Ubuntu 19.04 is here
The Computer Weekly Open Source Insider team is running Ubuntu.
More specifically, we’re running Ubuntu 19.04 on an originally Windows-empowered Lenovo laptop as a dual boot.
NOTE: Incidentally, this is an altogether joyous experience… although the BIOS boot screen defaults to Ubuntu startup if you fail to choose between Windows and Ubuntu, which seems ever so slightly cheeky given that Ubuntu was invited in as a guest… put it down to open source fervour… although the boot options are obviously very easy to edit in the BIOS itself.
Ubuntu 19.04
So what of Ubuntu 19.04 then?
Canonical says this version of the OS is all about open infrastructure, developer desktop and IoT.
“The open-source-first on Ubuntu movement in telco, finance and media has spread to other sectors. From the public cloud to the private data center to the edge appliance or cluster, open source has become the reference for efficiency and innovation. Ubuntu 19.04 includes the leading projects to underpin that transition, and the developer tooling to accelerate the applications for those domains” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical.
Ubuntu 19.04 integrates recent updates from open infrastructure projects including OpenStack, Kubernetes, and Ceph – with advanced life-cycle management for multi-cloud and on-prem operations – from bare metal, VMware and OpenStack to every major public cloud.
Optimised Ubuntu Server 19.04 and Minimal Ubuntu 19.04 images are available on all major public clouds.
Amazon published Greengrass for IoT on Ubuntu, as well as launching the AWS DeepRacer developer-centric model for autonomous ground vehicle community development, also running Ubuntu.
The Edge X stack and a range of industrial control capabilities are now available for integration on Ubuntu based devices, with long term security updates.
Developer productivity
Microsoft Visual Studio Code joined the list of developer tools published as snaps including IntelliJ, pyCharm, Postman and microK8s. AI, machine learning and data science platforms continue to prefer Ubuntu for rapid adoption and fast project iterations.
In Ubuntu 19.04, multiple instances of the same snap can be installed for CI/CD, testing or phased rollouts. For example, two versions of a database or two versions of the golang compiler can be installed at the same time. Snap epochs control when and how data migration happens between major version upgrades.
More than 2,000 independent software publishers now distribute their applications to Linux desktops, appliances and cloud VMs through the snap store, growing 30% since October 2018.