Ubuntu 18.10: New theme, Android integration, Power optimization

Canonical has announced the official opening of the Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) universe, bringing with it a number of new features and enhancements that have been planned for a long time but are too late to be put into the long-term support of Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver). According to the 9-month release cycle, Ubuntu 18.10 will be a brand new experiment for Canonical, such as unlocking the Ubuntu desktop with a fingerprint scanner, integrating with the KDE Connect Android app by default via GS Connect, a brand new installer, and a set of system themes.

Image: ubuntu

Will Cooke writes in the latest blog post:

“Mark recently proposed that we investigate how we could improve the desktop installer by looking at what has been done to move the server installer forward.  This is a complex topic and will take more than one 6 month cycle to complete, but we’re going to be starting our investigations.”

The exciting thing in Ubuntu 18.10 is a lot of optimization improvements:

“There are a number of kernel options for switching devices like HDD controllers, USB controllers etc to a low power state when not in use.  However, in the past we have found that this causes more problems than it solves and so we’ve taken a conservative approach to power management.  We’ll be spending time this cycle digging in to these low level options to see what can be done to improve power consumption without sacrificing stability.”

Ubuntu 18.10 also has a lot of optimizations for snapshots (starting with XDG Portals support and startup time), and Canonical plans to make the open source Chromium web browser “use only as a snapshot” (starting with the Cosmic Cuttlefish distribution).

Finally, Ubuntu 18.10 will be equipped with all major improvements in the upcoming GNOME 3.0 (this is also its default desktop environment), including improvements to the GNOME/Ubuntu graphical package manager, and deployment of Thunderbolt settings through the GNOME Control Center.

Ubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) is scheduled to be officially released on October 18, 2018. Canonical abandoned the Alpha 1, Alpha 2 and Beta 1 phases in this round of development cycle and replaced it with “Testing Weeks”.

The first Testing Week will be open to public testers on May 21-25, 2018.

Source: Softpedia