Mesa 18.0.5 Being Prepped For Ubuntu 18.04 While 18.1.1 Going Into X-Updates

When Ubuntu 18.04 LTS shipped in April, it shipped with a near-final release candidate of Mesa 18.0. Coming down the pipe now to "Bionic Beaver" desktop users is Mesa 18.0.5.

Canonical's Timo Aaltonen who wrangles the X/Mesa packages has been working on getting the Mesa 18.0.5 point release out into the 18.04 Bionic archive and also an updated GLVND package to ease the transition for users that may be upgrading from Ubuntu 16.04. Those updates are in the process of landing.

Mesa 18.0.5 was released earlier this month and it's the last planned point release in the 18.0 series. But Ubuntu 18.04 will be sticking with the Mesa 18.0 series as it usually does and not opt for a newer quarterly release series as a stable release update. It won't be until Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS down the road when it pulls in the Ubuntu 18.10 Mesa/kernel hardware enablement stack, at which point it should take things to Mesa 18.2.

While not a formal stable release update, those wishing to move to the newer Mesa 18.1 series for better features and performance, Mesa 18.1.1 is now available via the X-Updates PPA, Timo has shared.

Alternatively, if you are a bit more adventurous, we highly recommend the Padoka PPA and Oibaf PPA for getting the bleeding-edge open-source Linux graphics driver support. There is also the Padoka Stable PPA for sticking to the Mesa stable releases and tends to be updated more often than X-Updates.