15 ms·

Canonical releases Ubuntu 16.10

265 points by Jarlakxen 10y ago

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
"Developer preview of Unity 8 includes desktop, tablet and phone UX convergence" Am I the only one that thinks this is a terrible idea?
- oblio 10y ago
  It depends how it's done. Microsoft's approach was pretty wonky as it basically gutted the desktop. If Ubuntu's one is more respectful for the desktop, why not try it?
  - criddell 10y ago
    I have a feeling that if Microsoft were to design a motorcycle, it would have a steering wheel and gas pedal.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    My bet is that it isn't I'm not happy to say this but free software consistently fumbles usability So, no. It's not going to work for all of them
- dijit 10y ago
  You're not the only one, but since they're the only company backing unity they're free to explore things. Maybe it's a great idea hidden as a bad one- I'm for exploration as long as they're not dragging software contributed to by others coughgnomecough.
- yulaow 10y ago
  Meh, let them try! At least on ubuntu we can choose between a lot of DE and WM, and we are not obliged to use unity anyway, so nothing is really forced on us (Still wishing to have a win7 ui on w10)
  - theandrewbailey 10y ago
    The Aero UI is exactly as pretty as it was 10 years ago, and I think that it all still looks good.
  - gertlex 10y ago
    On Windows 8 and 10 (Surface Pro and a Desktop respectively), I use Windows7-like UI for most things via Classic Shell.
- reddotX 10y ago
  even in the current state Unity 8 is not really that bad to use on desktop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaf2LTeLHhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaf2LTeLHhQ (it's more or less like unity7 on desktop)
- solaris_7 10y ago
  I'm always intrigued by this desire for integration. Even if you want to have one device that is mainly a phone but also a PC when you connect it to an external 24" screen and keyboard - why can't it have totally different UX experiences optimized for each state? Is that really so bad? Windows 8 was a UX disaster - so maybe that's just coloring my judgement. I haven't used Ubuntu on mobile yet so guess I need to try it.
  - V-2 10y ago
    They shouldn't be totally different. Common look and feel is welcome in my opinion. Then obviously they should be customized to adjust for different input devices and screen sizes. It can be done without repeating the Windows 8 fiasco - which seemed to be tailored for touch-input devices, leading to clunky experience on a regular PC. Eg. see Remix OS, or Android for desktop: http://www.jide.com/remixos http://www.jide.com/remixos It's Android, but from the look of it, it's adapted nicely: https://youtu.be/TjAxCWO84L4 https://youtu.be/TjAxCWO84L4 (I admit I haven't used it myself, but even if there are some quirks not visible at first glance, my point is not that Remix OS hit the sweet spot, only that it can be done in principle).
  - jug 10y ago
    Yes, I think Windows 10 is a more mature and sane take on this concept, where the "apps" can now run windowed as usual. Makes the transition _much_ less jarring, and is more like how RemixOS also mentioned in the comments here does it with Android.
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      Will be interesting to see if OEMs will adopt floating mode for tablets and such with Android 7.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Right now what I am seeing is the majority of tablets with keyboards are being sold with Windows 10 on them, lets see if OEMs decide to sell Android 7 as well.
- davidw 10y ago
  Seems kind of like aiming for a convergent experience with a pocketknife and a table saw, but hey, maybe my pessimism is unwarranted. I use Xubuntu anyway. I'm extremely grateful for all the effort people have put into Ubuntu over the years.
- yAnonymous 10y ago
  Working everywhere with the same tools on one device would be awesome and I can imagine Unity and Linux being much better at this than Microsoft's pathetic attempt.
  - 72deluxe 10y ago
    Why? Why was Microsoft's attempt pathetic?
- formula1 10y ago
  I think this is a good thing in the long run. I have no problem being the beta tester for a unifying ui. This can consolidate development focus which arguably will reduce bugs. As people get more tired of one ui, there will likely eventually be enough pushback to cause more custom options. A major difference between ubuntu and every other os is ubuntu is open source with a rich enough history to show it has staying power. Worse comes to worse another fork happens. But the OS UX paradigm has a huge opportunity to evolve with this kind of focus
- satysin 10y ago
  Nope I think it is a horrible idea also. Microsoft showed us that mixing the UX between a 5" screen and a 25" screen sucks. I can't imagine Ubuntu working it out any better. Why the hell do they worry about UX convergence yet I can't put the dock on the right side of the screen?! (and only just got the ability to put it on the bottom earlier this year!)
- superkuh 10y ago
  It is a terrible idea. No matter their popularity phones have tiny screens and limited, slow input methods compared to desktop PCs. And mobile OSes have to be provided with special workarounds to deal with the absolutely terrible mobile IP networking that cannot even keep a TCP session open reliably. Convergence to a user interface that provides the crutches for these limits of mobile platforms neccessarily gimps the desktop UI too.
- bandrami 10y ago
  No. It's been tried over and over again for a decade now, and keeps running very hard onto the rocks of "users really, really don't want that". I get why devs want it: it's a single codebase for everything. But nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to use a desktop computer the way they use a tablet or a phone. There's a reason people tend to disable computer touchscreens.
  - luxpir 10y ago
    >But nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to use a desktop computer the way they use a tablet or a phone. That's not quite what's on offer. It's more like the ability to plug your phone into a monitor and carry on working. No longer carrying a laptop around (once tablets/phones are at CPU horsepower parity for office work). So yeah, it's not working backwards like you suggest, it's making the phone/tablet more like a desktop (add mice, keyboards, screens etc.) One mobile device is quite likely all we'll need in the near future, not three separates. 2-in-1 laptops are already selling quite well as MS gets its own convergence efforts underway. Apple are actually lagging in this field and kudos to Ubuntu for steering the ship in an innovative/inevitable direction.
    - mrighele 10y ago
      > It's more like the ability to plug your phone into a monitor and carry on working. Do I really need a phone to do this ? As long as I can reach the same data I don't really care if I'm on the same device where I started working on it. In fact the software I want to use when I am in front of a monitor is much different than the one I have on my phone, and I am not talking only about user interface, but also features. Cpu power is getting cheaper and in smaller form factors. I suspect that instead of connecting our phones to the display devices, those devices will be powerful enough that we won't need any integration. And if I really want something portable, I will be able to "add a cpu" with an external stick (like Intel Compute Stick, but cheaper e/o smaller).
      - bandrami 10y ago
        And if I really want something portable, I will be able to "add a cpu" with an external stick I'd say it's even more likely that anything computationally expensive won't be done in the same room with you to begin with 10 years from now, but will be done by an anonymous compute node in a datacenter that you're leasing for the 5 seconds you're using it.
- fingar 10y ago
  Bad idea to include the developer preview? You can safely try it out and see whether it works for your hardware.
- Pxtl 10y ago
  Having used Windows 10 and the ascendance of responsive webpages, I can see its potential. Obviously Microsoft completely bungled it in Windows 8, but otherwise: This is something that can be done and done well, and if so I'd love to have a phone with the power and software of a full desktop device, expressed in a phone-oriented UI. The trick is that there's a matrix of several features that have to be considered: 1) Tiny screens means that multiple visible applications is not useful, and that all OS UI needs to be auto-hidden (something users want to be able to do anyways). Font sizes may need to be scaled up (that's something you need to be supporting anyways for older folks). 2) Touch means adding new ways to interact with existing widgets (drag scroll, for ex) and buttons need to be scaled up to have a larger hit-area (and you alreayd have to deal with scaling up fonts, so fixed-size UI elements already went out the window). To me, the important thing is that 1 and 2 are not duct-taped together. If I have a phone and a stylus or I plug in a keyboard and mouse, I want 1 but not 2. On the other hand, if I have a 20" touch-screen, I want 2 but not 1.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Unified UI is a terrible idea: the idea boils down to this: instead of having several UIs that serve the interface they operate on well, have one UI that serves all the interfaces poorly.
- talideon 10y ago
  They're not forcing it on anybody any time soon. Until Unity 8 has parity with Unity 7, it's not even going to be considered as the default. Funny thing is, their efforts to avoid the issues with and backlash against the original Unity are the reason Unity 8 has been delayed for so long. Whatever else you might say about Canonical, at least they're doing the whole 'convergence' thing in a pretty open and responsible manner.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Is there a meaningful difference to responsive websites? Because those have generally evolved to a point where the interfaces work quite well across devices while sharing meaningful amounts of code to make it easier than build x individual UIs.
- e12e 10y ago
  I'd say it depends. I'm a rather happy owner of a Microsoft Surface 4 Pro - and I do see the need for the ability to switch between modes (and I can't say MS has exactly succeeded here, but also not entirely failed). Granted, I don't really see why I'd want UI/UX adapted to a screen 1/8th the size - but to a certain extent "tablet mode" and "tiny tablet mode" are probably more similar than "tablet mode" and "laptop/desktop" mode. I'd have to test it of course. One thing that MS has not managed is make a UI that works well for high resolution screens (for legacy applications, that is). But I guess one of the reasons I'm positive to the use of "convergence" buzz word, is that it could mean that all GUI-frameworks are expected to scale in a sane manner. I absolutely understand the skepticism that it will end up being "a worst of all worlds" UI.
- tdkl 10y ago
  Nope. I wished Ubuntu used the Windows 8 clusterfuck to gather more ground on desktop, but instead they jumped on mobile/tablet hype rollercoaster.
- krylon 10y ago
  You are not. I still remember how well it worked out on Windows 8...
  - WayneBro 10y ago
    Yes I remember too and it worked very well. I used it the whole time it was available. It worked well on my Windows tablets (Surface Pro, Surface Pro 3, Dell Venue 8 Pro). It worked well on my gaming PC, my dev workstation and my hyper-v server.
    - krylon 10y ago
      Admittedly, I have been told by several people that the new interface worked very nicely on tablets. That's what it was made for, after all. On desktops without a touch screen, I found it annoying and still do. Of course, one can still get work done using the new interface, but I still don't understand how they got the crazy idea of throwing out the start menu.
- AgentME 10y ago
  I love Unity, so hearing that it's getting better on mobile sounds great.
- toxican 10y ago
  There's a reason I've not used plain Ubuntu in years, and it's Unity. Pretty much all canonical variations of Ubuntu ship with a better UI than Ubuntu anymore.
  - vegabook 10y ago
    I don't agree with this. I have done Gnome 3.18 for 6 months, did i3 for another 12, and tbh, I found myself with a bog-standard Unity interface on a new machine about 3 months ago and I haven't bothered to change it. Why? Because it doesn't try to be clever, it doesn't get in the way, sure I have to use the mouse a tiny bit more, but it just seems nice and vanilla. It works well by being inconspicuous and straightforward, while not trying extra hard to be boring (Cinnamon). And the fonts look crisp like OS/x which, to my detail-oriented eye, is a big deal. Actually the only UI I consider truly interesting, believe it or not, is e17. That feels like being on a Star Trek transporter beaming onto a Romulan Warbird. Real deal no compromise "this ain't Kansas", if that's your thing. Try Terminology for a taster. All the others (KDE) are trying too hard while simultaneously not being truly interesting. Or they're stultifyingly boring (cinnamon - why?) without being resource cheap. On this front, xfce on armbian is a beaut. Cinnamon without the weight. I also give i3 a big thumbs up btw but I just can't live without the tray icon conveniences for bluetooth, dropbox, power down etc.
    - stormbrew 10y ago
      > I give i3 a big thumbs up btw but I just can't live without the tray icons. What do you mean? i3bar supports tray icons just fine...
- zerognowl 10y ago
  Keep in mind, iOS apps send your devices' serial number & MAC address via a simple API command, and this can all be done without asking for permission. If you bought an iDevice in a store, you're also on CCTV buying that device and it can absolutely be traced to your canonical name. The idea behind Ubuntu tablets is that it imports the security model of the Debian Linux trust chain to the user, and so worries of serial numbers and the typical 'link-ability' one finds in proprietary iOS devices are vanished.
- gurkendoktor 10y ago
  I'm not sure if it's a terrible idea in general, but a Ubuntu phone would be many years behind iOS/Android when it comes to apps. I think only Apple and Google have the marketshare to pull off a convergent OS at this point.
ithkuil 10y ago
wonder if the name Yakkety Yak is a reference to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving
- radarsat1 10y ago
  More likely the song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakety_Yak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakety_Yak Don't remember it from Twins?
  - iso-8859-1 10y ago
    He is Italian, why would he know Twins?
    - radarsat1 10y ago
      ?? Because it's a popular movie from the 80s?
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  I'd guess mostly the song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakety_Yak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakety_Yak
hendry 10y ago
No mention of systemd..
- jcastro 10y ago
  systemd is now used for user sessions, the article doesn't link to the technical release notes: - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes
- zbjornson 10y ago
  Not sure what about systemd you're interested in, but I was hoping for improvements in boot time regressions since the switch from upstart. Searching bugs it sounds like it might have instead gotten worse in 16.10. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1626436 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1626436
  - Diederich 10y ago
    Huh...strange. Ubuntu 16.04 boots my macbook faster than any other OS before it.
- talideon 10y ago
  Why would there be mention of systemd? It's in 16.04 already as the default init.
solaris_7 10y ago
Is anyone using Snaps in production - or even regularly on their development machine? I'm still on 14.04 and would be interested to know what the most popular uses for Snaps might be.
- niemeyer 10y ago
  Yes, people are using in production. Last community meeting we had some folks reported a large server deployment in the UK (in the order of thousands of servers) that was being partly transitioned to snaps. I think that's the biggest use I've personally heard about so far. There are some people interested in having them working on 14.04, btw. It'd be great to see that working well.
smacktoward 10y ago
I miss the days when new Ubuntu releases included things desktop/laptop users could get excited about. Nowadays it's all stuff for servers and phones. I run Ubuntu on both my workstations, so it's sad to see that use case feel more and more like an afterthought.
- gcp 10y ago
  Updated packages without the whole UI/system being changed underneath you isn't always bad.
- ohstopitu 10y ago
  I know exactly what you mean. If you still want to get excited for UI changes...have a look at Ubuntu Gnome. They generally have nice tweaks/changes every update.
- newjersey 10y ago
  I have a nexus 5 that I just play with no sim card (currently on the Nexus experience ROM). I wonder if anyone here has tried installing yakkety yak on a nexus 5. If you have, will you please share your experience? Thank you.
  - redwards510 10y ago
    I believe the parent means installing Ubuntu Touch on your android phone. The best tool to do this with is MultiROM[1], an app in the play store that allows you to select the ROM you want at boot time. I tried this a couple years ago on a N6 and was very unimpressed as it was incredibly slow and unresponsive, had no apps you could install, and just barely met the definition of "phone OS". It was more of a PoC and didn't even have a shell prompt. Things have probably improved a bit since then[2], but I would expect you'll get bored of it. I follow the android ROM scene and (unlike iOS) I've never seen people say "#$%$% all this! I'm gonna run Ubuntu Touch from now on!" Still, it's fun to install just so you can say you did. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tassadar.multirommgr https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tassadar.m... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch
0x54MUR41 10y ago
I am currently using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. There are lot of changes since 14.04 LTS. GUI change is easy to notice at the first time. You will see different look in GUI. But, I don't know the GUI somewhat buggy to me sometimes. The screen appears to be black and it will repaint when you are moving your cursor around the black screen. My friend told me that Ubuntu's GUI system was so heavy. He suggested to use Ubuntu Mate or Kubuntu as alternative distro.
- 0xmohit 10y ago
  You need not use Unity. Things are much better with Openbox; the usual problems of compiz and friends eating all the available RAM pretty much goes away.
  - pmontra 10y ago
    I didn't get that sort of problems with compiz, but I'm on a 16 GB laptop so maybe I didn't notice. I agree with not needing Unity. I'm on Gnome flashback and 16.04 finally let me get about the same DE I had with 10.04. It's Gnome 3 but it looks like the Gnome 2 desktop, with only one panel to the bottom and the compiz cube. I use the 3D rotation effect to remember which side I came from. A 2D slide doesn't hint me enough and I get lost in the virtual desktops. I don't use the cube for anything else. All considered, I'm happy with 16.04 and I'm staying here at least until 18.04.
    - 0xmohit 10y ago
      All considered, I'm happy with 16.04 and I'm staying here at least until 18.04. Having moved from 14.04 to 15.x, I cannot agree more. However, many packages aren't updated in the LTS releases which prompt one to move over to the intermediate releases. I wish Canonical were more agile about updating compilers and such on LTS versions.
      - Rezo 10y ago
        You can find a PPA (apt repository) for almost any app or tool these days. I find that just adding a few of these for specific cases to a LTS release gives you the best of both worlds. My current ones: git, Google chrome, flux, node, nylas, spotify, tarsnap, blender
ohstopitu 10y ago
I used to generally update version after version, but recently, I have not seen a good enough reason to switch from 16.04 to 16.10 (I intend to stick to 16.04 till the next LTS version is released).
- fingar 10y ago
  Sticking to the 16.04 LTS is the expected choice for the vast majority of users.
- ams6110 10y ago
  I would never use a .10 release personally. I only run the LTS versions.
- dleslie 10y ago
  I will be downgrading to 14.04 due to bad hardware issues with the newer releases; there are big reports with many angry users, but ubuntu doesn't appear to find AMD mobile graphics and Broadcom to be a priority.
  - foenix 10y ago
    I'm very close to doing the same. I haven't been able to get lightworks to work on ubuntu with my AMD card since the update to 16.04.
- piotrkubisa 10y ago
  If we speaking in terms of upgrading Ubuntu to 16.10, it makes sense whether you desire to have latest version of DE-specific applications e.g. Nautilus (updated to 3.20), xfce-terminal (was ported to GTK3 [1]) or obviously a whole DE like GNOME [2] or XFCE [3]. Personally, I am going to stick with 16.04 too. [1]: https://xubuntu.org/news/xubuntu-16-10-release/ https://xubuntu.org/news/xubuntu-16-10-release/ [2]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuGNOME https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuGNOME [3]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/FinalRelease/Xubuntu https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/FinalRelease/Xubuntu
- newman314 10y ago
curt15 10y ago
Any word on what's happening with "Snappy Personal"? That's their desktop build composed entirely out of snaps with an A/B system partition format. They have been really quiet about it for the last few months. They started talking about it for 16.04, but then planned to defer that until 16.10 (https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2312045 https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2312045).
- niemeyer 10y ago
  We have a sprint next week to discuss some of that. The recent focus around snaps has been on the feature set leading to Ubuntu Core 16, which is itself in freeze at this point. The features are mostly general, though, and have been landing on 16.04 and 16.10 on the way. This was the announcement: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/snapcraft/2016-October/001273.html https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/snapcraft/2016-October/001...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
shiftoutbox 10y ago
RUN !
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Does anybody actually use Ubuntu in production? I've forsaken it on the desktop (I got sick of my system breaking every 6 months, and having out of date packages), as have many others, but it's still quite popular there. On the server, though?
- bpicolo 10y ago
  Ubuntu is an extremely commonly used server OS, if that's the question.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Really? Huh.
    - pmontra 10y ago
      Really, basically every server I see is either Ubuntu or Centos. Very few Debian. With containers is different, who packaged the container for a given service wins. Example: Elastic uses Debian for their docker images on docker hub. See also the results of this survey https://brashear.me/blog/2015/08/24/results-of-the-2015-slash-r-slash-linux-distribution-survey/ https://brashear.me/blog/2015/08/24/results-of-the-2015-slas... It begins to be old but this section is telling "Which Linux distribution do you primarily use on your server computers?" Distro #resp %resp prev year Ubuntu 633 34% 27% Debian 539 29% 31% CentOS 214 12% 15% ... Not a large poll but I didn't find anything better in a quick search on Google.
      - pragmar 10y ago
        CentOS is in a tricky position with regard to ALPN/http2 support--there's absolutely nothing on the horizon. A continuing shift to Ubuntu in the webserver space is almost certain in the mid-term.
        qwertyuiop924 10y ago
sho_hn 10y ago
So Unity 8 continues to be a no-show as production desktop environment, despite the claim that adopting Mir instead of Wayland would accelerate progress past Wayland. Meanwhile, Fedora 25 is shipping soon with Gnome on Wayland as default, and KDE-based distros are not too far behind anymore. And Mir would be even less far along without infrastructure created for and by the Wayland community, such as libinput, which it came to rely on. (That's without talking about mobile - Wayland shipped on Jolla's SailfishOS phone to endusers more than a year before the first Mir-powered Ubuntu Phone.) I'd say history has proven the critics right on this one.
- owaislone 10y ago
  Writing a new backend for an existing DE (Gnome3/KDE) is not the same as writing a completely new DE from scratch. A fair comparison would have been porting Gnome3 to Wayland vs porting Unity7 (based on Gnome3) to Mir. Also, Unity8 did land much much before on the phone which was the first target.
  - sho_hn 10y ago
    > Writing a new backend for an existing DE (Gnome3/KDE) is not the same as writing a completely new DE from scratch. Having written substantial parts of the Plasma 5 shell (also nearly a full rewrite, which may just ship stable on Wayland before Unity 8, despite having been started later, and the Wayland conversion even later), I don't agree - "writing a new backend" is a substantial amount of work when the frontend doesn't have a concept of "backend"; a lot of X11 shell code traditionally made a lot of assumptions about being on X11. We had to rewrite our dock[1] as well for example, and that's before you get to talking about turning a X11 window manager into a Wayland display server and its many additional responsibilities. And as mentioned, Wayland handily beat them to the phone, too. I don't see any evidence that Mir hasn't just been an extra expense in resources for Canonical, and that's with freeloading on activity of the Wayland community. How did it in any way accelerate their progress to production to be the odd man out? 1 = https://blogs.kde.org/2016/05/31/new-plasma-task-manager-backend-faster-better-wayland https://blogs.kde.org/2016/05/31/new-plasma-task-manager-bac...
holtalanm 10y ago
Tried 16.10 with Unity 8 in a VirtualBox VM, and after typing in my password and hitting enter, all I get is a black screen for a few seconds before being put back on the login screen. It seems their developer preview has issues.
- expression 10y ago
  Ubuntu has done that a long time if there's a problem with graphics drivers. Don't know more specifics for your issue, since I haven't run Ubuntu in a VM in years.
- thomnottom 10y ago
  I believe that Unity 8 currently does not work with VirtualBox but is functioning in VMware Workstation.
ff10 10y ago
Can anybody say how well will Unity 8 work with convertible and detachable machines that run with Windows 10 out of the box? I have an HP X2 210 lying around that runs 16.04 well but without PM, Sound, detached mode and multitouch touchpad.

265 points by Jarlakxen 10y ago

"Developer preview of Unity 8 includes desktop, tablet and phone UX convergence" Am I the only one that thinks this is a terrible idea?

oblio 10y ago
It depends how it's done. Microsoft's approach was pretty wonky as it basically gutted the desktop. If Ubuntu's one is more respectful for the desktop, why not try it?
- criddell 10y ago
  I have a feeling that if Microsoft were to design a motorcycle, it would have a steering wheel and gas pedal.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  My bet is that it isn't I'm not happy to say this but free software consistently fumbles usability So, no. It's not going to work for all of them
dijit 10y ago
You're not the only one, but since they're the only company backing unity they're free to explore things. Maybe it's a great idea hidden as a bad one- I'm for exploration as long as they're not dragging software contributed to by others coughgnomecough.
yulaow 10y ago
Meh, let them try! At least on ubuntu we can choose between a lot of DE and WM, and we are not obliged to use unity anyway, so nothing is really forced on us (Still wishing to have a win7 ui on w10)
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  The Aero UI is exactly as pretty as it was 10 years ago, and I think that it all still looks good.
- gertlex 10y ago
  On Windows 8 and 10 (Surface Pro and a Desktop respectively), I use Windows7-like UI for most things via Classic Shell.
reddotX 10y ago
even in the current state Unity 8 is not really that bad to use on desktop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaf2LTeLHhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaf2LTeLHhQ (it's more or less like unity7 on desktop)
solaris_7 10y ago
I'm always intrigued by this desire for integration. Even if you want to have one device that is mainly a phone but also a PC when you connect it to an external 24" screen and keyboard - why can't it have totally different UX experiences optimized for each state? Is that really so bad? Windows 8 was a UX disaster - so maybe that's just coloring my judgement. I haven't used Ubuntu on mobile yet so guess I need to try it.
- V-2 10y ago
  They shouldn't be totally different. Common look and feel is welcome in my opinion. Then obviously they should be customized to adjust for different input devices and screen sizes. It can be done without repeating the Windows 8 fiasco - which seemed to be tailored for touch-input devices, leading to clunky experience on a regular PC. Eg. see Remix OS, or Android for desktop: http://www.jide.com/remixos http://www.jide.com/remixos It's Android, but from the look of it, it's adapted nicely: https://youtu.be/TjAxCWO84L4 https://youtu.be/TjAxCWO84L4 (I admit I haven't used it myself, but even if there are some quirks not visible at first glance, my point is not that Remix OS hit the sweet spot, only that it can be done in principle).
- jug 10y ago
  Yes, I think Windows 10 is a more mature and sane take on this concept, where the "apps" can now run windowed as usual. Makes the transition _much_ less jarring, and is more like how RemixOS also mentioned in the comments here does it with Android.
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    Will be interesting to see if OEMs will adopt floating mode for tablets and such with Android 7.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Right now what I am seeing is the majority of tablets with keyboards are being sold with Windows 10 on them, lets see if OEMs decide to sell Android 7 as well.
davidw 10y ago
Seems kind of like aiming for a convergent experience with a pocketknife and a table saw, but hey, maybe my pessimism is unwarranted. I use Xubuntu anyway. I'm extremely grateful for all the effort people have put into Ubuntu over the years.
yAnonymous 10y ago
Working everywhere with the same tools on one device would be awesome and I can imagine Unity and Linux being much better at this than Microsoft's pathetic attempt.
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  Why? Why was Microsoft's attempt pathetic?
formula1 10y ago
I think this is a good thing in the long run. I have no problem being the beta tester for a unifying ui. This can consolidate development focus which arguably will reduce bugs. As people get more tired of one ui, there will likely eventually be enough pushback to cause more custom options. A major difference between ubuntu and every other os is ubuntu is open source with a rich enough history to show it has staying power. Worse comes to worse another fork happens. But the OS UX paradigm has a huge opportunity to evolve with this kind of focus
satysin 10y ago
Nope I think it is a horrible idea also. Microsoft showed us that mixing the UX between a 5" screen and a 25" screen sucks. I can't imagine Ubuntu working it out any better. Why the hell do they worry about UX convergence yet I can't put the dock on the right side of the screen?! (and only just got the ability to put it on the bottom earlier this year!)
superkuh 10y ago
It is a terrible idea. No matter their popularity phones have tiny screens and limited, slow input methods compared to desktop PCs. And mobile OSes have to be provided with special workarounds to deal with the absolutely terrible mobile IP networking that cannot even keep a TCP session open reliably. Convergence to a user interface that provides the crutches for these limits of mobile platforms neccessarily gimps the desktop UI too.
bandrami 10y ago
No. It's been tried over and over again for a decade now, and keeps running very hard onto the rocks of "users really, really don't want that". I get why devs want it: it's a single codebase for everything. But nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to use a desktop computer the way they use a tablet or a phone. There's a reason people tend to disable computer touchscreens.
- luxpir 10y ago
  >But nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to use a desktop computer the way they use a tablet or a phone. That's not quite what's on offer. It's more like the ability to plug your phone into a monitor and carry on working. No longer carrying a laptop around (once tablets/phones are at CPU horsepower parity for office work). So yeah, it's not working backwards like you suggest, it's making the phone/tablet more like a desktop (add mice, keyboards, screens etc.) One mobile device is quite likely all we'll need in the near future, not three separates. 2-in-1 laptops are already selling quite well as MS gets its own convergence efforts underway. Apple are actually lagging in this field and kudos to Ubuntu for steering the ship in an innovative/inevitable direction.
  - mrighele 10y ago
    > It's more like the ability to plug your phone into a monitor and carry on working. Do I really need a phone to do this ? As long as I can reach the same data I don't really care if I'm on the same device where I started working on it. In fact the software I want to use when I am in front of a monitor is much different than the one I have on my phone, and I am not talking only about user interface, but also features. Cpu power is getting cheaper and in smaller form factors. I suspect that instead of connecting our phones to the display devices, those devices will be powerful enough that we won't need any integration. And if I really want something portable, I will be able to "add a cpu" with an external stick (like Intel Compute Stick, but cheaper e/o smaller).
    - bandrami 10y ago
      And if I really want something portable, I will be able to "add a cpu" with an external stick I'd say it's even more likely that anything computationally expensive won't be done in the same room with you to begin with 10 years from now, but will be done by an anonymous compute node in a datacenter that you're leasing for the 5 seconds you're using it.
fingar 10y ago
Bad idea to include the developer preview? You can safely try it out and see whether it works for your hardware.
Pxtl 10y ago
Having used Windows 10 and the ascendance of responsive webpages, I can see its potential. Obviously Microsoft completely bungled it in Windows 8, but otherwise: This is something that can be done and done well, and if so I'd love to have a phone with the power and software of a full desktop device, expressed in a phone-oriented UI. The trick is that there's a matrix of several features that have to be considered: 1) Tiny screens means that multiple visible applications is not useful, and that all OS UI needs to be auto-hidden (something users want to be able to do anyways). Font sizes may need to be scaled up (that's something you need to be supporting anyways for older folks). 2) Touch means adding new ways to interact with existing widgets (drag scroll, for ex) and buttons need to be scaled up to have a larger hit-area (and you alreayd have to deal with scaling up fonts, so fixed-size UI elements already went out the window). To me, the important thing is that 1 and 2 are not duct-taped together. If I have a phone and a stylus or I plug in a keyboard and mouse, I want 1 but not 2. On the other hand, if I have a 20" touch-screen, I want 2 but not 1.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Unified UI is a terrible idea: the idea boils down to this: instead of having several UIs that serve the interface they operate on well, have one UI that serves all the interfaces poorly.
talideon 10y ago
They're not forcing it on anybody any time soon. Until Unity 8 has parity with Unity 7, it's not even going to be considered as the default. Funny thing is, their efforts to avoid the issues with and backlash against the original Unity are the reason Unity 8 has been delayed for so long. Whatever else you might say about Canonical, at least they're doing the whole 'convergence' thing in a pretty open and responsible manner.
matt4077 10y ago
Is there a meaningful difference to responsive websites? Because those have generally evolved to a point where the interfaces work quite well across devices while sharing meaningful amounts of code to make it easier than build x individual UIs.
e12e 10y ago
I'd say it depends. I'm a rather happy owner of a Microsoft Surface 4 Pro - and I do see the need for the ability to switch between modes (and I can't say MS has exactly succeeded here, but also not entirely failed). Granted, I don't really see why I'd want UI/UX adapted to a screen 1/8th the size - but to a certain extent "tablet mode" and "tiny tablet mode" are probably more similar than "tablet mode" and "laptop/desktop" mode. I'd have to test it of course. One thing that MS has not managed is make a UI that works well for high resolution screens (for legacy applications, that is). But I guess one of the reasons I'm positive to the use of "convergence" buzz word, is that it could mean that all GUI-frameworks are expected to scale in a sane manner. I absolutely understand the skepticism that it will end up being "a worst of all worlds" UI.
tdkl 10y ago
Nope. I wished Ubuntu used the Windows 8 clusterfuck to gather more ground on desktop, but instead they jumped on mobile/tablet hype rollercoaster.
krylon 10y ago
You are not. I still remember how well it worked out on Windows 8...
- WayneBro 10y ago
  Yes I remember too and it worked very well. I used it the whole time it was available. It worked well on my Windows tablets (Surface Pro, Surface Pro 3, Dell Venue 8 Pro). It worked well on my gaming PC, my dev workstation and my hyper-v server.
  - krylon 10y ago
    Admittedly, I have been told by several people that the new interface worked very nicely on tablets. That's what it was made for, after all. On desktops without a touch screen, I found it annoying and still do. Of course, one can still get work done using the new interface, but I still don't understand how they got the crazy idea of throwing out the start menu.
AgentME 10y ago
I love Unity, so hearing that it's getting better on mobile sounds great.
toxican 10y ago
There's a reason I've not used plain Ubuntu in years, and it's Unity. Pretty much all canonical variations of Ubuntu ship with a better UI than Ubuntu anymore.
- vegabook 10y ago
  I don't agree with this. I have done Gnome 3.18 for 6 months, did i3 for another 12, and tbh, I found myself with a bog-standard Unity interface on a new machine about 3 months ago and I haven't bothered to change it. Why? Because it doesn't try to be clever, it doesn't get in the way, sure I have to use the mouse a tiny bit more, but it just seems nice and vanilla. It works well by being inconspicuous and straightforward, while not trying extra hard to be boring (Cinnamon). And the fonts look crisp like OS/x which, to my detail-oriented eye, is a big deal. Actually the only UI I consider truly interesting, believe it or not, is e17. That feels like being on a Star Trek transporter beaming onto a Romulan Warbird. Real deal no compromise "this ain't Kansas", if that's your thing. Try Terminology for a taster. All the others (KDE) are trying too hard while simultaneously not being truly interesting. Or they're stultifyingly boring (cinnamon - why?) without being resource cheap. On this front, xfce on armbian is a beaut. Cinnamon without the weight. I also give i3 a big thumbs up btw but I just can't live without the tray icon conveniences for bluetooth, dropbox, power down etc.
  - stormbrew 10y ago
    > I give i3 a big thumbs up btw but I just can't live without the tray icons. What do you mean? i3bar supports tray icons just fine...
zerognowl 10y ago
Keep in mind, iOS apps send your devices' serial number & MAC address via a simple API command, and this can all be done without asking for permission. If you bought an iDevice in a store, you're also on CCTV buying that device and it can absolutely be traced to your canonical name. The idea behind Ubuntu tablets is that it imports the security model of the Debian Linux trust chain to the user, and so worries of serial numbers and the typical 'link-ability' one finds in proprietary iOS devices are vanished.
gurkendoktor 10y ago
I'm not sure if it's a terrible idea in general, but a Ubuntu phone would be many years behind iOS/Android when it comes to apps. I think only Apple and Google have the marketshare to pull off a convergent OS at this point.

ithkuil 10y ago

wonder if the name Yakkety Yak is a reference to https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving

radarsat1 10y ago
More likely the song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakety_Yak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakety_Yak Don't remember it from Twins?
- iso-8859-1 10y ago
  He is Italian, why would he know Twins?
  - radarsat1 10y ago
    ?? Because it's a popular movie from the 80s?
TorKlingberg 10y ago
I'd guess mostly the song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakety_Yak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakety_Yak

hendry 10y ago

No mention of systemd..

jcastro 10y ago
systemd is now used for user sessions, the article doesn't link to the technical release notes: - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes
zbjornson 10y ago
Not sure what about systemd you're interested in, but I was hoping for improvements in boot time regressions since the switch from upstart. Searching bugs it sounds like it might have instead gotten worse in 16.10. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1626436 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1626436
- Diederich 10y ago
  Huh...strange. Ubuntu 16.04 boots my macbook faster than any other OS before it.
talideon 10y ago
Why would there be mention of systemd? It's in 16.04 already as the default init.

solaris_7 10y ago

Is anyone using Snaps in production - or even regularly on their development machine? I'm still on 14.04 and would be interested to know what the most popular uses for Snaps might be.

niemeyer 10y ago
Yes, people are using in production. Last community meeting we had some folks reported a large server deployment in the UK (in the order of thousands of servers) that was being partly transitioned to snaps. I think that's the biggest use I've personally heard about so far. There are some people interested in having them working on 14.04, btw. It'd be great to see that working well.

smacktoward 10y ago

I miss the days when new Ubuntu releases included things desktop/laptop users could get excited about. Nowadays it's all stuff for servers and phones. I run Ubuntu on both my workstations, so it's sad to see that use case feel more and more like an afterthought.

gcp 10y ago
Updated packages without the whole UI/system being changed underneath you isn't always bad.
ohstopitu 10y ago
I know exactly what you mean. If you still want to get excited for UI changes...have a look at Ubuntu Gnome. They generally have nice tweaks/changes every update.
newjersey 10y ago
I have a nexus 5 that I just play with no sim card (currently on the Nexus experience ROM). I wonder if anyone here has tried installing yakkety yak on a nexus 5. If you have, will you please share your experience? Thank you.
- redwards510 10y ago
  I believe the parent means installing Ubuntu Touch on your android phone. The best tool to do this with is MultiROM[1], an app in the play store that allows you to select the ROM you want at boot time. I tried this a couple years ago on a N6 and was very unimpressed as it was incredibly slow and unresponsive, had no apps you could install, and just barely met the definition of "phone OS". It was more of a PoC and didn't even have a shell prompt. Things have probably improved a bit since then[2], but I would expect you'll get bored of it. I follow the android ROM scene and (unlike iOS) I've never seen people say "#$%$% all this! I'm gonna run Ubuntu Touch from now on!" Still, it's fun to install just so you can say you did. [1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tassadar.multirommgr https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tassadar.m... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Touch

0x54MUR41 10y ago

I am currently using Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. There are lot of changes since 14.04 LTS. GUI change is easy to notice at the first time. You will see different look in GUI. But, I don't know the GUI somewhat buggy to me sometimes. The screen appears to be black and it will repaint when you are moving your cursor around the black screen. My friend told me that Ubuntu's GUI system was so heavy. He suggested to use Ubuntu Mate or Kubuntu as alternative distro.

0xmohit 10y ago
You need not use Unity. Things are much better with Openbox; the usual problems of compiz and friends eating all the available RAM pretty much goes away.
- pmontra 10y ago
  I didn't get that sort of problems with compiz, but I'm on a 16 GB laptop so maybe I didn't notice. I agree with not needing Unity. I'm on Gnome flashback and 16.04 finally let me get about the same DE I had with 10.04. It's Gnome 3 but it looks like the Gnome 2 desktop, with only one panel to the bottom and the compiz cube. I use the 3D rotation effect to remember which side I came from. A 2D slide doesn't hint me enough and I get lost in the virtual desktops. I don't use the cube for anything else. All considered, I'm happy with 16.04 and I'm staying here at least until 18.04.
  - 0xmohit 10y ago
    All considered, I'm happy with 16.04 and I'm staying here at least until 18.04. Having moved from 14.04 to 15.x, I cannot agree more. However, many packages aren't updated in the LTS releases which prompt one to move over to the intermediate releases. I wish Canonical were more agile about updating compilers and such on LTS versions.
    - Rezo 10y ago
      You can find a PPA (apt repository) for almost any app or tool these days. I find that just adding a few of these for specific cases to a LTS release gives you the best of both worlds. My current ones: git, Google chrome, flux, node, nylas, spotify, tarsnap, blender

ohstopitu 10y ago

I used to generally update version after version, but recently, I have not seen a good enough reason to switch from 16.04 to 16.10 (I intend to stick to 16.04 till the next LTS version is released).

fingar 10y ago
Sticking to the 16.04 LTS is the expected choice for the vast majority of users.
ams6110 10y ago
I would never use a .10 release personally. I only run the LTS versions.
dleslie 10y ago
I will be downgrading to 14.04 due to bad hardware issues with the newer releases; there are big reports with many angry users, but ubuntu doesn't appear to find AMD mobile graphics and Broadcom to be a priority.
- foenix 10y ago
  I'm very close to doing the same. I haven't been able to get lightworks to work on ubuntu with my AMD card since the update to 16.04.
piotrkubisa 10y ago
If we speaking in terms of upgrading Ubuntu to 16.10, it makes sense whether you desire to have latest version of DE-specific applications e.g. Nautilus (updated to 3.20), xfce-terminal (was ported to GTK3 [1]) or obviously a whole DE like GNOME [2] or XFCE [3]. Personally, I am going to stick with 16.04 too. [1]: https://xubuntu.org/news/xubuntu-16-10-release/ https://xubuntu.org/news/xubuntu-16-10-release/ [2]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuGNOME https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/ReleaseNotes/UbuntuGNOME [3]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/FinalRelease/Xubuntu https://wiki.ubuntu.com/YakketyYak/FinalRelease/Xubuntu
newman314 10y ago

curt15 10y ago

Any word on what's happening with "Snappy Personal"? That's their desktop build composed entirely out of snaps with an A/B system partition format. They have been really quiet about it for the last few months. They started talking about it for 16.04, but then planned to defer that until 16.10 (https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2312045 https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2312045).

niemeyer 10y ago
We have a sprint next week to discuss some of that. The recent focus around snaps has been on the feature set leading to Ubuntu Core 16, which is itself in freeze at this point. The features are mostly general, though, and have been landing on 16.04 and 16.10 on the way. This was the announcement: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/snapcraft/2016-October/001273.html https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/snapcraft/2016-October/001...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

shiftoutbox 10y ago

RUN !

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

Does anybody actually use Ubuntu in production? I've forsaken it on the desktop (I got sick of my system breaking every 6 months, and having out of date packages), as have many others, but it's still quite popular there. On the server, though?

bpicolo 10y ago
Ubuntu is an extremely commonly used server OS, if that's the question.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Really? Huh.
  - pmontra 10y ago
    Really, basically every server I see is either Ubuntu or Centos. Very few Debian. With containers is different, who packaged the container for a given service wins. Example: Elastic uses Debian for their docker images on docker hub. See also the results of this survey https://brashear.me/blog/2015/08/24/results-of-the-2015-slash-r-slash-linux-distribution-survey/ https://brashear.me/blog/2015/08/24/results-of-the-2015-slas... It begins to be old but this section is telling "Which Linux distribution do you primarily use on your server computers?" Distro #resp %resp prev year Ubuntu 633 34% 27% Debian 539 29% 31% CentOS 214 12% 15% ... Not a large poll but I didn't find anything better in a quick search on Google.
    - pragmar 10y ago
      CentOS is in a tricky position with regard to ALPN/http2 support--there's absolutely nothing on the horizon. A continuing shift to Ubuntu in the webserver space is almost certain in the mid-term.
      - qwertyuiop924 10y ago

sho_hn 10y ago

So Unity 8 continues to be a no-show as production desktop environment, despite the claim that adopting Mir instead of Wayland would accelerate progress past Wayland. Meanwhile, Fedora 25 is shipping soon with Gnome on Wayland as default, and KDE-based distros are not too far behind anymore. And Mir would be even less far along without infrastructure created for and by the Wayland community, such as libinput, which it came to rely on. (That's without talking about mobile - Wayland shipped on Jolla's SailfishOS phone to endusers more than a year before the first Mir-powered Ubuntu Phone.) I'd say history has proven the critics right on this one.

owaislone 10y ago
Writing a new backend for an existing DE (Gnome3/KDE) is not the same as writing a completely new DE from scratch. A fair comparison would have been porting Gnome3 to Wayland vs porting Unity7 (based on Gnome3) to Mir. Also, Unity8 did land much much before on the phone which was the first target.
- sho_hn 10y ago
  > Writing a new backend for an existing DE (Gnome3/KDE) is not the same as writing a completely new DE from scratch. Having written substantial parts of the Plasma 5 shell (also nearly a full rewrite, which may just ship stable on Wayland before Unity 8, despite having been started later, and the Wayland conversion even later), I don't agree - "writing a new backend" is a substantial amount of work when the frontend doesn't have a concept of "backend"; a lot of X11 shell code traditionally made a lot of assumptions about being on X11. We had to rewrite our dock[1] as well for example, and that's before you get to talking about turning a X11 window manager into a Wayland display server and its many additional responsibilities. And as mentioned, Wayland handily beat them to the phone, too. I don't see any evidence that Mir hasn't just been an extra expense in resources for Canonical, and that's with freeloading on activity of the Wayland community. How did it in any way accelerate their progress to production to be the odd man out? 1 = https://blogs.kde.org/2016/05/31/new-plasma-task-manager-backend-faster-better-wayland https://blogs.kde.org/2016/05/31/new-plasma-task-manager-bac...

holtalanm 10y ago

Tried 16.10 with Unity 8 in a VirtualBox VM, and after typing in my password and hitting enter, all I get is a black screen for a few seconds before being put back on the login screen. It seems their developer preview has issues.

expression 10y ago
Ubuntu has done that a long time if there's a problem with graphics drivers. Don't know more specifics for your issue, since I haven't run Ubuntu in a VM in years.
thomnottom 10y ago
I believe that Unity 8 currently does not work with VirtualBox but is functioning in VMware Workstation.

ff10 10y ago

Can anybody say how well will Unity 8 work with convertible and detachable machines that run with Windows 10 out of the box? I have an HP X2 210 lying around that runs 16.04 well but without PM, Sound, detached mode and multitouch touchpad.