountered this. Synclient was superseded by libinput as a more generic system. Try here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/ind... [archlinux.org]

The arch documentation for Linux is excellent by the way, even if you don't use arch. TL;DR, you use xinput now, not synclient.

Gnome Shell - the default (AFAIK) for Debi

Re:

[Carewolf]

Gnome Shell - the default (AFAIK) for Debian.

The default for Debian with Gnome GUI. GUI isn't even a required default for Debian. But the underpants people have succesfully removed Gnome from their label in the installer so you get the false choice between "GUI" and "KDE GUI"... We used to be able to report bugs on that and have it fixed, but at some point a few years ago the midgets have started
to get away with it.

glad back on track

[e**(i pi)-1]

I'm still on trusty (14.04) on one of my machines and I'm glad Ubuntu is well and alive and overcame the Unity disaster. I had never any issues with long term support versions. I just hope that Xorg will stay default. I would not mind Wayland as long as it is not the only version (a linux distribution without Xorg would be not an option any more as I run blackbox, a minimal windows manager which has solved for me the windows manager issue 20 years ago and which had allowed me to just completely ignore unity for the years it existed). The health of Ubuntu is also important for derivative distributions like mint. And even more important is debian which feeds ubuntu. In any case, it is reassuring to see a healthy culture (without monoculture).

Re:

[Suren Enfiajyan]

Ubuntu is well and alive and overcame the Unity disaster

As if GNOME 3 is better.

Screenshots?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are the screenshots called beaver shots?

What's in a name.

[Norman Haga]

Great name. My wife said she knows some women that deserve that name.

I used to come to slashdot for the comments

[thegarbz]

66 Comments in and all of them deserving their current moderation. What the hell is going on on this site right now?

Re:

[0100010001010011]

Everyone is fed up with where they currently are on the internet so they scatter seeing if they can find something better.

Reddit is a sinking ship with it's core demographic. Facebook is dropping users left and right. Twitter and Instagram are just bots. Given Slashdot's staying power and topic I'm guessing a new demographic is trying it out. I'm guessing a lot are trying to troll and Slashdot's moderation system is working as intended.