Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver is a long-term support version that was released on 26 April 2018, Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS was released three months later on 26 July 2018. Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS was released six months after Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS, on 15 February 2019. Further incremental update releases of the 18.04 LTS cycle were released as 18.04.3 and 18.04.4 at an approximately six-month release cycle, on August 8, 2019, and February 12, 2020, respectively. Version 18.04.5 was released six months later, on 13 August 2020. Ubuntu 18.04.6 LTS was released thirteen months later, on 17 September 2021.
Plans to include a new theme, created by the Ubuntu community, were announced on 5 February 2018. However, as the development of the theme was unfinished and buggy as of 13 March 2018, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS did not include a new theme, and instead retained the Ambiance theme from 2010 as its default theme. The new theme was available as a Snap package.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS introduced new features, such as colour emoticons, a new To-Do application preinstalled in the default installation, and added the option of a "Minimal Install" to the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS installer, which only installs a web browser and system tools. Ubuntu 18.04 LTS's default display server was returned to Xorg for more stability and reliability, however, Wayland was still included as part of the default install.
This release employed Linux kernel version 4.15, which incorporated a CPU controller for the cgroup v2 interface, AMD secure memory encryption support and improved SATA Link Power Management.
For the first time some applications were delivered by default as snaps.
In reviewing Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, Michael Larabel of Phoronix wrote, "Ubuntu 18.04 is mostly an incremental upgrade over Ubuntu 17.10 with updated packages, the switch back to X.Org session by default rather than Wayland, continued presence of Snaps, and a variety of minor user-interface updates. It's really not a big deal going from 17.10 to 18.04 besides the LTS extended support nature, but it is quite a change if upgrading from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. For that upgrade you now have the GCC 7 compiler, Unity 7 to GNOME Shell by default, and a wealth of other package updates."
In reviewing the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server version, Michael Larabel of Phoronix indicated that the newly developed text-based installer is an improvement over previous installers.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS has normal LTS support for five years, until April 2023 and has paid ESM support available from Canonical for an additional five years, until April 2028.
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