This is the first real step in providing site owners a better experience in operating a web oriented CMS.
For this release, the focus is on giving the site owner a choice on when to upgrade. The importance of this was exemplified in the WordPress 5.0.1 security focused release. People who wanted to stay on the 4.9.x release line longer until Gutenberg stabilized had to chose one of the following bad choices:
- Upgrade to 5.0.1 although they do not want to use Gutenberg and have the hassle of installing plugins to disable it
- Stay on 4.9.8 with publicly known security vulnerabilities
Although WordPress released 4.9.9 which solved the security issues on the 4.9.x release line, users did not get any indication in the admin UI that such an upgrade path is possible at all.
There are some other small changes, mostly revolving around deprecation of small obsolete features.
Get it Now! Just be aware that PHP 5.2 is a minimum requirement to run it.