October is the time of the year when users get to play with new versions of Ubuntu and Fedora.

Canonical announced Ubuntu 18.10, and the Fedora community announced Fedora 29. Both are Gnome-based distributions. Ubuntu focused on faster boot times and improved support for new hardware; Fedora focused on improving its modular design.

“Modularity helps make it easier to include alternative versions of software and updates than those shipped with the default release, designed to enable some users to use tried-and-true versions of software while enabling others to work with just-released innovation without impacting the overall stability of the Fedora operating system,” according to Fedora press release.

Fedora comes in 3 editions: Workstation, Cloud, and Atomic Host. The latest version of Fedora’s desktop-focused edition provides new tools and features for general users as well as developers with the inclusion of GNOME 3.30. Fedora is putting its weight behind Flatpack.

Ubuntu also comes in different editions: Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Cloud, and Ubuntu for IoT. There are different flavors of Ubuntu that support various desktop environments, including KDE Plasma, LXQt, etc.

Snap is the default app packaging and delivery mechanism of Ubuntu that competes with Flatpack. Canonical said that Ubuntu's Linux app store includes 4,100 snaps from over 1,700 developers with support across 24 Linux distributions.18.10 enables native desktop controls to access files via the host system.

While Fedora remains a distribution for developers (Linus Torvalds himself uses Fedora), Ubuntu still appeals to a wider audience, from gamers to enterprise customers.

Download Ubuntu: https://www.ubuntu.com/download

Download Fedora: https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/