14 DAY TRIAL // With a one-day delay, the Ubuntu Release Team announced today the availability of the first beta release of its upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating system series, but only for opt-in flavors.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) had one of the busiest development cycles, especially due to the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities, but also because of other causes, including the not very well planned release schedule.
For example, the opt-in flavors were supposed to get two alpha releases, the first one within a week and a half after the New Year's Eve and the second one on February 1st. None of these alpha milestones happened, so that's why we're now seeing the beta.
While Ubuntu itself never participates in the first beta release, the developers of various of the official flavors were busy this week testing the beta images. Among the participating flavors, we can mention Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Budgie, and Ubuntu Kylin.
Unfortunately, Lubuntu and Ubuntu Studio aren't available for this beta, but we're hoping to see them next month, on April 5th, when the Ubuntu Release Team will announce the Final Beta milestone, which will also be available for Ubuntu itself.
Powered by Linux kernel 4.15
As for the new features, Kubuntu 18.04 LTS Beta ships with the latest, long-term supported KDE Plasma 5.12 desktop environment by default, along with KDE Applications 17.12.2, VLC as default media player, and various other updated components.
Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 LTS Beta appears to have quite a bunch of enhancements and new features, including better font handling for Korean and Chinese languages, color emoji support, better key shortcuts, new default Budgie applets, and an exciting new GTK+ theme.
On the other hand, Xubuntu 18.04 LTS Beta comes without the GTK Theme Configuration tool, updated Greybird GTK+ theme, Xfce PulseAudio Plugin, Status Notifier Plugin, Atril document viewer, Engrampa archive manager, MATE Calculator, and new default wallpaper.
All these opt-in flavors are powered by the latest Linux 4.15 kernel, just like Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) would be when it's released next month on April 26. Until then, we invite you to take these beta builds for a test drive and report any issues you might encounter.
So without any further ado, go ahead and download Kubuntu 18.04 LTS Beta, Xubuntu 18.04 LTS Beta, Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS Beta, Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 LTS Beta, and Ubuntu Kylin 18.04 LTS Beta right now through our website. All of them are available for both 64-bit and 32-bit computers.
