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Ubuntu 16.04 proves even an LTS release can live at Linux’s bleeding edge

156 points by bpierre 11y ago

technofiend 11y ago
Based on feedback here and on reddit, I plan to jump on with the next minor release. Maybe Mate will fix the issues found in using the Citrix receiver on Unity. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4h58mj/ubuntu_1604_is_just_so_unstable/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4h58mj/ubuntu_1604_i...
valarauca1 11y ago
Installed 16.04 last Saturday no large issues but then my scope of customization is really small. Nvidia drivers also installed without an issue which is honestly a first (for me on any distro).
- jsvaughan 11y ago
  I had a few weird small things - I was using Gnome on the desktop and after the update I couldn't mouse click on anything (MS wireless mouse), but all works in Unity. One of my ssh keys stopped working, the font (possibly consolas) i was using in the terminal stopped rendering nicely and for a while Terminator thought a pipe symbol was a < (despite it being ok elsewhere). I am using an nvidia card and have had no issues with that.
  - drewg123 11y ago
    Your ssh key probably stopped working because they deprecated support for older, weaker keys. I had an old dss key stop working. You need this line in ssh_config and sshd_config: PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes=+ssh-dss
- drewg123 11y ago
  The actual Nvidia drivers from Nvidia? That's great news. In the past, it has always been quite a bit of a struggle to get nouveau fully blacklisted, and has made me dread new installs.
  - valarauca1 11y ago
    I was very careful in my base install to ensure Nouveau wasn't included initially or updated in. Fedora makes this far easier as there is a kernel module (which sits in RPM Fusion) that will download proper driver, install driver, strip nouveau, modify x on boot. But I'm not sure what changed in Fedora23 but I can't make boot-able USB's anymore. It just hangs on an early memory mapping error.
- pmontra 11y ago
  They worked for me too (Nvidia Quadro K1100M). I don't like Unity because of the top bar (I move everything to the bottom) so I use Gnome Flashback with Compiz. It works well, almost good as 10.04 and much better than any intermediate release. It's not perfect because of some work still to be done by Gnome on supporting the flashback environment (eg: no File, Edit menu on Nautilus, a menu which I very seldom use). Apparently they're working on that. Overall I'm happy with the upgrade (I was coming from 12.04 on this laptop).
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Although I am mostly a Windows guy nowadays, I started using GNU/Linux distributions back in the day with Slackware 2.0. Tried dozens of distributions and spent endless hours trying out desktop themes and other desktop customizations. Nowadays I just use whatever defaults are there. Probably the only customizations I do are related to power management and what should happen when closing the laptop lid.
  - valarauca1 11y ago
    >Nowadays I just use whatever defaults are there. Probably the only customizations I do are related to power management and what should happen when closing the laptop lid. Same boat. After ~15 years of nearly daily fighting with computers to do the right thing. Fighting with them to look pretty WHILE doing the right thing just seemed like wasted effort. Also modern slackware is pretty nice.
arca_vorago 11y ago
I've been running 16.04 with cairo-dock, which has been my favorite non i3/awesome setup in a while.
- G43nm45ji 11y ago
  The only thing stopping me from using it is the window shadows. I wish there was an easy way to turn it off.
  - lamarkia 11y ago
    The shadows are quite subtle. How does it annoy you? You can disable through 'compizsettings'.
vintermann 11y ago
When I clicked yes to upgrading Kubuntu to 16.04, it broke hard, into a state which would be 100% unrecoverable for grandma (and quite likely the support guy she would have shipped it too as well).
- rocky1138 11y ago
  Me, too. But, this happens every time, so I know to drag out the ol' dpkg --configure -a. One thing I've noticed this release is that KDE5's Plasma fails quite often when I'm switching Wifi access points.
  - vintermann 11y ago
    It somehow ended up without a working boot image entirely, and that wasn't the only thing that broke (lots of central packages weren't installed, apparently). So I thought it wasn't worth the effort trying to disentangle it, and I just installed regular Ubuntu over it.
- pen2l 11y ago
  There should be an Ubuntu-distribution called Gubuntu, (Ubuntu for grandmas). No, seriously, there's a serious market for this -- Ubuntu's UI is crap (with the little triangles indicating which windows are open? Give me a break, I'm mid-20s and I have trouble seeing that). We cannot have that for our grandmas, gnome would probably be better. Also, grandmas don't need a lot of bells and whistles... only the absolute bare essentials. Like wordprocessing and and internet browser... the minimalism nature would make support easier for you. Lastly, I guess consider Windows 7. Windows 7 was probably the high point in terms of "oh, it's obvious how I do this..." for grandmas (I think the flat theming in Win10 took that away).
  - david-given 11y ago
    ChromeOS. http://www.neverware.com/ http://www.neverware.com/ make a PC installable version. You do end up having to use web based apps for everything, but for basic jobs (with a tethered net connection) that's fine. And it's so nice having something where everything works, everything either obvious or simply not present [ * ], and which has a UI which doesn't try to be different just for the sake of being different. [ * ] Keyboard layout settings notwithstanding. They really need cleaning up.
mclemme 11y ago
Installed it on my old laptop, a Dell XPS 15Z, and everything is running fine so far. Only issue I had at install was control panel crashing right after installing the nvidia driver, was solved with logging out and in again. I don't see that much difference compared to 14.04. Everything just seems to work. A few packages that make the experience evern better: Guake for a quick access (quake style) console. Kupfer for a fast launcher (I'm not a fan of the unity launcher). Edit: I'm waiting a while to install it on my main work laptop, a lenovo t450s, since I use it with a dock and when trying 16.04 out on it (live usb), it would sometimes crash when undocking :/
- ust 11y ago
  I have the same machine (t450s), and I've just upgraded from 15.10. No issues with docking, or even suspend for that matter.
  - mclemme 11y ago
    Are you also using the ultra dock[1]? I've got 1 DVI and 1 HDMI screen attached. I tried just when it came out, so could have been fixed in updates ofc. [1] = http://shop.lenovo.com/ISS_Static/ww/emea/merchandising/options/images/large/_460_0_40A20090UK_V1.jpg http://shop.lenovo.com/ISS_Static/ww/emea/merchandising/opti...
Symmetry 11y ago
It worked great for me on my Thinkpad. These days I have to use gekkio's PPA to get xmonad working nicely with Gnome but that was available the first week 16.04 was out and everything installed smoothly.
- nileshtrivedi 11y ago
  I have been facing networking issues. The network list completely disappears. "sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service" is needed to bring those back. Read somewhere that it has something to do with systemd.
  - KKKKkkkk1 11y ago
    This bug has been reported, but the Gnome folks need a Network Manager log to fix the problem. Can you reproduce and send them the log? Here are the bug trackers: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765831 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765831 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/1576314 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+b...
falcolas 11y ago
Question for those who have an install of 16.04 - if you type `hostname -f`, do you get the "command not found" error? I didn't have time to dig into it, but the man pages indicated that `-f` was still a valid option, but it appears that `hostname` was shifted to quasi-function. I came upon this while trying to bring up my vagrant development box against 16.04, part of which was to set the hostname via `server.vm.hostname`.
- mclemme 11y ago
  You mean in a console? Works fine here.
  - falcolas 11y ago
    $ vu development-16 Bringing machine 'development-16' up with 'virtualbox' provider... ==> development-16: Importing base box 'ubuntu/xenial64'... ==> development-16: Matching MAC address for NAT networking... ==> development-16: Checking if box 'ubuntu/xenial64' is up to date... ==> development-16: Setting the name of the VM: ubuntu-xenial-16.04-cloudimg [...] ==> development-16: Machine booted and ready! ==> development-16: Checking for guest additions in VM... ==> development-16: Setting hostname... The following SSH command responded with a non-zero exit status. Vagrant assumes that this means the command failed! hostname -f Stdout from the command: Stderr from the command: sudo: unable to resolve host ubuntu-xenial mesg: ttyname failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device hostname: Name or service not known $ vssh development-16 Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-22-generic x86_64) * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/ Get cloud support with Ubuntu Advantage Cloud Guest: http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/cloud 0 packages can be updated. 0 updates are security updates. ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ hostname ubuntu-xenial ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ hostname -f hostname: Name or service not known ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ which hostname /bin/hostname ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ \hostname -f hostname: Name or service not known ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=16.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=xenial DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 16.04 LTS" Fun times.
StavrosK 11y ago
Speaking of upgrading, I can't recommend this setup enough: https://www.stavros.io/posts/provisioning-your-computer-one-command-awesome/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/provisioning-your-computer-one-... My laptop was getting bogged down with cruft acquired in my homedir over the years, so I decided to reinstall 16.04 from scratch. It took a few minutes to get Ubuntu on the disk, and a single command to get every setting and configuration file back on the machine, the way it was. Not only that, but you can synchronize settings and installed programs across computers as well. I love it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- noja 11y ago
  Are you using this only for dot files? How does putting them all in git prevent you getting bogged down with cruft?
  - StavrosK 11y ago
    > Be judicious in choosing which files you add to the repository. Don’t just add everything that’s in your home directory, or even most of it, because that will just require unnecessary commits and make your repository larger. It does take a bit more time to figure out where programs store their preferences, but it’s nothing you can’t find out in two minutes, and it will ensure you only sync the things you really need to.
    - noja 11y ago
      So it doesn't prevent you being bogged down with cruft?
      - StavrosK 11y ago
        ...it does. You don't add them all.
- 0x6c6f6c 11y ago
alberth 11y ago
Am I alone in being scared of the tone of this thread? So many people are saying "yep, installed it and all works ok" Were you expecting it to NOT work? This is a LTS release, I'd hope the Ubuntu team tested it enough to ensure there isn't major issue. Not to get off topic but maybe because I've solely run *BSDs for the last few years I take for granted releases "just working".
- deanCommie 11y ago
  Worse than that: "The only things that aren't working is the webcam and suspend / hibernate, but I don't really care about those and suspend even seems fixable." SRSLY?
  - vespakoen 11y ago
    I go to great lengths to be able to run Linux, cannot live without a properly functioning tiling window manager. I don't mind that the webcam support is coming in a (couple of) year(s). As the laptop (re)boots in a couple of seconds, I don't mind the shutdown when I go to bed (eco friendly even ;))
    - reitoei 11y ago
      > I go to great lengths to be able to run Linux What do you mean by this?
      - vespakoen 11y ago
        That I might have invested 100+ hours tweaking & patching stuff to get linux to run properly on apple hardware. a lot of this time was spent with getting nvidia drivers to work on my macbook pro 6,1 as it has a weird EFI version. (I don't mind because I like tinkering with stuff and learning about underlying causes of problems)
    - andreasvc 11y ago
      > I don't mind the shutdown when I go to bed (eco friendly even ;)) What exactly is eco friendly about shutdown versus suspend where it uses < 1W? Besides, the wear and tear of repeated shutdown/powerup cycles might mean it is a less "eco" friendly option in the end. I don't think the way you run your laptop has appreciable environmental impact. The damage is in manufacturing and disposal. The best way to be eco friendly is to buy laptops that don't need to be replaced as often.
vespakoen 11y ago
My (6 year old) macbook pro got bricked and I was daring enough to get the new Macbook Pro retina (MacBookPro11,4). Before installing Arch (assuming I needed the latest kernel for anything to work) I tried installing Xubuntu 16.04, and it amazes me how well it works! After installing refind everything just seemed to work out of the box. The only things that aren't working is the webcam and suspend / hibernate, but I don't really care about those and suspend even seems fixable. For anyone interested, I got the intel graphics drivers installer to run by changing DISTRIB_CODENAME to "wily" in /etc/lsb-release and changing it back to "xenial" after installation (make a backup: sudo cp /etc/lsb-release.backup /etc/lsb-release)
- phaemon 11y ago
  I don't know if it's the same webcam in the newest Macbook, but the the reverse engineered driver works perfectly for me on a 2013 model: https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki Just follow the instructions exactly. If it doesn't work first time, try `sudo modprobe -r bdc_pci` and then retry `sudo modprobe facetimehd` and see if it creates `/dev/video0` (which means it's working) For suspend, is it waking up after you close the lid? I fixed this with: sudo -i echo XHC1 > /proc/acpi/wakeup Then give it a test. If it works, pop it into a startup service somewhere.
  - vespakoen 11y ago
    Cool! will give those a try, lspci -v now gives me: http://hastebin.com/yosicucoku.xml http://hastebin.com/yosicucoku.xml It seems to have loaded bdc_pci by default, will try your suggestions and report back.
  - vespakoen 11y ago
    Webcam works now, thanks for that! I added that script to echo XHC1 to wakeup here: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/100macfix without any luck (made it executable) I also removed light-locker (that was the cause wakeup problems on my old macbook pro (6,1), but no luck with that either. I will play with it another time and report back here if I make progress.
fouadf 11y ago
I installed it from scratch on my laptop, had trouble installing chrome and virtualbox. Two straightforward installs required me to fix using the command-line, that was a deal breaker for me. Not the smooth start I was hoping for, I don't have the time to manually fix everything. Back to 14.04
- ergo14 11y ago
  It seems that the new gnome store thingie, does not pull dependencies when you try to install deb file directly, not sure why (at least it does that in ubuntu gnome 16.04). A command line install will indeed work just fine.
exratione 11y ago
I just updated my Ubuntu mail server recipe for Ubuntu 16.04 (https://www.exratione.com/2016/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-16-04-postfix-dovecot-mysql/ https://www.exratione.com/2016/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-16-...). It only took a day of work to find all the holes and fall into them. Everything core Ubuntu and core mailserver worked fairly well. The standard issue Apache/PHP 7 seems to have some odd kinks around the edges, though - at one point the only thing that worked to make it recognize a newly installed PHP module package was to restart the whole server. I have to wonder if this was something relating to systemd, but I'm not familiar enough yet to tell. Subsidiary packages had a number of issues, but this is probably just standard PHP ecosystem raggedness at the edges for a new distribution. The Roundcube version installed via package is just outright broken due to bad symlinks, for example. On the whole I was pleasantly surprised as to how much of a nonissue the transition to systemd was.
- gzm 11y ago
  Hey there - thanks for your guide! I used it as a base for my own guide but tweaked for Slackware64 14.1 (https://gerardozamudio.mx/2015/04/25/slackware-mail-server-with-mysql-postfix-and-dovecot/ https://gerardozamudio.mx/2015/04/25/slackware-mail-server-w...). I'm in the process of updating it for the upcoming Slackware 14.2 release. I'd love to get your feedback on it if you ever have some spare time.
Thaxll 11y ago
The Dell XPS 2016 doesn't work properly, there is a graphic bug where your screen keeps flickering. It seems fixed using the 4.6 DRM kernel.
kriro 11y ago
My upgrade to 16.04 (Xubuntu) hit a rather unsuspected bump. During the upgrade process my computer froze (the lone mechanical HD was at fault). Only thing to do was cut the power/reset. Alas the upgrade was stuck in a limbo state and I had to manually remove some stuff with dpkg but eventually everything upgraded smoothly. Interestingly I hadn't noticed that resolv.conf isn't a thing anymore and the resolvconf package is used now...yikes how long didn't I configure a network interface via the command line to not notice that :D Runs very smoothly on my systems and my parents' systems.
herbst 11y ago
Why is never anyone talking about using Ubuntu with Gnome 3? Mate is outdated by design, LXDE a Win95 clone and don't even let us get started with unity. The only 2 modern and productivity focused WMs (except from everything tiled) are KDE and Gnome 3.
- ergo14 11y ago
  There is also cinnamon which builds on top of gnome 3 tech.
  - herbst 11y ago
    Forgot about that one, but its also just a Win95 desktop clone (with awesome tech in the background tho)
    - ergo14 10y ago
      Maybe, but i find the "win95" approach the one I'm the most productive with.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  You say modern and productivity focused, I say bloated and opinionated. Gnome and KDE seem to want to show off, while Mate/LXDE wants to get out of my way and let me work. Gnome brings nothing new or interesting to the UI table. An "activities" system that doesn't match the way actual people use their computers, a mobile-first design that I swear was cribbed from Microsoft, just with a rough file taken to the window corners. (This looks more and more out of place when you see something like, say, the Boxes app. Why does my virtualization tool look like a tablet toy?), and oh yeah, developers who will break your shit and then tell you its for your own good when you go to complain, if they respond at all. (Me? Bitter?) KDE at least doesn't suffer from those problems, but I find the UI to be gaudy (think WinXP Luna), and unless you like bright themes, unusable.
  - herbst 11y ago
    Personally i love to use Gnome because it gets out of my way so perfectly. Its like it is only there when i just need it, and this works flawlessly with 2 screens (where most WMs including Metro have annoying issues) It really comes down to personal preference, i am aware of that. But using a UX style that was invented more than 20 years ago seems a bit strange to me as well. (Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE, XFCE, ...) I agree that it is a bit bloated. Before i had my current machine i used fluxbox with FBpanel, because Gnome, KDE and unity would lag like mad.
Rezo 11y ago
Ubuntu LTS + a few carefully selected apps as upstream APT repositories or PPAs is the best of both worlds; solid predictable base and the latest software where it matters: Chrome & dev tools in my case. Except for the browser and local dev tools, I don't think I miss or have any use for desktop software. Everything from music (the Spotify web player is excellent, if little known), videos, calendars to email all happen in the browser these days, making it easier than ever to switch to Linux even as desktop usage declines. Increasingly the OS should fade to the background instead of trying to woo with apps or functionality. You don't have to provide an office suite or an email client at all, and I think it would be interesting to see what a distro could do with that kind of sharp focus. I think the core apps of say GNOME, while of generally good quality, probably see fairly limited use in practice. Personally I look forward to not having to think about the OS until the next LTS in a few years time. It's a great environment for getting stuff done.
- pmlnr 11y ago
  You must have a rock solid internet coverage in your world. I do use offline stuff.
gpderetta 11y ago
So, in the last few weeks I updated an old Kubuntu 14.04 desktop installation (which has seen little or no use in the last few years) up to 16.04. Now kwin dies as soon as I login and I open any window. The underlying reason is probably some badly updated package or config file. Still, attaching the debugger I can see kwin segfaulting inside the Qt Javascript interpreter. I have no idea why a window manager would need to run a javascript interpreter nor why it would be a good idea. Bottom line, tonight I'm installing Debian testing and switching to Xfce (which I have been using for years on my latptop).
paulmd 11y ago
I ran into a bug in the installer myself: if you select "download and install updates" then for some reason the dialog that says "We autodetected your timezone as America/New York" cannot ever be closed (and it never unfroze for me) This is apparently a bug that spans multiple sub-distributions (Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu) and dates back to at least 11.04, it was reported over five years ago. Now, once you know the solution it's easy to get around, but it was by no means easy to track down the problem - and who wouldn't want to install fresher packages? It's kind of amateurish to allow major bugs like that to linger in your installer for multiple years. I was installing Lubuntu on a Liva X mini-PC with N2808 processor and eMMC memory. I actually still couldn't get it to boot after I finished the install - the UEFI doesn't see the eMMC drive as a valid boot target in the boot menu and it just goes straight to BIOS. Not sure if I don't have GRUB installed to the right place, or if there's some other Ubuntu-specific bug cropping up, or what.
moron4hire 11y ago
Can we come up with a different archetypal bad/clueless user than "grandma"? My son's grandma manned a crew-served grenade launcher and ran radio intercept equipment in the Army and now owns her own database consulting company. The way it's used brings to mind a crooked, old, white haired woman who spent her life in the kitchen. That's increasingly not anyone's grandma. Using the name in this way is both sexist and ageist.
- daveguy 11y ago
  Agreed. My daughter's grandma was programming path following algorithms for industrial robots before I was born. She has an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a masters in physics. She is also a 3rd degree black belt. I expect that within 20 years grandmas will be running half of all tech companies.
- JetSpiegel 11y ago
  Can we not say people are generally dumb? Einstein is a person and he was not dumb. I can do syllogisms all day long.
  - moron4hire 11y ago
    Except you can't be "general people-ist". It's funny. You'd think that, with our industry's reputation for being both sexist and ageist, we'd work to try to understand how we've gained that perception, rather than just double-downing on it and claiming there is no problem. Here we go, why don't we just say "clueless user" instead? That would cover all the Millenials who have to google search to find the Facebook login page, too.
    - Dylan16807 11y ago
      People are less sympathetic to "clueless user" than grandma or grandpa. That's probably also the reason to prefer grandma, not sexism.
      - moron4hire 11y ago
KKKKkkkk1 11y ago
What's kind of annoying is that Ubuntu has moved most of the system from upstart to systemd, but user sessions are still managed by upstart. If I want to customize my user sessions, I need to learn how to use a system that's being phased out and is incompatible with the rest of the world.
- Skunkleton 11y ago
  Come try Arch, you might like it here :)
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
I remember fglrx being essential for gaming, even if it was awful. Are the open-source drivers better now, such that dropping fglrx support won't be a big problem?
- lamarkia 11y ago
  For most games, amdgpu is ok. If your game requires fglrx, then stick to 14.04 or 15.10. fglrx does not work on 16.04 and all resources from AMD now go to amdgpu so it gets fully useful by the end of 2016.
larrik 11y ago
When I installed 12.04 LTS, I was shocked at how radically different it was than 11.10, and that it was going to be an LTS release. This introduced Unity as the default, among other changes, and I was concerned that they were being too aggressive. It's odd to be applauding them for this attitude, frankly.
- jcastro 11y ago
  Unity was switched on as the default in 11.04.
- pmlnr 11y ago
  I loved 10.10. That would have been a perfect LTS distro.
  - Santosh83 11y ago
    Yup. My all time favourite Ubuntu releases were 6.06 (Dapper Drake) and 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat); 14.04 has also been rock solid.
jejones3141 11y ago
I did a double take at one sentence in the article: "In order to retain some file browser functionality, Nautilus remains at version 3.14." That sounds like the current version of Nautilus has no file browser functionality--which struck me as ironic, because a while back I tried everything I found suggested to stop Nautilus from changing my wallpaper (um, Unix philosophy?) to no avail, and ended up reconfiguring Cinnamon so it would always run Nemo and never run Nautilus. I hope what was meant was that 3.14 had some particular features related to file browsing that later versions dropped.
yandrypozo 11y ago
what's the Linux's bleeding edge ??
- Santosh83 11y ago
  Fedora Rawhide, Debian Sid, Arch, Ubuntu Development Version, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Of these Tumbleweed waits a while before upgrading from upstream so it's not literally the bleeding edge. So is Ubuntu Development version. And only Arch and Tumbleweed are recommended to be used by plain users (as opposed to developers and beta testers).
  - shmerl 11y ago
    Debian testing used to be recommended.
    - Santosh83 11y ago
      Yes, but Testing isn't a full rolling release AFAIK. It undergoes a lengthy freeze before a new Stable is released and I believe manual intervention is needed to continue staying on Testing. Plus security patches take a bit of time to land on Testing from Sid, so the Debian guys don't recommend Testing if you need the fastest access to security updates.
      - shmerl 11y ago
        > Yes, but Testing isn't a full rolling release AFAIK. It undergoes a lengthy freeze before a new Stable is released Not more than unstable really. The only difference, testing is more polished overall. Other than that, they are both semi-rolling. Debian tried to reduce freeze period for a while already, and the last one was shorter than one before that. > and I believe manual intervention is needed to continue staying on Testing. What kind? Normally it should just roll forward.
- shmerl 11y ago
  I think simply rolling distros.
tajen 11y ago
> now with 100% less "spyware" > Canonical dug itself an even deeper hole when it went after [...] FixUbuntu.com for trademark violations. 1. I find it both positive and daunting that the first section of this press release is "They're not being assholes this time". Linux systems should be the guardians of nonspying/noncloud systems. 2. It's excellent they have a theme on stability. I'm not sure how many customers it costs them every year. I personally when to Mac after my second Ubuntu upgrade (1st: the mouse, 2nd: the network). 3. I'd pay $200/yr for a free OS on a developer machine which just works, where I don't even know whether I'm running Gnome, Unity or KDE. I also want UX improvements (the Amazon search) to be well-UX tested (or rejected) before publication. Something like elementary.io, without the installation errors (yeah I've tried), and with on-the-phone magicians if there's a problem. Something like Mac OS X, but paid. I hope they'll do it one day, I wonder whether there's enough customers for that.
- Skunkleton 11y ago
  If you are careful with your hardware selection, #3 is totally doable. For example my work PC (Xeon E5-1650, nVidia Quadro K2000) has had absolutely no compatibility or stability issues. I had the exact opposite experience trying to install Linux on my macbook pro. I have heard good things about the Dell XPS (the one that comes in a 'developer' edition). You also might try virtualization. With paravirtualized drivers, and VT-x support in the CPU, you run at near native speeds, and it is all very stable.
  - gshulegaard 11y ago
    Word of warning, The XPS DE is definitely _not_ perfect. When I got my XPS 13 DE last year they had a multitude of issues I could go on and on about, but the bottom line is that the laptop was completely unusable out of the box. Part of the issue is that the Sputnik team has to take the XPS 13 hardware as is (as it was designed for Windows) and try to support it. They are releasing the drivers upstream (at least they were when I last checked) so that's awesome! But it meant I had crazy stability issues until the 3.19 kernel release. The newer models of the XPS 13 DE seem to have better hardware for linux (Intel vs. Broadcom wireless for example) so it may be better, but I would still encourage anyone looking at the Sputnik projects to consider the Precision M3800 instead (15" workstation version of the XPS 13). There are also some other Dell workstations available now that might have better hardware for Linux. Edit: Also I have owned a couple of System76 laptops and have had 0 issues with them out of the box. But their drivers are proprietary (AFAIK) and their chassis are Clevo...so definitely not in the same ballpark as the XPS when it comes to build quality.
listic 11y ago
In 16.04 they broke importing a saved VPN configuration. Again. Previous time they broke it with a previous LTS release, 14.04 (sic!) [1] Another failure of such magnitude that affected me - breaking the switching between keyboard layouts with Ctrl+Shift (to introduce a new dialog in place of the one that worked for years) was in 13.10 - not the LTS release, at least. I wonder if they will fix the VPN by 16.04.1, due in July. Sometimes I wish they were not so strict about time-based releases, if only to allow for the bugs like this one to be fixed. [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-openvpn/+bug/1294899 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-op...
- rlpb 11y ago
  According to the bug you linked, it works fine on 16.04.
  - listic 11y ago
    Well, according to my experience, and this thread[1], it doesn't. Also, the bug is confirmed and high priority[2] [1] https://cryptostorm.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=9026#p15888 https://cryptostorm.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=9026#p15888 [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-openvpn https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-op...
- cxseven 11y ago
  What did you mean about their strictness? Does Ubuntu not push out fixes for critical problems like this except at certain times?
  - listic 11y ago
    I mean they rather strictly hold on to the release schedule [1]: ready or not, you can count on .04 version to come by the end of April, rather than in May. I'd prefer that they didn't release with such glaring bugs as I mentioned, even if a bit late. [1] Xenial Xerus Release Schedule https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseSchedule https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseSchedule
rdtsc 11y ago
Anyone tried ZFS from 16.04 yet? How did that go?

156 points by bpierre 11y ago

Based on feedback here and on reddit, I plan to jump on with the next minor release. Maybe Mate will fix the issues found in using the Citrix receiver on Unity. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4h58mj/ubuntu_1604_is_just_so_unstable/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4h58mj/ubuntu_1604_i...

valarauca1 11y ago

Installed 16.04 last Saturday no large issues but then my scope of customization is really small. Nvidia drivers also installed without an issue which is honestly a first (for me on any distro).

jsvaughan 11y ago
I had a few weird small things - I was using Gnome on the desktop and after the update I couldn't mouse click on anything (MS wireless mouse), but all works in Unity. One of my ssh keys stopped working, the font (possibly consolas) i was using in the terminal stopped rendering nicely and for a while Terminator thought a pipe symbol was a < (despite it being ok elsewhere). I am using an nvidia card and have had no issues with that.
- drewg123 11y ago
  Your ssh key probably stopped working because they deprecated support for older, weaker keys. I had an old dss key stop working. You need this line in ssh_config and sshd_config: PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes=+ssh-dss
drewg123 11y ago
The actual Nvidia drivers from Nvidia? That's great news. In the past, it has always been quite a bit of a struggle to get nouveau fully blacklisted, and has made me dread new installs.
- valarauca1 11y ago
  I was very careful in my base install to ensure Nouveau wasn't included initially or updated in. Fedora makes this far easier as there is a kernel module (which sits in RPM Fusion) that will download proper driver, install driver, strip nouveau, modify x on boot. But I'm not sure what changed in Fedora23 but I can't make boot-able USB's anymore. It just hangs on an early memory mapping error.
pmontra 11y ago
They worked for me too (Nvidia Quadro K1100M). I don't like Unity because of the top bar (I move everything to the bottom) so I use Gnome Flashback with Compiz. It works well, almost good as 10.04 and much better than any intermediate release. It's not perfect because of some work still to be done by Gnome on supporting the flashback environment (eg: no File, Edit menu on Nautilus, a menu which I very seldom use). Apparently they're working on that. Overall I'm happy with the upgrade (I was coming from 12.04 on this laptop).
pjmlp 11y ago
Although I am mostly a Windows guy nowadays, I started using GNU/Linux distributions back in the day with Slackware 2.0. Tried dozens of distributions and spent endless hours trying out desktop themes and other desktop customizations. Nowadays I just use whatever defaults are there. Probably the only customizations I do are related to power management and what should happen when closing the laptop lid.
- valarauca1 11y ago
  >Nowadays I just use whatever defaults are there. Probably the only customizations I do are related to power management and what should happen when closing the laptop lid. Same boat. After ~15 years of nearly daily fighting with computers to do the right thing. Fighting with them to look pretty WHILE doing the right thing just seemed like wasted effort. Also modern slackware is pretty nice.

arca_vorago 11y ago

I've been running 16.04 with cairo-dock, which has been my favorite non i3/awesome setup in a while.

G43nm45ji 11y ago
The only thing stopping me from using it is the window shadows. I wish there was an easy way to turn it off.
- lamarkia 11y ago
  The shadows are quite subtle. How does it annoy you? You can disable through 'compizsettings'.

vintermann 11y ago

When I clicked yes to upgrading Kubuntu to 16.04, it broke hard, into a state which would be 100% unrecoverable for grandma (and quite likely the support guy she would have shipped it too as well).

rocky1138 11y ago
Me, too. But, this happens every time, so I know to drag out the ol' dpkg --configure -a. One thing I've noticed this release is that KDE5's Plasma fails quite often when I'm switching Wifi access points.
- vintermann 11y ago
  It somehow ended up without a working boot image entirely, and that wasn't the only thing that broke (lots of central packages weren't installed, apparently). So I thought it wasn't worth the effort trying to disentangle it, and I just installed regular Ubuntu over it.
pen2l 11y ago
There should be an Ubuntu-distribution called Gubuntu, (Ubuntu for grandmas). No, seriously, there's a serious market for this -- Ubuntu's UI is crap (with the little triangles indicating which windows are open? Give me a break, I'm mid-20s and I have trouble seeing that). We cannot have that for our grandmas, gnome would probably be better. Also, grandmas don't need a lot of bells and whistles... only the absolute bare essentials. Like wordprocessing and and internet browser... the minimalism nature would make support easier for you. Lastly, I guess consider Windows 7. Windows 7 was probably the high point in terms of "oh, it's obvious how I do this..." for grandmas (I think the flat theming in Win10 took that away).
- david-given 11y ago
  ChromeOS. http://www.neverware.com/ http://www.neverware.com/ make a PC installable version. You do end up having to use web based apps for everything, but for basic jobs (with a tethered net connection) that's fine. And it's so nice having something where everything works, everything either obvious or simply not present [ * ], and which has a UI which doesn't try to be different just for the sake of being different. [ * ] Keyboard layout settings notwithstanding. They really need cleaning up.

mclemme 11y ago

Installed it on my old laptop, a Dell XPS 15Z, and everything is running fine so far. Only issue I had at install was control panel crashing right after installing the nvidia driver, was solved with logging out and in again. I don't see that much difference compared to 14.04. Everything just seems to work. A few packages that make the experience evern better: Guake for a quick access (quake style) console. Kupfer for a fast launcher (I'm not a fan of the unity launcher). Edit: I'm waiting a while to install it on my main work laptop, a lenovo t450s, since I use it with a dock and when trying 16.04 out on it (live usb), it would sometimes crash when undocking :/

ust 11y ago
I have the same machine (t450s), and I've just upgraded from 15.10. No issues with docking, or even suspend for that matter.
- mclemme 11y ago
  Are you also using the ultra dock[1]? I've got 1 DVI and 1 HDMI screen attached. I tried just when it came out, so could have been fixed in updates ofc. [1] = http://shop.lenovo.com/ISS_Static/ww/emea/merchandising/options/images/large/_460_0_40A20090UK_V1.jpg http://shop.lenovo.com/ISS_Static/ww/emea/merchandising/opti...

Symmetry 11y ago

It worked great for me on my Thinkpad. These days I have to use gekkio's PPA to get xmonad working nicely with Gnome but that was available the first week 16.04 was out and everything installed smoothly.

nileshtrivedi 11y ago
I have been facing networking issues. The network list completely disappears. "sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service" is needed to bring those back. Read somewhere that it has something to do with systemd.
- KKKKkkkk1 11y ago
  This bug has been reported, but the Gnome folks need a Network Manager log to fix the problem. Can you reproduce and send them the log? Here are the bug trackers: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765831 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=765831 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/1576314 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+b...

falcolas 11y ago

Question for those who have an install of 16.04 - if you type `hostname -f`, do you get the "command not found" error? I didn't have time to dig into it, but the man pages indicated that `-f` was still a valid option, but it appears that `hostname` was shifted to quasi-function. I came upon this while trying to bring up my vagrant development box against 16.04, part of which was to set the hostname via `server.vm.hostname`.

mclemme 11y ago
You mean in a console? Works fine here.
- falcolas 11y ago
  $ vu development-16 Bringing machine 'development-16' up with 'virtualbox' provider... ==> development-16: Importing base box 'ubuntu/xenial64'... ==> development-16: Matching MAC address for NAT networking... ==> development-16: Checking if box 'ubuntu/xenial64' is up to date... ==> development-16: Setting the name of the VM: ubuntu-xenial-16.04-cloudimg [...] ==> development-16: Machine booted and ready! ==> development-16: Checking for guest additions in VM... ==> development-16: Setting hostname... The following SSH command responded with a non-zero exit status. Vagrant assumes that this means the command failed! hostname -f Stdout from the command: Stderr from the command: sudo: unable to resolve host ubuntu-xenial mesg: ttyname failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device hostname: Name or service not known $ vssh development-16 Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-22-generic x86_64) * Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com/ Get cloud support with Ubuntu Advantage Cloud Guest: http://www.ubuntu.com/business/services/cloud 0 packages can be updated. 0 updates are security updates. ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ hostname ubuntu-xenial ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ hostname -f hostname: Name or service not known ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ which hostname /bin/hostname ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ \hostname -f hostname: Name or service not known ubuntu@ubuntu-xenial:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=16.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=xenial DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 16.04 LTS" Fun times.

StavrosK 11y ago

Speaking of upgrading, I can't recommend this setup enough: https://www.stavros.io/posts/provisioning-your-computer-one-command-awesome/ https://www.stavros.io/posts/provisioning-your-computer-one-... My laptop was getting bogged down with cruft acquired in my homedir over the years, so I decided to reinstall 16.04 from scratch. It took a few minutes to get Ubuntu on the disk, and a single command to get every setting and configuration file back on the machine, the way it was. Not only that, but you can synchronize settings and installed programs across computers as well. I love it.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
noja 11y ago
Are you using this only for dot files? How does putting them all in git prevent you getting bogged down with cruft?
- StavrosK 11y ago
  > Be judicious in choosing which files you add to the repository. Don’t just add everything that’s in your home directory, or even most of it, because that will just require unnecessary commits and make your repository larger. It does take a bit more time to figure out where programs store their preferences, but it’s nothing you can’t find out in two minutes, and it will ensure you only sync the things you really need to.
  - noja 11y ago
    So it doesn't prevent you being bogged down with cruft?
    - StavrosK 11y ago
      ...it does. You don't add them all.
0x6c6f6c 11y ago

alberth 11y ago

Am I alone in being scared of the tone of this thread? So many people are saying "yep, installed it and all works ok" Were you expecting it to NOT work? This is a LTS release, I'd hope the Ubuntu team tested it enough to ensure there isn't major issue. Not to get off topic but maybe because I've solely run *BSDs for the last few years I take for granted releases "just working".

deanCommie 11y ago
Worse than that: "The only things that aren't working is the webcam and suspend / hibernate, but I don't really care about those and suspend even seems fixable." SRSLY?
- vespakoen 11y ago
  I go to great lengths to be able to run Linux, cannot live without a properly functioning tiling window manager. I don't mind that the webcam support is coming in a (couple of) year(s). As the laptop (re)boots in a couple of seconds, I don't mind the shutdown when I go to bed (eco friendly even ;))
  - reitoei 11y ago
    > I go to great lengths to be able to run Linux What do you mean by this?
    - vespakoen 11y ago
      That I might have invested 100+ hours tweaking & patching stuff to get linux to run properly on apple hardware. a lot of this time was spent with getting nvidia drivers to work on my macbook pro 6,1 as it has a weird EFI version. (I don't mind because I like tinkering with stuff and learning about underlying causes of problems)
  - andreasvc 11y ago
    > I don't mind the shutdown when I go to bed (eco friendly even ;)) What exactly is eco friendly about shutdown versus suspend where it uses < 1W? Besides, the wear and tear of repeated shutdown/powerup cycles might mean it is a less "eco" friendly option in the end. I don't think the way you run your laptop has appreciable environmental impact. The damage is in manufacturing and disposal. The best way to be eco friendly is to buy laptops that don't need to be replaced as often.

vespakoen 11y ago

My (6 year old) macbook pro got bricked and I was daring enough to get the new Macbook Pro retina (MacBookPro11,4). Before installing Arch (assuming I needed the latest kernel for anything to work) I tried installing Xubuntu 16.04, and it amazes me how well it works! After installing refind everything just seemed to work out of the box. The only things that aren't working is the webcam and suspend / hibernate, but I don't really care about those and suspend even seems fixable. For anyone interested, I got the intel graphics drivers installer to run by changing DISTRIB_CODENAME to "wily" in /etc/lsb-release and changing it back to "xenial" after installation (make a backup: sudo cp /etc/lsb-release.backup /etc/lsb-release)

phaemon 11y ago
I don't know if it's the same webcam in the newest Macbook, but the the reverse engineered driver works perfectly for me on a 2013 model: https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie/wiki Just follow the instructions exactly. If it doesn't work first time, try `sudo modprobe -r bdc_pci` and then retry `sudo modprobe facetimehd` and see if it creates `/dev/video0` (which means it's working) For suspend, is it waking up after you close the lid? I fixed this with: sudo -i echo XHC1 > /proc/acpi/wakeup Then give it a test. If it works, pop it into a startup service somewhere.
- vespakoen 11y ago
  Cool! will give those a try, lspci -v now gives me: http://hastebin.com/yosicucoku.xml http://hastebin.com/yosicucoku.xml It seems to have loaded bdc_pci by default, will try your suggestions and report back.
- vespakoen 11y ago
  Webcam works now, thanks for that! I added that script to echo XHC1 to wakeup here: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/100macfix without any luck (made it executable) I also removed light-locker (that was the cause wakeup problems on my old macbook pro (6,1), but no luck with that either. I will play with it another time and report back here if I make progress.

fouadf 11y ago

I installed it from scratch on my laptop, had trouble installing chrome and virtualbox. Two straightforward installs required me to fix using the command-line, that was a deal breaker for me. Not the smooth start I was hoping for, I don't have the time to manually fix everything. Back to 14.04

ergo14 11y ago
It seems that the new gnome store thingie, does not pull dependencies when you try to install deb file directly, not sure why (at least it does that in ubuntu gnome 16.04). A command line install will indeed work just fine.

exratione 11y ago

I just updated my Ubuntu mail server recipe for Ubuntu 16.04 (https://www.exratione.com/2016/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-16-04-postfix-dovecot-mysql/ https://www.exratione.com/2016/05/a-mailserver-on-ubuntu-16-...). It only took a day of work to find all the holes and fall into them. Everything core Ubuntu and core mailserver worked fairly well. The standard issue Apache/PHP 7 seems to have some odd kinks around the edges, though - at one point the only thing that worked to make it recognize a newly installed PHP module package was to restart the whole server. I have to wonder if this was something relating to systemd, but I'm not familiar enough yet to tell. Subsidiary packages had a number of issues, but this is probably just standard PHP ecosystem raggedness at the edges for a new distribution. The Roundcube version installed via package is just outright broken due to bad symlinks, for example. On the whole I was pleasantly surprised as to how much of a nonissue the transition to systemd was.

gzm 11y ago
Hey there - thanks for your guide! I used it as a base for my own guide but tweaked for Slackware64 14.1 (https://gerardozamudio.mx/2015/04/25/slackware-mail-server-with-mysql-postfix-and-dovecot/ https://gerardozamudio.mx/2015/04/25/slackware-mail-server-w...). I'm in the process of updating it for the upcoming Slackware 14.2 release. I'd love to get your feedback on it if you ever have some spare time.

Thaxll 11y ago

The Dell XPS 2016 doesn't work properly, there is a graphic bug where your screen keeps flickering. It seems fixed using the 4.6 DRM kernel.

kriro 11y ago

My upgrade to 16.04 (Xubuntu) hit a rather unsuspected bump. During the upgrade process my computer froze (the lone mechanical HD was at fault). Only thing to do was cut the power/reset. Alas the upgrade was stuck in a limbo state and I had to manually remove some stuff with dpkg but eventually everything upgraded smoothly. Interestingly I hadn't noticed that resolv.conf isn't a thing anymore and the resolvconf package is used now...yikes how long didn't I configure a network interface via the command line to not notice that :D Runs very smoothly on my systems and my parents' systems.

herbst 11y ago

Why is never anyone talking about using Ubuntu with Gnome 3? Mate is outdated by design, LXDE a Win95 clone and don't even let us get started with unity. The only 2 modern and productivity focused WMs (except from everything tiled) are KDE and Gnome 3.

ergo14 11y ago
There is also cinnamon which builds on top of gnome 3 tech.
- herbst 11y ago
  Forgot about that one, but its also just a Win95 desktop clone (with awesome tech in the background tho)
  - ergo14 10y ago
    Maybe, but i find the "win95" approach the one I'm the most productive with.
Karunamon 11y ago
You say modern and productivity focused, I say bloated and opinionated. Gnome and KDE seem to want to show off, while Mate/LXDE wants to get out of my way and let me work. Gnome brings nothing new or interesting to the UI table. An "activities" system that doesn't match the way actual people use their computers, a mobile-first design that I swear was cribbed from Microsoft, just with a rough file taken to the window corners. (This looks more and more out of place when you see something like, say, the Boxes app. Why does my virtualization tool look like a tablet toy?), and oh yeah, developers who will break your shit and then tell you its for your own good when you go to complain, if they respond at all. (Me? Bitter?) KDE at least doesn't suffer from those problems, but I find the UI to be gaudy (think WinXP Luna), and unless you like bright themes, unusable.
- herbst 11y ago
  Personally i love to use Gnome because it gets out of my way so perfectly. Its like it is only there when i just need it, and this works flawlessly with 2 screens (where most WMs including Metro have annoying issues) It really comes down to personal preference, i am aware of that. But using a UX style that was invented more than 20 years ago seems a bit strange to me as well. (Cinnamon, Mate, LXDE, XFCE, ...) I agree that it is a bit bloated. Before i had my current machine i used fluxbox with FBpanel, because Gnome, KDE and unity would lag like mad.

Rezo 11y ago

Ubuntu LTS + a few carefully selected apps as upstream APT repositories or PPAs is the best of both worlds; solid predictable base and the latest software where it matters: Chrome & dev tools in my case. Except for the browser and local dev tools, I don't think I miss or have any use for desktop software. Everything from music (the Spotify web player is excellent, if little known), videos, calendars to email all happen in the browser these days, making it easier than ever to switch to Linux even as desktop usage declines. Increasingly the OS should fade to the background instead of trying to woo with apps or functionality. You don't have to provide an office suite or an email client at all, and I think it would be interesting to see what a distro could do with that kind of sharp focus. I think the core apps of say GNOME, while of generally good quality, probably see fairly limited use in practice. Personally I look forward to not having to think about the OS until the next LTS in a few years time. It's a great environment for getting stuff done.

pmlnr 11y ago
You must have a rock solid internet coverage in your world. I do use offline stuff.

gpderetta 11y ago

So, in the last few weeks I updated an old Kubuntu 14.04 desktop installation (which has seen little or no use in the last few years) up to 16.04. Now kwin dies as soon as I login and I open any window. The underlying reason is probably some badly updated package or config file. Still, attaching the debugger I can see kwin segfaulting inside the Qt Javascript interpreter. I have no idea why a window manager would need to run a javascript interpreter nor why it would be a good idea. Bottom line, tonight I'm installing Debian testing and switching to Xfce (which I have been using for years on my latptop).

paulmd 11y ago

I ran into a bug in the installer myself: if you select "download and install updates" then for some reason the dialog that says "We autodetected your timezone as America/New York" cannot ever be closed (and it never unfroze for me) This is apparently a bug that spans multiple sub-distributions (Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu) and dates back to at least 11.04, it was reported over five years ago. Now, once you know the solution it's easy to get around, but it was by no means easy to track down the problem - and who wouldn't want to install fresher packages? It's kind of amateurish to allow major bugs like that to linger in your installer for multiple years. I was installing Lubuntu on a Liva X mini-PC with N2808 processor and eMMC memory. I actually still couldn't get it to boot after I finished the install - the UEFI doesn't see the eMMC drive as a valid boot target in the boot menu and it just goes straight to BIOS. Not sure if I don't have GRUB installed to the right place, or if there's some other Ubuntu-specific bug cropping up, or what.

moron4hire 11y ago

Can we come up with a different archetypal bad/clueless user than "grandma"? My son's grandma manned a crew-served grenade launcher and ran radio intercept equipment in the Army and now owns her own database consulting company. The way it's used brings to mind a crooked, old, white haired woman who spent her life in the kitchen. That's increasingly not anyone's grandma. Using the name in this way is both sexist and ageist.

daveguy 11y ago
Agreed. My daughter's grandma was programming path following algorithms for industrial robots before I was born. She has an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a masters in physics. She is also a 3rd degree black belt. I expect that within 20 years grandmas will be running half of all tech companies.
JetSpiegel 11y ago
Can we not say people are generally dumb? Einstein is a person and he was not dumb. I can do syllogisms all day long.
- moron4hire 11y ago
  Except you can't be "general people-ist". It's funny. You'd think that, with our industry's reputation for being both sexist and ageist, we'd work to try to understand how we've gained that perception, rather than just double-downing on it and claiming there is no problem. Here we go, why don't we just say "clueless user" instead? That would cover all the Millenials who have to google search to find the Facebook login page, too.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    People are less sympathetic to "clueless user" than grandma or grandpa. That's probably also the reason to prefer grandma, not sexism.
    - moron4hire 11y ago

KKKKkkkk1 11y ago

What's kind of annoying is that Ubuntu has moved most of the system from upstart to systemd, but user sessions are still managed by upstart. If I want to customize my user sessions, I need to learn how to use a system that's being phased out and is incompatible with the rest of the world.

Skunkleton 11y ago
Come try Arch, you might like it here :)

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

I remember fglrx being essential for gaming, even if it was awful. Are the open-source drivers better now, such that dropping fglrx support won't be a big problem?

lamarkia 11y ago
For most games, amdgpu is ok. If your game requires fglrx, then stick to 14.04 or 15.10. fglrx does not work on 16.04 and all resources from AMD now go to amdgpu so it gets fully useful by the end of 2016.

larrik 11y ago

When I installed 12.04 LTS, I was shocked at how radically different it was than 11.10, and that it was going to be an LTS release. This introduced Unity as the default, among other changes, and I was concerned that they were being too aggressive. It's odd to be applauding them for this attitude, frankly.

jcastro 11y ago
Unity was switched on as the default in 11.04.
pmlnr 11y ago
I loved 10.10. That would have been a perfect LTS distro.
- Santosh83 11y ago
  Yup. My all time favourite Ubuntu releases were 6.06 (Dapper Drake) and 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat); 14.04 has also been rock solid.

jejones3141 11y ago

I did a double take at one sentence in the article: "In order to retain some file browser functionality, Nautilus remains at version 3.14." That sounds like the current version of Nautilus has no file browser functionality--which struck me as ironic, because a while back I tried everything I found suggested to stop Nautilus from changing my wallpaper (um, Unix philosophy?) to no avail, and ended up reconfiguring Cinnamon so it would always run Nemo and never run Nautilus. I hope what was meant was that 3.14 had some particular features related to file browsing that later versions dropped.

yandrypozo 11y ago

what's the Linux's bleeding edge ??

Santosh83 11y ago
Fedora Rawhide, Debian Sid, Arch, Ubuntu Development Version, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Of these Tumbleweed waits a while before upgrading from upstream so it's not literally the bleeding edge. So is Ubuntu Development version. And only Arch and Tumbleweed are recommended to be used by plain users (as opposed to developers and beta testers).
- shmerl 11y ago
  Debian testing used to be recommended.
  - Santosh83 11y ago
    Yes, but Testing isn't a full rolling release AFAIK. It undergoes a lengthy freeze before a new Stable is released and I believe manual intervention is needed to continue staying on Testing. Plus security patches take a bit of time to land on Testing from Sid, so the Debian guys don't recommend Testing if you need the fastest access to security updates.
    - shmerl 11y ago
      > Yes, but Testing isn't a full rolling release AFAIK. It undergoes a lengthy freeze before a new Stable is released Not more than unstable really. The only difference, testing is more polished overall. Other than that, they are both semi-rolling. Debian tried to reduce freeze period for a while already, and the last one was shorter than one before that. > and I believe manual intervention is needed to continue staying on Testing. What kind? Normally it should just roll forward.
shmerl 11y ago
I think simply rolling distros.

tajen 11y ago

> now with 100% less "spyware" > Canonical dug itself an even deeper hole when it went after [...] FixUbuntu.com for trademark violations. 1. I find it both positive and daunting that the first section of this press release is "They're not being assholes this time". Linux systems should be the guardians of nonspying/noncloud systems. 2. It's excellent they have a theme on stability. I'm not sure how many customers it costs them every year. I personally when to Mac after my second Ubuntu upgrade (1st: the mouse, 2nd: the network). 3. I'd pay $200/yr for a free OS on a developer machine which just works, where I don't even know whether I'm running Gnome, Unity or KDE. I also want UX improvements (the Amazon search) to be well-UX tested (or rejected) before publication. Something like elementary.io, without the installation errors (yeah I've tried), and with on-the-phone magicians if there's a problem. Something like Mac OS X, but paid. I hope they'll do it one day, I wonder whether there's enough customers for that.

Skunkleton 11y ago
If you are careful with your hardware selection, #3 is totally doable. For example my work PC (Xeon E5-1650, nVidia Quadro K2000) has had absolutely no compatibility or stability issues. I had the exact opposite experience trying to install Linux on my macbook pro. I have heard good things about the Dell XPS (the one that comes in a 'developer' edition). You also might try virtualization. With paravirtualized drivers, and VT-x support in the CPU, you run at near native speeds, and it is all very stable.
- gshulegaard 11y ago
  Word of warning, The XPS DE is definitely _not_ perfect. When I got my XPS 13 DE last year they had a multitude of issues I could go on and on about, but the bottom line is that the laptop was completely unusable out of the box. Part of the issue is that the Sputnik team has to take the XPS 13 hardware as is (as it was designed for Windows) and try to support it. They are releasing the drivers upstream (at least they were when I last checked) so that's awesome! But it meant I had crazy stability issues until the 3.19 kernel release. The newer models of the XPS 13 DE seem to have better hardware for linux (Intel vs. Broadcom wireless for example) so it may be better, but I would still encourage anyone looking at the Sputnik projects to consider the Precision M3800 instead (15" workstation version of the XPS 13). There are also some other Dell workstations available now that might have better hardware for Linux. Edit: Also I have owned a couple of System76 laptops and have had 0 issues with them out of the box. But their drivers are proprietary (AFAIK) and their chassis are Clevo...so definitely not in the same ballpark as the XPS when it comes to build quality.

listic 11y ago

In 16.04 they broke importing a saved VPN configuration. Again. Previous time they broke it with a previous LTS release, 14.04 (sic!) [1] Another failure of such magnitude that affected me - breaking the switching between keyboard layouts with Ctrl+Shift (to introduce a new dialog in place of the one that worked for years) was in 13.10 - not the LTS release, at least. I wonder if they will fix the VPN by 16.04.1, due in July. Sometimes I wish they were not so strict about time-based releases, if only to allow for the bugs like this one to be fixed. [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-openvpn/+bug/1294899 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-op...

rlpb 11y ago
According to the bug you linked, it works fine on 16.04.
- listic 11y ago
  Well, according to my experience, and this thread[1], it doesn't. Also, the bug is confirmed and high priority[2] [1] https://cryptostorm.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=9026#p15888 https://cryptostorm.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=9026#p15888 [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-openvpn https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-op...
cxseven 11y ago
What did you mean about their strictness? Does Ubuntu not push out fixes for critical problems like this except at certain times?
- listic 11y ago
  I mean they rather strictly hold on to the release schedule [1]: ready or not, you can count on .04 version to come by the end of April, rather than in May. I'd prefer that they didn't release with such glaring bugs as I mentioned, even if a bit late. [1] Xenial Xerus Release Schedule https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseSchedule https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/ReleaseSchedule

rdtsc 11y ago

Anyone tried ZFS from 16.04 yet? How did that go?