Ubuntu’s most advanced version yet, Ubuntu 19.04, is released officially today. April 11th is when Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu finally froze the version, which is the last stage in the development process. At this stage, only the critical bugs will be fixed before the official release to the public.
Ubuntu 19.04 “Disco Dingo”
Ubuntu 19.04 is codenamed as Disco Dingo, which is an interesting combination by itself. Following the usual Ubuntu naming standard, the next letter is D, after C (Cosmic Cuttlefish). Dingo is an Australian dog. Interestingly enough, “dingo” is an Australian slang term meaning “a cowardly person,” but in this context, people rarely use both words. Anyway, here’s Ubuntu 19.04 “Disco Dingo”.
Official Ubuntu 19.04 Wallpaper
Here is the default desktop wallpaper. Other versions of the wallpaper are available at the official development portal.
Disco Dingo Wallpaper
9-months Support
Disco Dingo succeeds the Ubuntu 18.10 “Cosmic Cuttlefish” and will be the short-term release version, meaning Canonical will support the build with software and security updates for only nine months, until July 2020. For those new to non-LTS (Long Term Support) versions, they are targeted for users who want to run the latest Ubuntu version, including all the updated technologies, not the most stable and well-tested.
New Features in Ubuntu 19.04
This advanced version of Ubuntu ships with the latest GNOME 3.32 desktop environment and is powered by Linux kernel 5.0.
Ubuntu 19.04 Desktop
Ubuntu 19.04 is all about performance; therefore users will hardly notice any visual changes after the upgrade. However, since the performance is a huge overhaul, users will feel fluidic, responsive animations and desktop experience.
As far as the updated major applications are concerned, Ubuntu 19.04 includes LibreOffice 6.2.2, Mozilla Firefox 66.0, and Chromium browser as a snap app.
Upgrading from Ubuntu 18.10
One can easily upgrade from Ubuntu 18.10 to Ubuntu 19.04 from the Terminal. Launch the Terminal and fire the following commands:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt autoremove
Starting from Scratch?
Or, if you are starting from scratch, you can download the Ubuntu 19.04 ISO from the official servers and burn it into a USB drive to create an Ubuntu installation media.
Upgrading from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS
Unfortunately, it’s not possible to directly upgrade from a Ubuntu 18.04 to 19.04 directly. You should first upgrade to Ubuntu 18.10 and then follow the above steps.
Step 1) Click “Activities” and then “Software & Updates”.
Step 2) Click on the “Updates” tab.
Step 3) Set “Notify me of a new Ubuntu version” to “For any new version”.
Step 4) Press Alt+F2 and type in “update-manager -c” (without the quotes) into the command box. Alternatively, you can launch “Update Manager” from “Activities” too.
Step 5) Update Manager will notify that New distribution release ‘18.10’ is available.
Step 6) Click Upgrade and follow the on-screen instructions.
After a reboot, your Ubuntu should be upgraded to version 18.10.
