Ubuntu is one of the most popular desktop Linux-based operating systems in the world, and rightfully so. It's stable, fast, and offers a very polished user experience. Ubuntu has gotten even better recently too, since Canonical -- the company that develops the distribution -- switched to GNOME from the much-maligned Unity. Quite frankly, GNOME is the best overall desktop environment, but I digress.

Today, Ubuntu 18.04.1 becomes available. This is the first "point" release of 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver. It is chock full of fixes and optimizations, which some individuals and organizations have been waiting for before upgrading. You see, while some enthusiasts will install the latest and greatest immediately, others value stability -- especially for business -- and opt to hold off until many of the bugs are worked out. If you are a longtime Windows user, think of it like waiting for Microsoft to release a service pack before upgrading -- sort of.

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"If you’re already running 18.04 LTS, and you have been updating regularly, then you will already have all of these applied and so essentially you’re already running 18.04.1 LTS. The point release is an opportunity for us to make a new ISO image, and so people downloading and installing from the release of the new images will benefit from having those updates available immediately," says Will Cooke Desktop Engineering Manager, Canonical.

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Cooke further says, "The first point release for an LTS comes out three months after release, and is also the time at which we enable upgrades from the previous LTS release. That is to say, if you’re running 16.04 LTS then you will be prompted to upgrade to 18.04 LTS from today onwards (there is a little lag between the ISOs being made available and the upgrades being enabled). The three month period provides us the opportunity to find and fix critical bugs before enabling upgrades for our LTS users who, by nature, expect a very reliable base OS."

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If you are ready to download and create your Ubuntu Linux 18.04.1 installation media, you can get it here. Keep in mind: if you are already running 18.04 and are up to date on updates, there is no reason to download the ISO. If you are running 16.04, it may be time to take the plunge into Bionic Beaver when prompted.

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