Senior author, Open Source enthusiast.

Wednesday, February 20, 2019 at 23:23

Ubuntu 19.04 Two Months Before Release

(Ubuntu 19.04 with icons on desktop and Nautilus File Manager 3.30)

Testing Ubuntu 19.04 pre-release on LiveCD impresses me as it's far more quicker and lighter than 18.10 backwards to 17.04 I had tested. I can feel the performance difference. It is planned to be released on next April like usual and I tested this today in February, about two month before actual release date. It features GNOME 3.30 and LibreOffice 6.1; with icons on desktop feature and Yaru Theme. On my hardware, I didn't encounter any crash or error, on the contrary it feels smooth and responsive. I think the final release will be better and interesting. If you want to test 19.04 today, go download it from the official server. Test it yourself, or install it on your testing computer, and enjoy.

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Cosmic Cuttlefish Download | First Yaru | GNOME 3.30

My Hardware

I tested 19.04 alpha on Acer Aspire One 756, Intel Pentium 967, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD. I ran it as LiveCD session over my 16GB flash drive.

For whom the alpha is

Today, 19.04 is available as pre-release (before Beta) version which is updated daily. It is called 'alpha'. In my computer, it works smoothly already. So if you have a certain computer to test the 19.04 alpha alone, go ahead. But do not use 19.04 alpha for desktop production and do not upgrade already stable system to 19.04 alpha.

(Download page of the 19.04 daily build: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current)

1. Whole desktop

You notice it? Yes, Ubuntu 19.04 brings back the icons on desktop area feature. However, the wallpaper is still from 18.10 right now and this is expected as 19.04 is still in alpha stage.

(The Desktop)

Did you hear the new Desktop Icon extension for GNOME 3.30+? That extension is preinstalled on 19.04. That's why we see desktop icons are there while actually this feature was removed since 3.28. Really huge thanks to csoriano to bring this feature back in 3.30. I love this.

(Thanks to Nautilus 3.30, doing right-click > Properties on desktop is allowed now)

2. Top bar

This is how the titlebars on 19.04 look like. If you come from 16.04, you will find this to be different, as Ubuntu abandoned the Ambiance theme since 17.04. This theme is called Yaru theme. More than that, because many apps here come from GNOME 3.30, you see the menus are a little bit strange as they are located on the titlebar now.

(Top bar)

(See the hamburger-logo menus opened (back), only non-GNOME program doesn't have such menu (front))

3. Icons & start menu

Here is the Yaru theme icon set. This Yaru started its debut since 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish. You will find it more colorful, more catchy.

(Icon set of whole desktop)

4. File manager

Compared to 18.10, here Nautilus upgraded to version 3.30. Noticeable visual change will be the top bar especially the path bar. Every single path when we browse is now including drop-down menu. The menu shows Properties, New Folder, and Open in Terminal. And search bar is now placed in the same place as path bar, not below, and also with drop-down menu.

(Nautilus 3.30 on 19.04 looks great with Yaru theme)

5. Software Center

The Ubuntu Software now reached version 3.30 as well. It includes support for Snap and it included with software-properties-gtk like usual.

(Ubuntu Software)

6. Applications

These are subject to change on the next final release, but at least you can see the version numbers. Generally all GNOME Applications upgraded to 3.30, while Firefox got latest version, and LibreOffice is currently stable on 6.1. If it will be 6.2 on the final, I will be very happy, as the Notebookbar is really better on 6.2.

LibreOffice 6.1.4.2
Shotwell 0.30.1
Nautilus 3.30.5
Ubuntu Software 3.30.6
Rhythmbox 3.4.3
GNOME Terminal 3.30.2
Remmina 1.2.32.1
Gedit 3.30.2
GNOME Calendar 3.30.1
Firefox 65 "Quantum"
Thunderbird 60.4.0

(Apps)

(LibreOffice 6.1.4.2 with Notebookbar enabled)

Still, 19.04 alpha is an alpha operating system under heavy development right now. So I get many updates even today. See Software Updater screenshot below, it seems everything like Firefox and Nautilus and Cheese still get constant updates.

(Software versions still changing day by day)

7. Snaps

Built-in snaps software are like below. This means if we run Calculator and System Monitor, we run them as Snap programs, not as our traditional DEB programs. Again, this list can be changed on the final release.

core 16-2.37.1
gnome-3-26-1604 3.26.0
gnome-calculator 3.30.1
gnome-characters 3.30.0
gnome-logs 3.30.0
gnome-system-monitor 3.30.0
gtk-common-themes 0.1-4-g88bc1b2

(Snaps)

8. More Details

For today, we can see these information from 19.04 alpha. We know from this that 19.04 will use kernel 4.18 or later. We know the codename will be Disco Dingo. And the sources.list entries will be full with 'disco' as name of the release.

More than that, APT version is 1.8.0, snapd version is 2.37.1, and GNOME Shell version is 3.30.2.

Closing Words

While reviewing 17.04 up to 18.10, I felt every release was heavy. What I like from this alpha version is the fact that it's lighter and quicker on my machine. I hope this will be lighter too on your machines. We are waiting for April for 19.04 to really come. Enjoy testing the alpha!