We would like to inform you the new release date for Istio 1.5 release is now March 5th, 2020. We are planning to have 2 community testing days as has been with the previous releases. The tentative dates for the community testing days are February 18th and February 25th, 2020. In the coming days, we will be sending out more details regarding the community testing days. The important dates pertinent to the 1.5 release has been posted at https://github.com/istio/istio/wiki/Istio-Release-1.5.
Yes. Although you can still deploy some individual components if you need them for some reason (eg. If you are using Galley MCP feature, which is not yet available in istiod).