14 DAY TRIAL // The Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) was released today as Canonical's seventh long-term supported Ubuntu Server operating system, a release that introduces a new installer and updated components.
We already overviewed the new features of Ubuntu Desktop 18.04 LTS, so, in this article, we'll have a look at what's new in Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS. First of all, you should know that this release is powered by the Linux 4.15 kernel series, which includes mitigations for the Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities.
The included kernel also provides support for the latest hardware and peripherals from IBM, Intel, and other manufacturers backported from the Linux 4.16 kernel series, support for signing of POWER host and NV kernels, AMD secure memory encryption support, and the latest MD driver with software RAID enhancements.
Next generation Ubuntu Server installer, Chrony and Netplan
Probably the most significant new feature in Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS is the next generation, revamped Subiquity server installer, which promises to offer users the same level of comfort and speed as Ubuntu Desktop's Ubiquity installer.
However, if you need to use features like LVM, RAID, VLANs, bonds, or multipath, as well as to re-use existing partitions, you still need to use the alternate installer. Another important change is the deprecation of ifupdown and its replacement with Netplan.
The backend configuration on Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS is provided by systemd-networkd by default, and Chrony replaces the Network Time Protocol daemon NTPd as the recommended server for the NTP protocol. systemd-timesyncd is used for basic time sync needs.
"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 it is highly recommended to migrate to chrony if you had set up ntpd before," said Canonical.
Updated components in Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS
As expected, Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS ships with numerous updated components, among which we can mention the LXD 3.0 system container manager, QEMU 2.11.1 virtual machine manager, libvirt 4.0 virtualization API, DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) 17.11.x, and Open vSwitch 2.9 distributed virtual multilayer switch.
Canonical's MAAS (Metal as a Service) cloud style provisioning tool for physical servers was updated to version 2.4 beta 2 in Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS, which also includes up-to-date components like cloud-init 18.2, curtin 18.1, PHP 7.2.x, Apache 2.4.29, Nginx 1.14.0, SSSD 1.16.x, and OpenStack Queens.
Last but not least, the landscape-client was ported to Python 3, ubuntu-advantage-tools comes with new, dynamic MOTD support for Canonical Livepatch that displays the status of livepatches when logging in on a console, as well as a new enable-fips-updates command for enabling a special FIPS repository.
There are also numerous s390x-specific enhancements, all of which you can study in the release notes. You can download Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS right now through our web portal for 64-bit (amd64), AArch64 (ARM 64-bit), IBM System z (s390x), Power PC 64-bit Little Endian (PPC64el), or ARMhf/Raspberry Pi 2 systems. Please note that 32-bit (i386) installations are now longer supported.