A great addition for those who want less bloatware

Feb 28, 2018 13:18 GMT  ·  By

Canonical is adding a new feature to its upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system, due for release this spring at the end of April, allowing users to install a minimal and non-bloated Ubuntu OS on their PCs.

The feature is called "Minimal Installation" and it's an option that will be available for those who need it on the "Preparing to install Ubuntu" screen of Ubuntu's installer, right after you select the keyboard layout. As you can imagine, the option is disabled by default.

Enabling it will install Ubuntu with a minimal desktop environment consisting of a web browser and the standard utilities, at least that's what option's description tells us. So we took it for a test drive and installed the current development version of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with the Minimal Installation option in a VM.

First look at Ubuntu 18.04 LTS' Minimal Installation

As you can see from the screenshot gallery below, after installing Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) using the Minimal Installation option, we got a cleaner Ubuntu session with only a bunch of apps, including Mozilla Firefox, and a few GNOME apps like Terminal, System Monitor, Calculator, Gedit, Evince, and Videos (Totem).

Among the utilities included in the Minimal Installation version of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, we can mention Software Updater, Software & Updates, Startup Applications, Power Statistics, Input Method, Archive Manager, Characters, Font Viewer, Screenshot, Logs, as well as Passwords & Keys.

Most of these utilities are grouped in a "Utilities" folder for easy access and also to keep GNOME's app drawer clean. As expected, the minimal Ubuntu installation is more light on your system's components and occupies a smaller volume on the disk drive, not to mention that it's less bloatware.

Not that Ubuntu is bloatware, but there are many users out there who don't like specific apps or want to customize their installations with only the apps they need. That's what the new Minimal Installation option in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is for, and it's a very welcome addition to the Linux OS.

If you want to test the Minimal Installation option yourself, you can do it right now by downloading the latest Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) daily build ISO image. Just keep in mind that the operating system is still in development and some things might not work as expected. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is slated for release on April 26, 2018.

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS' minimal installation option
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS' minimal installation option
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS minimal installation
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS minimal installation
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS minimal installation apps
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS minimal installation apps
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS minimal installation utilities
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS minimal installation utilities

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (5 Images)

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS minimal installation
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS' minimal installation optionUbuntu 18.04 LTS minimal installation apps
+2more