The latest long term support (LTS) release of Ubuntu is now available for new installs. Ubuntu 18.04, also known as Bionic Beaver can be ordered at https://rimuhosting.com/order/v2orderstart.jsp. It’s also an option to consider if you reinstall an existing VPS.

The official release notes for version of Ubuntu are available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BionicBeaver/ReleaseNotes. This release of Ubuntu will be supported until April 2023. Ubuntu is one of the most popular linux server platforms, based on the solid Debian distribution. This release brings an update for Apache to version 2.4.29, with HTTP/2 support enabled. PHP has also been updated to version 7.2.x. The MySQL database server 5.7.22 is installed in our VPSs and MariaDB server 10.1.29 is also available.

Version 1.14 of the Nginx web server can be installed as an alternative to Apache. As always, RimuHosting can install Java and the Tomcat application server for your java hosting needs, just mention this in on your order.

If you are doing development, 18.04 includes Python 3.6, GCC 7.3, and updates for languages such as nodejs, go and rust.

There are also updates for container and virutal machine tools, LXD, Ubuntu’s default container manager is updated to 3.0, QEMU to 2.11.1 and libvirt to 4.0.

One significant difference from past installs is that Debian’s venerable ifupdown which keeps network configuration in /etc/network/interfaces, has been deprecated in favour of netplan.io. Network configuration is now stored under /etc/netplan. Netplan typically uses systemd-networkd under the hood to manage networks on server systems. New installs will have a netplan configuration, while upgraded systems will stay with ifupdown for now.

Upgrades for older versions of Ubuntu to 18.04 will soon be available, see our upgrade guide.

You can install new servers now at https://rimuhosting.com/order/v2orderstart.jsp, or contact us if you have any questions about Ubuntu 18.04.