27 ms·

Ubuntu 21.10

267 points by zathan 5y ago

Flimm 5y ago
If you use ZFS, please don't install or upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10. It contains a known issue (mentioned in the release notes) that causes filesystem corruption if using ZFS. See the release notes and search for "ZFS": https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/impish-indri-release-notes/21951 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/impish-indri-release-notes/21...
qwerty456127 5y ago
The saddest thing about it so far is they didn't bundle the most recent GNOME.
blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Some discussion here[1] already. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864458
capableweb 5y ago
Funny, I run Ubuntu on my laptop and tried just today to upgrade it (since I'm on 18.04 and have been for a while). But no matter how I try, `do-release-upgrade` won't do the upgrade, complaining about third party repositories (removed all of them as a result), mismatched python versions, and a load of other issues. When I fix one, another one appears. Tried for 5 hours today and eventually gave up. On the other hand, my desktop machines run Arch and NixOS and I have never had any issues upgrading. Well, actually a few issues with NixOS upgrades, but it's so easy to rollback that I barely spend any time on it, and when I later try to upgrade again, everything just works. I wonder why Ubuntu/Canonical can never get their upgrade game to work properly. I've had similar issues with Ubuntu upgrades since I started using Ubuntu (8.X) and seems it'll never be fixed. Maybe I'll just start using either Arch or NixOS on my laptop too.
- mmcdermott 5y ago
  Interesting. I ran the upgrade over lunch on my laptop and it finished pretty quickly (and I say this as I've been considering moving to Arch anyway). The only complaint I ran into is that I didn't catch the "new release available" message on the upgrade dialog the first time and had to go check again.
- flas9sd 5y ago
  have a backup and skip the do-release-upgrade script, edit /etc/apt/sources.list directly for newer repos, outcomment anything 3rdparty (in sources.list.d/ too) and update+upgrade+dist-upgrade your system into the future, did it this way for years.. it's almost a rolling rhino
- bombcar 5y ago
  Even when a "version jumping" upgrade is allowed, I usually do them in order, unless I'm going from LTS to LTS.
  - koolba 5y ago
    Bold is the man that jumps across multiple major versions of any software.
- uniqueuid 5y ago
  I've upgraded from 18.04 in the past, but via intermediary LTS releases (i.e. 20.04). Going all in one step is not possible IMO. Also note that Ubuntu LTS releases only do upgrades after the first point release of a new version. You won't be upgraded to 21.10 until it hits 21.10.1. [edit] Apparently the holdout until point release .1 only applies to LTS versions: > Upgrades from one LTS to the next LTS release are only available after the first point release. For example, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will only upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS after the 20.04.1 point release. [https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/upgrade-introduction https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/upgrade-introduction]
  - alcidesfonseca 5y ago
    I’ve learned that ubuntu upgrades only if you update to the next version as soon as it is released. I have a 14.04 server that I cannot upgrade anymore and it sucks. Also, NVidia and Cuda drivers mess the upgrade path as well. And ubuntu is the most supported distro.
    - uniqueuid 5y ago
      Yes, Nvidia is special (in a bad way). They seem especially hell-bent on pushing new versions of CUDA on everyone way before any usable software supports it (i.e. try getting a usable tensorflow or mxnet when your machine auto-upgraded to 11.4.x one day after its release).
      - my123 5y ago
        You can have multiple CUDA versions installed at once, it’s not exclusive.
    - rlpb 5y ago
      > I’ve learned that ubuntu upgrades only if you update to the next version as soon as it is released. I have a 14.04 server that I cannot upgrade anymore and it sucks. Actually you can upgrade from old releases. You do need to move from LTS to LTS, rather than jumping. So you can upgrade 14.04 to 16.04, then to 18.04, and then to 20.04. See https://askubuntu.com/questions/91815/how-to-install-software-or-upgrade-from-an-old-unsupported-release https://askubuntu.com/questions/91815/how-to-install-softwar... for details.
- deeblering4 5y ago
  In my experience it's best to simply not attempt in-place major distro version upgrades and approach them instead as a backup/reimage/restore (or using an alternate/new machine) This has been true for me across all distros, and honestly it's a main reason why I only run linux on servers anymore (easy to create a new VM for upgrades, harder to create a new laptop)
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    If you use btrfs, which Ubuntu defaults to, you can simply take a snapshot of your system before upgrading and roll it back if there's an issue. That said, I use Ubuntu on many machines and VMs, and I haven't had issues with upgrading them at all.
    - Hasnep 5y ago
      I don't think Ubuntu defaults to btrfs.
      - heavyset_go 5y ago
        I just looked and you're right.
  - qorrect 5y ago
    I have been using linux and Ubuntu for years, and not once has a full upgrade gone off without a hitch. I did upgrade to 21.10 , and of course it blew away my display drivers.
  - regularfry 5y ago
    In my patchy and incomplete experience this is true for Ubuntu but untrue for Debian. As long as I've followed the upgrade instructions I don't think I've ever had a Debian stable version bump fail. Whereas Ubuntu... yeah, backup and restore, because you're going to do it anyway.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    Hmm, I have a couple of laptops with Ubuntu on them, they aren't my primary personal (or work) machines, but I generally haven't had trouble upgrading them - I did one today, via do-release-upgrade -d and it worked fine (though the FF snap, while maybe ok in theory, meant that it had lost all my tabs / bookmarks / etc., uninstalling and installing via apt got me the deb version which did pull those all in from my profile).
- outworlder 5y ago
  I'll echo the NixOS experience. Upgrades are not even stressful since you can 'rollback' nearly everything.
- rlpb 5y ago
  > I wonder why Ubuntu/Canonical can never get their upgrade game to work properly. Ubuntu developer here. Sounds like you have a really hacked up system there, and that it's your existing system that has issues. Under these circumstances, I don't think it's reasonable to expect an upgrade to be able to work smoothly. Scripts that handle upgrade paths necessarily need to make assumptions that what they are upgrading from is what the distribution put there. If you hack it up, then those scripts aren't going to work. Your Arch system, being rolling release based, I assume isn't as hacked up with newer versions of things because you get them straight from your distribution? The equivalent on Ubuntu would be to run the six-monthly releases, which I assume you choose not to do. If you do that and then you hack up your system, then I don't think it's fair to compare to an Arch system where you (presumably) don't do that. If you want to run an Ubuntu LTS system then I suggest that you do your hacking inside containers (whether system containers like lxd, or app containers like Docker). Then you won't need to hack up your system itself, and then upgrades will generally work fine.
  - uniqueuid 5y ago
    To be fair, some moving parts outside of canonical's work are necessary yet break often. Prominent example: Nvidia drivers. Oh how often have I wiped a system because the precise combination of driver/CUDA/nvcuvid/nvenc and nvidia-docker broke through some freak update. These are the things that often prevent smooth upgrades.
  - outworlder 5y ago
    > Sounds like you have a really hacked up system there Some people would call this 'a system that's actually being used to do something'. Don't blame users unless it's clear they are doing something egregious with the system. Installing a different Python version shouldn't break installers, but here we are. Ubuntu should have taken a page from CoreOS, NixOS and even Arch. CoreOS with their immutable system partitions (and two of them so it can revert to a good one if the current can't boot). NixOS with the immutable packages (and the split between user and system packages). And even Arch with its release model. Sometimes you have to 'hack your system' to add a new apt source to try to get your GPU working with OpenCL, or you have to modify some config file on /etc to get something else working. Or whatever the use-case might be. Should that break upgrades then? Ubuntu really doesn't provide any guidance or utilities to help with this. At least figure out a way to install a known sane system configuration, even if it breaks the user's customization. Having a separate system partition by default would actually help a little. Even Windows allow you to snapshot and rollback changes. Something that Ubuntu users have to – guess what – "hack the system" to get.
- prmph 5y ago
  And this is why the year of the Linux desktop will forever be in the future. From the cryptic (to a normal user) error messages, the broken repositories, the (often) primitive UI/UX, I really don't see Linux becoming more mainstream popular anytime soon.
- pxc 5y ago
  For my part, I prefer NixOS, too, and it works just fine on a laptop. However: do-release-upgrade is really conservative about shutting everything down and reversing as much as possible if anything goes wrong. But if you know your way around apt and dpkg and you know how to mount a borked system and chroot it, you don't really need do-release-upgrade. Just manually hack up your apt sources to the next LTS release and use your favorite apt frontend (aptitude is probably best for this) to upgrade and full-upgrade your way through it. Use dpkg with some --force flags if the state of things gets really messed up.
zmk5 5y ago
Updated a bit ago and it is a fantastic release so far. Yaru is very mature by now and the speed improvements for animations in Gnome 40 are very evident.
aborsy 5y ago
Over a decade of Ubuntu use, could not be happier! I remember in 2000s, I had to edit /etc/ text files to set up internet etc. Nowadays everything works out of box. All sorts of peripherals and hardware is recognized automatically. High quality free open source software is available for most stuff I need. The freedom to choose software and customize Linux, if required, is amazing! Am I missing anything ignoring closed source Windows and MacOS?
- a_bonobo 5y ago
  >Am I missing anything ignoring closed source Windows and MacOS? I went back to Windows with WSL. My employer relies heavily on Outlook and especially the Outlook calendar. The equivalent in Thunderbird does not work well at all with missed invites/missed reminders/missed meetings. WSL with Ubuntu is amazing for dev work!
- underscore_ku 5y ago
  nope
- astrea 5y ago
  video games :(
  - midasuni 5y ago
    I wish I had time to play, but transport fever, civ 6 and KSP all seem to work just fine every few months when I get a few hours.
  - _xy8h 5y ago
    Proton. Play on Linux. Lutris.
    - beefjerkins 5y ago
      Yeah, gaming on Linux has seriously come a long way thanks to the efforts of Valve and the wider community. My main issue with gaming on linux is cloud saves; while it generally will work with Steam, other platforms like GoG have no such capacity, and it's a real drag compared to Windows.
underscore_ku 5y ago
my favorite distro
TekMol 5y ago
The one thing that I don't like about Ubuntu is that you don't have a taskbar. It is such a productivity boost to see a list of all windows and their titles. And it let's me organize my work much better when I can organize this list by changing the order of the buttons. Is anybody here using Ubuntu with a taskbar?
- ProAm 5y ago
  What do you mean? Mine has a taskbar from default install. Which window manager are you using?
  - TekMol 5y ago
    What do you mean by "What do you mean?"? I don't know which window manager. I just use Ubuntus defaults. It looks like this: https://ubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/a728/2020-04-23-13.05.21.jpg https://ubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/a728/2020-04-23-13.05....
    - outworlder 5y ago
      That is a launcher + taskbar. Open an app, it will show that the app is open. Open a new app, it will show there. Similar to the OSX dock.
      - TekMol 5y ago
        Yes. I have been using it for a few weeks now and it sucks. Because it does not show the titles of all open windows. And I cannot organize the entries as I wish.
        airstrike 5y ago
        It's great for tablets, though /s
        ProAm 5y ago
        Switch window managers and you'll be able to do that.
veeblevee 5y ago
I love Ubuntu but maybe not snaps so much.
- epage 5y ago
  Had been with Ubuntu for so long but some problems with snaps finally drove me away from it. For now, I'm using Mint due to familiarity without snaps but flirted with "user friendly" Arch derivatives (had problems with both) and NixOS (got tired of specializing in a programming language just to use my OS and ran into some problems I couldn't find a solution to.)
  - Chyzwar 5y ago
    I had no issues with snaps. If anything, I wish more userspace software is provided via snap packages.
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      The problem with snap is not the software selection, but how obnoxious it is on the system.
      - pxc 5y ago
        Can you explain that a bit?
        mixmastamyk 5y ago
        I've written this comment several times, but it basically spams your system folders, mounts, daemons, and more. Integration is clumsy and poor. It doesn't give much ability to configure it either. Canonical just doesn't have the human-enginering chops/resources to polish all the rough edges. Sorta reminds me of docker, good ideas, middle-brow execution. Add in poor startup performance, and I removed it. Replaced Chromium snap with a PPA, which was faster and 10x less intrusive.
amelius 5y ago
I love Ubuntu. But I wish their package manager supported "undo".
- outworlder 5y ago
  You could use the Nix package manager with Ubuntu. Not ideal, but maybe it helps your use-case. https://ariya.io/2020/05/nix-package-manager-on-ubuntu-or-debian https://ariya.io/2020/05/nix-package-manager-on-ubuntu-or-de...
- m0zg 5y ago
  It does, if you use ZFS, for which there's an option during the install: https://www.maketecheasier.com/use-zfs-snapshots-ubuntu/ https://www.maketecheasier.com/use-zfs-snapshots-ubuntu/
  - pxc 5y ago
    etckeeper helps, too, if you're not on a CoW filesystem
  - Flimm 5y ago
    ZFS is currently broken in Ubuntu 21.10, as mentioned in the release notes. Don't install or upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10 if you're using ZFS, or you may experience filesystem corruption.
airstrike 5y ago
I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/ https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/
- reilly3000 5y ago
  I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?
  - petre 5y ago
    openSuSE Leap is nice if you don't have anything against rpms. Upgrades just work and the distribution has an 18 month support window. The packages are pretty polished too. We're currently using that and Debian and also Ubuntu 18 on the developer workstations, which we'll switch to Debian 11.
  - josephg 5y ago
    I’ve been really happy with Mint. It’s based on Ubuntu internally, but it feels light and fast.
  - y4mi 5y ago
    Fedora, Arch. You can basically look for any popular distro, they're all working very well if you're not entirely out of your depth wrt Linux
    - zamalek 5y ago
      Agreed. I've done a lot of Ubuntu and Arch. Arch is fantastic. I recently have been trying out Fedora and I have been enjoying it a lot.
    - shams93 5y ago
vasergen 5y ago
My setup for last 3 years is Ubuntu with i3wm (gaps) and NIX as a package manager. I keep Ubuntu as it is, just upgrade OS packages from time to time. All custom setup goes to nix package manager. This way I have more flexibility there and up to date tools that I use. I have all dependencies in a repo, so can quickly spin-up the same desktop environment in another computer if needed, as an example I do it between my personal and work laptop. This is preatty handy and I don't feel any difference switching between computers.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Then why not just go full nixos?
  - vasergen 5y ago
    I just like to have a backup,and be able in case there would be some issues (for whatever reason) just use Ubuntu. For example some package just not exist in nix
- schaefer 5y ago
  Any chance your repo is public? Care to share a URL? I'm just getting curious about Nix, and would love to see this specific use case in the wild.
  - vasergen 5y ago
    Unfortunately not public, but what I use is home manager, you can check it out here https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager. There is also chance that other people have it publically
encryptluks2 5y ago
After using Ubuntu for a couple years, I switched to Arch and never even think about going back. Ubuntu is great for people new to Linux, but it is like buying a new PC. Some people know very little about computers, so they just get an HP or Dell. Then once you start learning about graphics cards, SSDs, cooling, processors, etc... You either build your own or buy one with the components you actually want. That is why I use Arch.
- seiferteric 5y ago
  What is so great about Arch? Is it just gentoo for the younger generation? I used to use gentoo and build all my own stuff, but I just don't care about that anymore and want it to just work. That's why I use Ubuntu after using Linux for 20 years :)
  - mateuszf 5y ago
    It's a DIY KISS distro, but with a lot less building packages from source like on Gentoo. And with systemd as default which to me is a benefit.
  - saghm 5y ago
    Arch has a lot of the flexibility of Gentoo (no default desktop/window manager/network software/etc., very small minimal install) but binary packages (with pacman, a package manager that many prefer to apt/yum), as well as the optional but very enticing AUR, which is essentially a first-party hosting of third-party packages (kind of like a one-stop shop for PPAs, if you're used to those). Arguably, the only strong opinion Arch holds is defaulting to systemd; you _can_ replace it, but it's a lot of work and a lot of the package in the main repo won't work as-is if you do.
reilly3000 5y ago
It’s great to see continued work on Nvidia GPU virtualization. A few years ago it was a monsterous challenge.
beermonster 5y ago
I think 20.04 LTS with its 10 years support separates it from the crowd. As soon as you’re updating every nine months there are many great alternatives however.
- bombcar 5y ago
  10 year support is great for servers and "set it up once" type setups - but soon enough the libraries provided begin to be out of date, and you end up hacking things in. It was a problem on CentOS before it died the death, anything remotely PHPish was always really unhappy.
  - Tsiklon 5y ago
    The IUS Repo did much in the way of solving PHP Hell on RHEL(type) machines.
mindwok 5y ago
Ubuntu isn't perfect, but as someone who has used Linux as a daily desktop driver for the last 3 years or so, I think it's the best we've got (including downstream derivatives like Pop and Mint). Its release cadence seems to be in the sweet spot between 'bleeding edge and may break things' like Fedora and Arch, and 'too slow for a developers desktop' like Debian. I think for the Linux desktop role, it still manages to edge out the other distros.
lordofgibbons 5y ago
A lot of negativity in this thread. I've been using Ubuntu for about 10 years and is my favorite distro after trying a few others. I went through the whole distro hoping thing and using Arch to set up everything just the way I wanted phase, and while very fun & educational, it isn't good for getting things done. Ubuntu just works and let's me be productive with things I care about. Thank you Ubuntu team!
- themodelplumber 5y ago
  Same, getting close to 20 years of use here and I keep coming back to it. Big thanks to the team and community. I'll see if I can read a Full Circle again soon. :-)
- amdelamar 5y ago
  I've had a similar phase and just switched back to Ubuntu a week ago after having used a number of different distros since 2011. As a software developer myself, I think there is a mix of two emotions that lead to this; fear of missing out (FOMO) and imposter syndrome. I was trying to learn as much as possible for a while, adding skills to my resume, thinking my peers were doing the same. (They were not). All that time I ended up suffering from some pretty poor UX issues (Audio/Bluetooth/Wifi) that I tried fixing unsuccessfully or ignoring for the longest time, that I forgot what it was like to use a system THAT JUST WORKED out of the box.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Not enough negativity I think. Positive feedback loop without a reality check is not confronting the real issues. Ubuntu has many.
whitepoplar 5y ago
Does this release allow ZFS-on-root via the server installer? (previous releases allowed ZFS-on-root, but only via the desktop installer)
- Flimm 5y ago
  ZFS is currently broken in Ubuntu 21.10 and causes filesystem corruption. See the known issues section in the release notes.
  - whitepoplar 5y ago
    Thanks for the heads up!
jzer0cool 5y ago
I had rotated a lot "pre-ubuntu" trying to discover a distribution that works a decade+ before. It was always trying to get the video card (at high res) and wifi dongle to work. Ubuntu just worked out of the box and I was very happy with that. So. Cool. The magic was also the boot live install that also worked. It really was magical. I am using Ubuntu on desktop and a mac via VM now which is also good performance (no need to dual boot), so I think tech in general has come a long way. === Thought someone might be able to help here with something on my mind: 1) smooth mousepad scroll? 2) able to utilize multiple "desktops" (ie: swipe to different desktop). the mac seems to captures the vm as a single application so I can't get multiple desktops other than within the guest vm on a single screen.
marcodiego 5y ago
"the most productive environment for cloud-native developers and AI/ML innovators across the desktop, devices and cloud." Whoever wrote this phrase checked all the boxes in the buzzword list.
icedchai 5y ago
I've been running Ubuntu on servers for over 12 years. It generally works great... until you upgrade it to the next major release. I haven't had a smooth Ubuntu upgrade in years. During one upgrade, the system lost the default route. There was some bug with multiple NICs. Another time, it decided to rename all the network interfaces, requiring a bunch of manual reconfiguration. Then for some reason my boot device got switched (perhaps this was really a UEFI issue?) and the system failed to restart. Some of these systems have 3 or 4 NICs, multiple HDs and NVMEs in RAID configurations. Is this that exotic a configuration?
- adevx 5y ago
  It probably isn't a configuration that is well tested. I only update servers between LTS releases and take the opportunity to start with a fresh install. I think this makes sense even for Windows servers. Too many things change, not only in hardware configuration/drivers, but also major bumps in software packages eg: nginx, apache, postgresql etc.
  - icedchai 5y ago
    Yes, part of my problem was a few of these systems had been through multiple upgrades: 14.04 -> 16.04 -> 20.04. Still, these are all LTS releases. I was able to fix all of these problems by dropping to single user mode. But I've been working with Linux since 1993...
systemvoltage 5y ago
I'd love to see Ubuntu being the defacto standard for OS, far better than the fashion-driven MacOS and telemetry-driven Windows. But, I am pretty much against the self-congratulating rhetoric in this thread. Everytime I use Ubuntu, it hangs up. Just today, I tried to install new fonts and the Font manager just froze. The basic UI framework has so many hangups that it is impossible to imagine saying anything positive about it unless 1) People have no expectations 2) Haven't used MacOS or Windows 3) People have low standards for excellence. That said, this is an open source effort by volunteers. The fact that we have OSS that even come to compare with commercial offering spending billions is amazing and also an indictment that it will never surpass it. Especially with Big Tech making their own custom chips with close integration in the OS. Someone in SV should start a Gitlab-like venture, but for operating system instead of git. VC-backed and open source.
lennydizzy 5y ago
which laptop do you guys use? it seems you basically cannot install linux on macbooks anymore
- npteljes 5y ago
  I have a HP EliteBook 850 G7, which I use with Kubuntu 20.04.2 LTS. Mainboard audio had some wonkiness and I'm not sure about the fingerprint reader, I never used it. Everything else worked out of the box: webcam, function keys, touchpad, pointing stick, video card, every USB device I have thrown at it.
albertopv 5y ago
At home I use Ubuntu and it just works. Mostly, because it can't recognise correct external monitor resolution, it's stuck to fhd instead of qhd, which with windows 10 job pc works like a charm.I don't have the time to troubleshoot these issues anymore. Other things works, really zero issues (wifi, bt...)
- TingPing 5y ago
  Your monitor is probably broken with bad EDID, Linux just respects that more. Can always override it.
qwerty456127 5y ago
> support for Bluetooth LDAC and AptX codecs Hooray! > Firefox version 93 is now seeded as a snap by default Fooooooo! They say they will still support the classic deb as an option in 21.10 but are going to move it to snap-only in 22.04 though so I will probably abandon Ubuntu and switch to some distro which is not corrupted by this bullshit. I have dozens of employees set-up on dozens Ubuntu computers in the office and want a single-install/update to apply to everyone seamlessly, not having to install/update an app separately under every user on every PC. Snap also notably doesn't work with LightDM's guest user mode (which I found the coolest feature introduced in Ubuntu after the Unity desktop).

267 points by zathan 5y ago

If you use ZFS, please don't install or upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10. It contains a known issue (mentioned in the release notes) that causes filesystem corruption if using ZFS. See the release notes and search for "ZFS": https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/impish-indri-release-notes/21951 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/impish-indri-release-notes/21...

qwerty456127 5y ago

The saddest thing about it so far is they didn't bundle the most recent GNOME.

blacksmith_tb 5y ago

Some discussion here[1] already. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28864458

capableweb 5y ago

Funny, I run Ubuntu on my laptop and tried just today to upgrade it (since I'm on 18.04 and have been for a while). But no matter how I try, `do-release-upgrade` won't do the upgrade, complaining about third party repositories (removed all of them as a result), mismatched python versions, and a load of other issues. When I fix one, another one appears. Tried for 5 hours today and eventually gave up. On the other hand, my desktop machines run Arch and NixOS and I have never had any issues upgrading. Well, actually a few issues with NixOS upgrades, but it's so easy to rollback that I barely spend any time on it, and when I later try to upgrade again, everything just works. I wonder why Ubuntu/Canonical can never get their upgrade game to work properly. I've had similar issues with Ubuntu upgrades since I started using Ubuntu (8.X) and seems it'll never be fixed. Maybe I'll just start using either Arch or NixOS on my laptop too.

mmcdermott 5y ago
Interesting. I ran the upgrade over lunch on my laptop and it finished pretty quickly (and I say this as I've been considering moving to Arch anyway). The only complaint I ran into is that I didn't catch the "new release available" message on the upgrade dialog the first time and had to go check again.
flas9sd 5y ago
have a backup and skip the do-release-upgrade script, edit /etc/apt/sources.list directly for newer repos, outcomment anything 3rdparty (in sources.list.d/ too) and update+upgrade+dist-upgrade your system into the future, did it this way for years.. it's almost a rolling rhino
bombcar 5y ago
Even when a "version jumping" upgrade is allowed, I usually do them in order, unless I'm going from LTS to LTS.
- koolba 5y ago
  Bold is the man that jumps across multiple major versions of any software.
uniqueuid 5y ago
I've upgraded from 18.04 in the past, but via intermediary LTS releases (i.e. 20.04). Going all in one step is not possible IMO. Also note that Ubuntu LTS releases only do upgrades after the first point release of a new version. You won't be upgraded to 21.10 until it hits 21.10.1. [edit] Apparently the holdout until point release .1 only applies to LTS versions: > Upgrades from one LTS to the next LTS release are only available after the first point release. For example, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will only upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS after the 20.04.1 point release. [https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/upgrade-introduction https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/upgrade-introduction]
- alcidesfonseca 5y ago
  I’ve learned that ubuntu upgrades only if you update to the next version as soon as it is released. I have a 14.04 server that I cannot upgrade anymore and it sucks. Also, NVidia and Cuda drivers mess the upgrade path as well. And ubuntu is the most supported distro.
  - uniqueuid 5y ago
    Yes, Nvidia is special (in a bad way). They seem especially hell-bent on pushing new versions of CUDA on everyone way before any usable software supports it (i.e. try getting a usable tensorflow or mxnet when your machine auto-upgraded to 11.4.x one day after its release).
    - my123 5y ago
      You can have multiple CUDA versions installed at once, it’s not exclusive.
  - rlpb 5y ago
    > I’ve learned that ubuntu upgrades only if you update to the next version as soon as it is released. I have a 14.04 server that I cannot upgrade anymore and it sucks. Actually you can upgrade from old releases. You do need to move from LTS to LTS, rather than jumping. So you can upgrade 14.04 to 16.04, then to 18.04, and then to 20.04. See https://askubuntu.com/questions/91815/how-to-install-software-or-upgrade-from-an-old-unsupported-release https://askubuntu.com/questions/91815/how-to-install-softwar... for details.
deeblering4 5y ago
In my experience it's best to simply not attempt in-place major distro version upgrades and approach them instead as a backup/reimage/restore (or using an alternate/new machine) This has been true for me across all distros, and honestly it's a main reason why I only run linux on servers anymore (easy to create a new VM for upgrades, harder to create a new laptop)
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  If you use btrfs, which Ubuntu defaults to, you can simply take a snapshot of your system before upgrading and roll it back if there's an issue. That said, I use Ubuntu on many machines and VMs, and I haven't had issues with upgrading them at all.
  - Hasnep 5y ago
    I don't think Ubuntu defaults to btrfs.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      I just looked and you're right.
- qorrect 5y ago
  I have been using linux and Ubuntu for years, and not once has a full upgrade gone off without a hitch. I did upgrade to 21.10 , and of course it blew away my display drivers.
- regularfry 5y ago
  In my patchy and incomplete experience this is true for Ubuntu but untrue for Debian. As long as I've followed the upgrade instructions I don't think I've ever had a Debian stable version bump fail. Whereas Ubuntu... yeah, backup and restore, because you're going to do it anyway.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Hmm, I have a couple of laptops with Ubuntu on them, they aren't my primary personal (or work) machines, but I generally haven't had trouble upgrading them - I did one today, via do-release-upgrade -d and it worked fine (though the FF snap, while maybe ok in theory, meant that it had lost all my tabs / bookmarks / etc., uninstalling and installing via apt got me the deb version which did pull those all in from my profile).
outworlder 5y ago
I'll echo the NixOS experience. Upgrades are not even stressful since you can 'rollback' nearly everything.
rlpb 5y ago
> I wonder why Ubuntu/Canonical can never get their upgrade game to work properly. Ubuntu developer here. Sounds like you have a really hacked up system there, and that it's your existing system that has issues. Under these circumstances, I don't think it's reasonable to expect an upgrade to be able to work smoothly. Scripts that handle upgrade paths necessarily need to make assumptions that what they are upgrading from is what the distribution put there. If you hack it up, then those scripts aren't going to work. Your Arch system, being rolling release based, I assume isn't as hacked up with newer versions of things because you get them straight from your distribution? The equivalent on Ubuntu would be to run the six-monthly releases, which I assume you choose not to do. If you do that and then you hack up your system, then I don't think it's fair to compare to an Arch system where you (presumably) don't do that. If you want to run an Ubuntu LTS system then I suggest that you do your hacking inside containers (whether system containers like lxd, or app containers like Docker). Then you won't need to hack up your system itself, and then upgrades will generally work fine.
- uniqueuid 5y ago
  To be fair, some moving parts outside of canonical's work are necessary yet break often. Prominent example: Nvidia drivers. Oh how often have I wiped a system because the precise combination of driver/CUDA/nvcuvid/nvenc and nvidia-docker broke through some freak update. These are the things that often prevent smooth upgrades.
- outworlder 5y ago
  > Sounds like you have a really hacked up system there Some people would call this 'a system that's actually being used to do something'. Don't blame users unless it's clear they are doing something egregious with the system. Installing a different Python version shouldn't break installers, but here we are. Ubuntu should have taken a page from CoreOS, NixOS and even Arch. CoreOS with their immutable system partitions (and two of them so it can revert to a good one if the current can't boot). NixOS with the immutable packages (and the split between user and system packages). And even Arch with its release model. Sometimes you have to 'hack your system' to add a new apt source to try to get your GPU working with OpenCL, or you have to modify some config file on /etc to get something else working. Or whatever the use-case might be. Should that break upgrades then? Ubuntu really doesn't provide any guidance or utilities to help with this. At least figure out a way to install a known sane system configuration, even if it breaks the user's customization. Having a separate system partition by default would actually help a little. Even Windows allow you to snapshot and rollback changes. Something that Ubuntu users have to – guess what – "hack the system" to get.
prmph 5y ago
And this is why the year of the Linux desktop will forever be in the future. From the cryptic (to a normal user) error messages, the broken repositories, the (often) primitive UI/UX, I really don't see Linux becoming more mainstream popular anytime soon.
pxc 5y ago
For my part, I prefer NixOS, too, and it works just fine on a laptop. However: do-release-upgrade is really conservative about shutting everything down and reversing as much as possible if anything goes wrong. But if you know your way around apt and dpkg and you know how to mount a borked system and chroot it, you don't really need do-release-upgrade. Just manually hack up your apt sources to the next LTS release and use your favorite apt frontend (aptitude is probably best for this) to upgrade and full-upgrade your way through it. Use dpkg with some --force flags if the state of things gets really messed up.

zmk5 5y ago

Updated a bit ago and it is a fantastic release so far. Yaru is very mature by now and the speed improvements for animations in Gnome 40 are very evident.

aborsy 5y ago

Over a decade of Ubuntu use, could not be happier! I remember in 2000s, I had to edit /etc/ text files to set up internet etc. Nowadays everything works out of box. All sorts of peripherals and hardware is recognized automatically. High quality free open source software is available for most stuff I need. The freedom to choose software and customize Linux, if required, is amazing! Am I missing anything ignoring closed source Windows and MacOS?

a_bonobo 5y ago
>Am I missing anything ignoring closed source Windows and MacOS? I went back to Windows with WSL. My employer relies heavily on Outlook and especially the Outlook calendar. The equivalent in Thunderbird does not work well at all with missed invites/missed reminders/missed meetings. WSL with Ubuntu is amazing for dev work!
underscore_ku 5y ago
nope
astrea 5y ago
video games :(
- midasuni 5y ago
  I wish I had time to play, but transport fever, civ 6 and KSP all seem to work just fine every few months when I get a few hours.
- _xy8h 5y ago
  Proton. Play on Linux. Lutris.
  - beefjerkins 5y ago
    Yeah, gaming on Linux has seriously come a long way thanks to the efforts of Valve and the wider community. My main issue with gaming on linux is cloud saves; while it generally will work with Steam, other platforms like GoG have no such capacity, and it's a real drag compared to Windows.

underscore_ku 5y ago

my favorite distro

TekMol 5y ago

The one thing that I don't like about Ubuntu is that you don't have a taskbar. It is such a productivity boost to see a list of all windows and their titles. And it let's me organize my work much better when I can organize this list by changing the order of the buttons. Is anybody here using Ubuntu with a taskbar?

ProAm 5y ago
What do you mean? Mine has a taskbar from default install. Which window manager are you using?
- TekMol 5y ago
  What do you mean by "What do you mean?"? I don't know which window manager. I just use Ubuntus defaults. It looks like this: https://ubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/a728/2020-04-23-13.05.21.jpg https://ubuntu.com/wp-content/uploads/a728/2020-04-23-13.05....
  - outworlder 5y ago
    That is a launcher + taskbar. Open an app, it will show that the app is open. Open a new app, it will show there. Similar to the OSX dock.
    - TekMol 5y ago
      Yes. I have been using it for a few weeks now and it sucks. Because it does not show the titles of all open windows. And I cannot organize the entries as I wish.
      - airstrike 5y ago
        It's great for tablets, though /s
      - ProAm 5y ago
        Switch window managers and you'll be able to do that.

veeblevee 5y ago

I love Ubuntu but maybe not snaps so much.

epage 5y ago
Had been with Ubuntu for so long but some problems with snaps finally drove me away from it. For now, I'm using Mint due to familiarity without snaps but flirted with "user friendly" Arch derivatives (had problems with both) and NixOS (got tired of specializing in a programming language just to use my OS and ran into some problems I couldn't find a solution to.)
- Chyzwar 5y ago
  I had no issues with snaps. If anything, I wish more userspace software is provided via snap packages.
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    The problem with snap is not the software selection, but how obnoxious it is on the system.
    - pxc 5y ago
      Can you explain that a bit?
      - mixmastamyk 5y ago
        I've written this comment several times, but it basically spams your system folders, mounts, daemons, and more. Integration is clumsy and poor. It doesn't give much ability to configure it either. Canonical just doesn't have the human-enginering chops/resources to polish all the rough edges. Sorta reminds me of docker, good ideas, middle-brow execution. Add in poor startup performance, and I removed it. Replaced Chromium snap with a PPA, which was faster and 10x less intrusive.

amelius 5y ago

I love Ubuntu. But I wish their package manager supported "undo".

outworlder 5y ago
You could use the Nix package manager with Ubuntu. Not ideal, but maybe it helps your use-case. https://ariya.io/2020/05/nix-package-manager-on-ubuntu-or-debian https://ariya.io/2020/05/nix-package-manager-on-ubuntu-or-de...
m0zg 5y ago
It does, if you use ZFS, for which there's an option during the install: https://www.maketecheasier.com/use-zfs-snapshots-ubuntu/ https://www.maketecheasier.com/use-zfs-snapshots-ubuntu/
- pxc 5y ago
  etckeeper helps, too, if you're not on a CoW filesystem
- Flimm 5y ago
  ZFS is currently broken in Ubuntu 21.10, as mentioned in the release notes. Don't install or upgrade to Ubuntu 21.10 if you're using ZFS, or you may experience filesystem corruption.

airstrike 5y ago

I loved Ubuntu around 2007-2009 or so. Nowdays it feels like there are plenty of alternative distros that "just work" without so many of the idiosyncratic stuff canonical keeps dumping into what used to be "debian for the masses" > As Linux evangelist Mark Pilgrim once quipped, Ubuntu "is an ancient African word meaning 'can't install Debian'". https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/ https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/16/debian_lenny_review/

reilly3000 5y ago
I’m a long time Ubuntu user and haven’t really shopped for other distros. Any recommendations besides Debian?
- petre 5y ago
  openSuSE Leap is nice if you don't have anything against rpms. Upgrades just work and the distribution has an 18 month support window. The packages are pretty polished too. We're currently using that and Debian and also Ubuntu 18 on the developer workstations, which we'll switch to Debian 11.
- josephg 5y ago
  I’ve been really happy with Mint. It’s based on Ubuntu internally, but it feels light and fast.
- y4mi 5y ago
  Fedora, Arch. You can basically look for any popular distro, they're all working very well if you're not entirely out of your depth wrt Linux
  - zamalek 5y ago
    Agreed. I've done a lot of Ubuntu and Arch. Arch is fantastic. I recently have been trying out Fedora and I have been enjoying it a lot.
  - shams93 5y ago

vasergen 5y ago

My setup for last 3 years is Ubuntu with i3wm (gaps) and NIX as a package manager. I keep Ubuntu as it is, just upgrade OS packages from time to time. All custom setup goes to nix package manager. This way I have more flexibility there and up to date tools that I use. I have all dependencies in a repo, so can quickly spin-up the same desktop environment in another computer if needed, as an example I do it between my personal and work laptop. This is preatty handy and I don't feel any difference switching between computers.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Then why not just go full nixos?
- vasergen 5y ago
  I just like to have a backup,and be able in case there would be some issues (for whatever reason) just use Ubuntu. For example some package just not exist in nix
schaefer 5y ago
Any chance your repo is public? Care to share a URL? I'm just getting curious about Nix, and would love to see this specific use case in the wild.
- vasergen 5y ago
  Unfortunately not public, but what I use is home manager, you can check it out here https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager https://github.com/nix-community/home-manager. There is also chance that other people have it publically

encryptluks2 5y ago

After using Ubuntu for a couple years, I switched to Arch and never even think about going back. Ubuntu is great for people new to Linux, but it is like buying a new PC. Some people know very little about computers, so they just get an HP or Dell. Then once you start learning about graphics cards, SSDs, cooling, processors, etc... You either build your own or buy one with the components you actually want. That is why I use Arch.

seiferteric 5y ago
What is so great about Arch? Is it just gentoo for the younger generation? I used to use gentoo and build all my own stuff, but I just don't care about that anymore and want it to just work. That's why I use Ubuntu after using Linux for 20 years :)
- mateuszf 5y ago
  It's a DIY KISS distro, but with a lot less building packages from source like on Gentoo. And with systemd as default which to me is a benefit.
- saghm 5y ago
  Arch has a lot of the flexibility of Gentoo (no default desktop/window manager/network software/etc., very small minimal install) but binary packages (with pacman, a package manager that many prefer to apt/yum), as well as the optional but very enticing AUR, which is essentially a first-party hosting of third-party packages (kind of like a one-stop shop for PPAs, if you're used to those). Arguably, the only strong opinion Arch holds is defaulting to systemd; you _can_ replace it, but it's a lot of work and a lot of the package in the main repo won't work as-is if you do.

reilly3000 5y ago

It’s great to see continued work on Nvidia GPU virtualization. A few years ago it was a monsterous challenge.

beermonster 5y ago

I think 20.04 LTS with its 10 years support separates it from the crowd. As soon as you’re updating every nine months there are many great alternatives however.

bombcar 5y ago
10 year support is great for servers and "set it up once" type setups - but soon enough the libraries provided begin to be out of date, and you end up hacking things in. It was a problem on CentOS before it died the death, anything remotely PHPish was always really unhappy.
- Tsiklon 5y ago
  The IUS Repo did much in the way of solving PHP Hell on RHEL(type) machines.

mindwok 5y ago

Ubuntu isn't perfect, but as someone who has used Linux as a daily desktop driver for the last 3 years or so, I think it's the best we've got (including downstream derivatives like Pop and Mint). Its release cadence seems to be in the sweet spot between 'bleeding edge and may break things' like Fedora and Arch, and 'too slow for a developers desktop' like Debian. I think for the Linux desktop role, it still manages to edge out the other distros.

lordofgibbons 5y ago

A lot of negativity in this thread. I've been using Ubuntu for about 10 years and is my favorite distro after trying a few others. I went through the whole distro hoping thing and using Arch to set up everything just the way I wanted phase, and while very fun & educational, it isn't good for getting things done. Ubuntu just works and let's me be productive with things I care about. Thank you Ubuntu team!

themodelplumber 5y ago
Same, getting close to 20 years of use here and I keep coming back to it. Big thanks to the team and community. I'll see if I can read a Full Circle again soon. :-)
amdelamar 5y ago
I've had a similar phase and just switched back to Ubuntu a week ago after having used a number of different distros since 2011. As a software developer myself, I think there is a mix of two emotions that lead to this; fear of missing out (FOMO) and imposter syndrome. I was trying to learn as much as possible for a while, adding skills to my resume, thinking my peers were doing the same. (They were not). All that time I ended up suffering from some pretty poor UX issues (Audio/Bluetooth/Wifi) that I tried fixing unsuccessfully or ignoring for the longest time, that I forgot what it was like to use a system THAT JUST WORKED out of the box.
systemvoltage 5y ago
Not enough negativity I think. Positive feedback loop without a reality check is not confronting the real issues. Ubuntu has many.

whitepoplar 5y ago

Does this release allow ZFS-on-root via the server installer? (previous releases allowed ZFS-on-root, but only via the desktop installer)

Flimm 5y ago
ZFS is currently broken in Ubuntu 21.10 and causes filesystem corruption. See the known issues section in the release notes.
- whitepoplar 5y ago
  Thanks for the heads up!

jzer0cool 5y ago

I had rotated a lot "pre-ubuntu" trying to discover a distribution that works a decade+ before. It was always trying to get the video card (at high res) and wifi dongle to work. Ubuntu just worked out of the box and I was very happy with that. So. Cool. The magic was also the boot live install that also worked. It really was magical. I am using Ubuntu on desktop and a mac via VM now which is also good performance (no need to dual boot), so I think tech in general has come a long way. === Thought someone might be able to help here with something on my mind: 1) smooth mousepad scroll? 2) able to utilize multiple "desktops" (ie: swipe to different desktop). the mac seems to captures the vm as a single application so I can't get multiple desktops other than within the guest vm on a single screen.

marcodiego 5y ago

"the most productive environment for cloud-native developers and AI/ML innovators across the desktop, devices and cloud." Whoever wrote this phrase checked all the boxes in the buzzword list.

icedchai 5y ago

I've been running Ubuntu on servers for over 12 years. It generally works great... until you upgrade it to the next major release. I haven't had a smooth Ubuntu upgrade in years. During one upgrade, the system lost the default route. There was some bug with multiple NICs. Another time, it decided to rename all the network interfaces, requiring a bunch of manual reconfiguration. Then for some reason my boot device got switched (perhaps this was really a UEFI issue?) and the system failed to restart. Some of these systems have 3 or 4 NICs, multiple HDs and NVMEs in RAID configurations. Is this that exotic a configuration?

adevx 5y ago
It probably isn't a configuration that is well tested. I only update servers between LTS releases and take the opportunity to start with a fresh install. I think this makes sense even for Windows servers. Too many things change, not only in hardware configuration/drivers, but also major bumps in software packages eg: nginx, apache, postgresql etc.
- icedchai 5y ago
  Yes, part of my problem was a few of these systems had been through multiple upgrades: 14.04 -> 16.04 -> 20.04. Still, these are all LTS releases. I was able to fix all of these problems by dropping to single user mode. But I've been working with Linux since 1993...

systemvoltage 5y ago

I'd love to see Ubuntu being the defacto standard for OS, far better than the fashion-driven MacOS and telemetry-driven Windows. But, I am pretty much against the self-congratulating rhetoric in this thread. Everytime I use Ubuntu, it hangs up. Just today, I tried to install new fonts and the Font manager just froze. The basic UI framework has so many hangups that it is impossible to imagine saying anything positive about it unless 1) People have no expectations 2) Haven't used MacOS or Windows 3) People have low standards for excellence. That said, this is an open source effort by volunteers. The fact that we have OSS that even come to compare with commercial offering spending billions is amazing and also an indictment that it will never surpass it. Especially with Big Tech making their own custom chips with close integration in the OS. Someone in SV should start a Gitlab-like venture, but for operating system instead of git. VC-backed and open source.

lennydizzy 5y ago

which laptop do you guys use? it seems you basically cannot install linux on macbooks anymore

npteljes 5y ago
I have a HP EliteBook 850 G7, which I use with Kubuntu 20.04.2 LTS. Mainboard audio had some wonkiness and I'm not sure about the fingerprint reader, I never used it. Everything else worked out of the box: webcam, function keys, touchpad, pointing stick, video card, every USB device I have thrown at it.

albertopv 5y ago

At home I use Ubuntu and it just works. Mostly, because it can't recognise correct external monitor resolution, it's stuck to fhd instead of qhd, which with windows 10 job pc works like a charm.I don't have the time to troubleshoot these issues anymore. Other things works, really zero issues (wifi, bt...)

TingPing 5y ago
Your monitor is probably broken with bad EDID, Linux just respects that more. Can always override it.

qwerty456127 5y ago

> support for Bluetooth LDAC and AptX codecs Hooray! > Firefox version 93 is now seeded as a snap by default Fooooooo! They say they will still support the classic deb as an option in 21.10 but are going to move it to snap-only in 22.04 though so I will probably abandon Ubuntu and switch to some distro which is not corrupted by this bullshit. I have dozens of employees set-up on dozens Ubuntu computers in the office and want a single-install/update to apply to everyone seamlessly, not having to install/update an app separately under every user on every PC. Snap also notably doesn't work with LightDM's guest user mode (which I found the coolest feature introduced in Ubuntu after the Unity desktop).