Day yesterday the most recent version of Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo was released which will go to mark (possibly) the step to a convergence of Ubuntu with Android (Even though everything is not quite clear).
However talking about versions that have left their mark, one of which will undoubtedly become one of the favorites and remembered will be Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver.
Bionic Beaver, one of the versions that has it all
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver is so far one of the few versions from Ubuntu (so far) that during "its launch" it has had great support and various applications at your disposal.
Maybe they wonder what are you going with all that? And it is that if we think a little about the great boom that applications have begun in Linux (in general) it is due to the idea of universal applications.
Although the idea of Snap, Flatpak, AppImage among others is not up to date, much less that they have arisen with the launch of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver, but it is a great acceptance and popularity.
Universal Applications
Among the greatest novelties that are in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions is the integration with Snap and Flatpak.
Which did not arrive in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, if not earlier versions, but due to famous stability and performance issues on the part of the desktop environment, these earlier versions could not stand out.
And since they are not LTS versions (Ubuntu 17.04 and Ubuntu 17.10) the support part tends to kill these transition versions.
As for the AppImage, they are an excellent bet on portable applications for Linux even though in the absence of integration by the developers it has not achieved a great exploitation.
With that, thanks to these universal applications, the use of repositories has begun to be abandoned (since it is more feasible to develop an application for Snap, Flatpak or AppImage than to create a package for each distribution).
Y this is a great feasibility that Canonical has seen when pushing their Snap packs, that in versions like 12.04 or 14.04, the implementation of this type of applications would have marked a golden age.
Games on Linux are not possible a big lie
Another great feature that have boosted not only Ubuntu but Linux in general is the continuous development of tools like Wine or Proton from Steam.
The latter was a great boom for Linux games since thanks to the active development that Wine has led (for two years) going from the eternal version 1.xx.xx, it set the tone for the guys from Steam to offer us Proton .
Y which is also worth remembering Vulkan and other APIs, recent that have emerged in recent years. With which Linux gaming has been driven to places that were believed unattainable.
Driver support and appearance
As for the appearance side, we can go back a few years ago when gnome 2 ego to the default environment and happened to be replaced by Unity. After Canonical changed environment again leaving Unity to return to Gnome but with a great cost "performance and resource management."
Which were the most talked about topics during this transition and that left a great mark for Ubuntu 17.10 and later it would inherit Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.
With this problem, Canonical began to turn to the community and try to listen (and not just focus on your paid products) to solve different problems.
Among them the problem of the implementation of drivers, where I launched a small campaign asking the community to support doing some steps with the Nvidia and Nouveau drivers (which the fruits were seen in the new version of Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo).
Conclusion
Although most of the aforementioned was not designed or released for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, the truth is that they were a great boost for the distribution and that, being frank, many of us would have liked that these could have arisen earlier.
And on the other hand, being an LTS version that still has many years of support, it will continue to receive the improvements and some of the features that will continue to be implemented in Ubuntu.
I agree, I have been using it for almost a year as the main distro and I never tire of saying that it was a very pleasant surprise. It is without a doubt a GREAT VERSION.