What does it mean Ubuntu 18.04 will "support colored emojis"?
Ubuntu – How does Ubuntu 18.04 “support emojis”
18.04emoji
Related Solutions
I tested this out in a VM, and it seems you can get colour emojis in 18.04:
16.04:
18.04:
The filenames were created over ssh from macOS using touch ??; the emojis entered using the macOS emoji picker.
Having fonts-noto-color-emoji was not enough also for my Ubuntu 18.04 system.
However, there is another answer to the question you linked to: https://askubuntu.com/a/1029675/188679
Create a file ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/01-emoji.conf and put the following content inside:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<alias>
<family>serif</family>
<prefer>
<family>Noto Color Emoji</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
<family>sans-serif</family>
<prefer>
<family>Noto Color Emoji</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
<alias>
<family>monospace</family>
<prefer>
<family>Noto Color Emoji</family>
</prefer>
</alias>
</fontconfig>
Then, run fc-cache -f -v. Finally, restart Chrome.
Best Answer
I guess you are quoting this OMG Ubuntu article.
Ubuntu (18.04) "supports colored emojis" means you'll be able to see system-wide coloured emojis out-of-the box, not just in some specific applications.
Currently in Ubuntu 17.10 or older versions you get to see coloured emojis without any extra modifications in for example, Firefox:
But the same emojis may render as simple monochromatic line drawings in other applications, e.g. gEdit:
Even though GNOME 3.26 (default in Ubuntu 17.10) supports coloured emojis, it's actually a missing feature in Ubuntu 17.10 as some necessary packages, which are
fontconfigv2.12.5,cairov1.15.7, and a font that supports coloured emojis are missing (source).This will be fixed in Ubuntu 18.04 and you'll be able to see coloured emojis everywhere out-of-the-box, as well as having a nice system picker application for choosing them.