This is a short review of Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" Beta for both your wishes to enjoy it and to contribute to its development. In summary, 18.10 features new Yaru Theme and GNOME 3.30, it will be released at October this year with 9 months official support until July next year. Also, this Beta release means our chance to contribute by reporting bug we find so we can help Ubuntu development process. I hope you will like it and enjoy contributing!
Subscribe to UbuntuBuzz Telegram Channel to get article updates directly.
Download It
Download page for Beta: http://releases.ubuntu.com/cosmic
I get 18.10 Beta image by using BitTorrent network. I hope you will follow this as it will help reduce community server's loads. However, I use GNOME Disk Utility to make a bootable USB to install it.
 |
| Downloading ISO image of the Beta |
1. User Interface
The most notable change here is the new icon theme called Yaru. It's actually a complete suite of themes: icon, GTK2 & GTK3, and GNOME Shell themes. It's the rumored Ubuntu Community Theme which you can contribute to at https://github.com/ubuntu/yaru. With this theme, 18.10 is ready for HiDPI screens i.e. Apple Retina Display. This Yaru theme suite is now the default on Ubuntu 18.10.
 |
| A Cosmic look with its default Yaru icons |
2. GNOME 3.30
Cosmic is the first version of Ubuntu which features GNOME 3.30 "Almeria". See below where Gedit, Calendar, Document Viewer, and Disk Usage Utility all reached version 3.30.
3. File Manager
While the rest is already 3.30, the file manager is still 3.26. You know, GNOME 3.30 does not have icons on desktop area feature, so keeping 3.26 which still has it keeps the feature. This way, it's still possible for us to put favorite apps on desktop like second picture below.
 |
| Nautilus showing Yaru icons; see @2x? That's HiDPI support! |
 |
| Icons on desktop area is still possible |
4. Repository
It is now cosmic. You may see https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+archivemirrors to find out whether a local mirror is already available in your country.
5. Let's Contribute (You can report bug too!)
An issue I see immediately after installing, is, taking screenshot freezes the desktop and immediately logged it out. I managed to send my bug report here. Bug hunting and reporting are not scary, it won't eat babies, instead it's automatically done by the help of ubuntu-bug command line. (note: anyway, finally I use scrot to take all screenshots here)
Everybody can report bug for 18.10 as long as he/she have strong determination to help the community and has good internet access.
To give you general picture:
- 1) download the ISO image of the Beta
- 2) install it safely on your computer
- 3) run programs and explore the features available as much as possible
- 4) you will eventually find an error or bug related to a program (a package)
- 5) run command line $ ubuntu-bug package-name and let Ubuntu process the rest of reporting
 |
| For example: my bug report generated and sent automatically to Ubuntu bug center |
That's All!
I hope this short review helps you to recognize what's new on the anticipated 18.10 and also to start contributing by doing bug report. Personally, I find 18.10 will be very interesting since GNOME 3.30 is the official desktop as I reviewed few days ago. That's all, we're waiting for October, enjoy Beta!
Further References
To anticipate 18.10 release, we can find its Announcement, Release Notes, etc. here:
- Official Beta announcement by Adam Conrad
- Official upgrade guide (18.04 to 18.10)
- Forum announcement of Cosmic
- Release notes (work in progress)
- Mailing list of official announcements (join & see archive)
- Ubuntu release list (all versions)
- Cosmic release schedule
This article is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.