Sunday 25 February 2018

Second look at Ubuntu 18.04 or Bionic

UpdateThis work is superseded by the release of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.


The latest daily builds of Ubuntu 18.04 or Bionic Beaver now includes the newly Ubuntuised v4.15 kernel (Ubuntu 4.15.0-10.11) which includes config support to keep sound and BT working on Intel Atom devices now that serial device support is enabled through ACPI.

I've respun the 20180223 build using my 'isorespin.sh' script and created ISOs suitable for Intel Atom and Intel Apollo Lake:

  • Atom (-i bionic-desktop-amd64.iso --atom)
  • Apollo (-i bionic-desktop-amd64.iso --apollo)

What is arguably equally interesting is that Canonical asked the Ubuntu community to make it a new GTK theme based on Adwaita (the default GNOME theme) and inspired by Ambiance (the default Ubuntu theme). OMG! Ubuntu first posted about this and has now posted instructions on how to try the new theme.

I thought it would be fun to try this so I've respun the Bionic daily according to the above instructions and I've also included the wallpaper mentioned in the post. Because you need to select the ‘Communitheme’ session from the session selector on the login screen:


I included creating a user 'linuxium' with the password 'p' when respinning the ISO:

isorespin.sh -i bionic-desktop-amd64.iso --apollo \
-r ppa:communitheme/ppa -p ubuntu-communitheme-session \
-f Abstract-Geometric_1_1920x1080_wallpaper_-_1920x1080_Wallpapers.jpg \
-c "sed -i '/\[org.gnome.desktop.background\]/{n;s?/usr/share/backgrounds/warty-final-ubuntu.png?/usr/local/bin/Abstract-Geometric_1_1920x1080_wallpaper_-_1920x1080_Wallpapers.jpg?}' /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/10_ubuntu-settings.gschema.override" \
-c "sed -i 's/#  AutomaticLoginEnable = true/   AutomaticLoginEnable = false/' /etc/gdm3/custom.conf" \
-c "useradd -c linuxium -d /home/linuxium -m -g users -s /bin/bash linuxium" \
-c "echo linuxium:p | chpasswd"

Note that I've purposely not made the user an 'administrator' as the ISO is only intended to demonstrate the new theme.

If you are interested in trying out the new theme download the ISO from:

  • communitheme-linuxium-apollo-bionic-desktop-amd64.iso

and remember the password is 'p' (without the quotes). The ISO should work on any Intel based device and is sufficient to demo the new theme but is not suitable for proper usage due to wifi, bluetooth and possible installation limitations.

Please donate if you find the ISOs or script useful using the following link http://goo.gl/nXWSGf.