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Maybe that was it. I cant recall it was a while ago. I do recall the non-LTS releases having some chaos moments, specifically on the desktop versions of the re

Maybe that was it. I cant recall it was a while ago. I do recall the non-LTS releases having some chaos moments, specifically on the desktop versions of the releases. There was definite anxiety on will this upgrade totally bork the system, so much I would typically take a full clonezilla backup of the disk before attempting. 12.04 or so things definately got a bit more....predictable but at the same time, but that point i was sticking STRICTLY to LTS as they seemed to be using packages that were geared toward stability over features. So it may have just been "me" there. I recall the 9. releases were kinda painful for a few systems I managed at the time, specifically ones that ran scientific instruments in some labs. I believe that was around the time i just went back to 8.04 and said "LTS only is my way"

lproven 4y ago
OK, yeah, that seems fair. The boxes that I really want to keep working, boringly and predictably, I run the LTS versions on. Maybe I am just getting old, but 2 years between LTS releases mostly doesn't feel all that long to me any more. 18.04 feels quite recent, and 20.04 not long ago at all. I mildly regretted updating to 18.04 because it broke some smallish things and did not give me anything at all I wanted, but it was bigger and slower. I had to reinstall the Unity metapackage, but that got Unity working again fine, and I just ignore GNOME. 20.04 didn't break anything at all as far as I can recall. 22.04 didn't break anything on my desktop but it got me NTFS3, which I wanted. That _did_ break things because of the weird way I dual-boot, but I fixed them and it's fine now.
- croutonwagon 4y ago
  yeah agree on that for sure. 2 years is nothing. And i increasingly prefer not to OS/DWM tinker and more use the laptop as a tool. THat wasnt the case as much 12 years ago where a LFS install or just making something work in a weird way was part of the fun. The Wayland default (and maybe they still default to wayland) is tough for me. Wayland struggles with Nvidia cards and specifically multi-monitor setups on an external dock/gpu. That said I moved back to X11 and its all cheeky on my laptop. I was on minor released from 20.04 to 22.04 mainly to try and get support for the newer intel graphics drivers on the 11th gen chips etc. Again was touch and go a bit, but it worked, just wonky. I specifically recall not liking the 16.04-18.04 upgrade path in that it would keep legacy options if you went the do-release-upgrade path, but if you did a fresh install of 18.04, changes were different. I think that was mostly upstart stuff, or maybe the network stack config options but also some of the desktop window management stuff.... Im sure that was to placate some of the complaints and keep the upgrade scripts sane, but it was weird in that certain options worked fine if they were carried over from the upgrade but the same config files did nothing if you copied them to a fresh install of 18.04. TBH though its a nitpick and i dont even think i can tell you more specifics that above at this point and frankly if they see a path thats better....who am I to judge. Im not keeping track of whether upstart or systemd is better maintained or scalable for an OS kernel etc.... 22.04 is pretty great honestly. I do need to reboot for the PCIe/eGPU changes but otherwise its pretty much plug and play. For prod servers even, i typically run a do-release-upgrade and just let er rip these days and worse case its a rebuild on 22.04 or something. EDIT: heres a good one i caught. 18.04 to 20.04 moves to netplan, and it no longer uses the MAC address for DHCP identifier, instead it uses a guid....thats annoying.
  - lproven 4y ago
    Thanks -- I really appreciate a detailed answer like that. :-) I am no fan of Wayland either, but nobody seems willing to step up and bring us X11R8 or X12, sadly. I think the Linux world needs it. Most of the world is little-endian now, rightly or not. x86-64, POWERLE, Arm64, they can all handle it. So if the choice becomes "X dies" or "we have to brutally cut a lot of stuff to keep this alive", let's prune hard. No client font server support any more, only 24-bit colour or higher, no byte-swapped clients, etc. Gods, maybe even IPv6 only. :-) > its all cheeky on my laptop What does that mean? I don't recognise the word in that context. (To me "cheeky" means "slightly rude, mildly hostile and uncooperative".) Netplan... ahaa! Some of the people on the Ubuntu Users mailing list kept complaining about this. I told them not to fight it: let everything DHCP, get your router resolving names however it wants. They wouldn't have it. They wanted old-school fixed IPs and DNS. I let networking do its thing and don't fight it. I find it makes life much easier.
    - croutonwagon 4y ago
      Cheeky=fine. Yeah im not one to care much about the tools. Ie:systemd av upstart/init.d And the networking change isn’t ENTIRELY on canonical. The dhcp rfc says to use a machine identifier over MAC address when possible. The hiccup is that when you upgrade 18.04 to 20.04, net plan is there but unconfigured. But they now generate machine ids so any dhcp reservations are broken. And I’m not aware of the override that goes into /etc/networking/interfaces. And if there is one like ClientIdentifier=Mac, it’s not easily documented. So I had to comment out the interface configs and migrate to netplan manually where I can specify the override.
      - lproven 4y ago
        > Cheeky=fine. Oh right! I never would have guessed. Is that a regional thing? If so -- just curious -- where from? Aussie? > so any dhcp reservations are broken. Ouch!
        croutonwagon 4y ago

lproven 4y ago

OK, yeah, that seems fair. The boxes that I really want to keep working, boringly and predictably, I run the LTS versions on. Maybe I am just getting old, but 2 years between LTS releases mostly doesn't feel all that long to me any more. 18.04 feels quite recent, and 20.04 not long ago at all. I mildly regretted updating to 18.04 because it broke some smallish things and did not give me anything at all I wanted, but it was bigger and slower. I had to reinstall the Unity metapackage, but that got Unity working again fine, and I just ignore GNOME. 20.04 didn't break anything at all as far as I can recall. 22.04 didn't break anything on my desktop but it got me NTFS3, which I wanted. That _did_ break things because of the weird way I dual-boot, but I fixed them and it's fine now.

croutonwagon 4y ago
yeah agree on that for sure. 2 years is nothing. And i increasingly prefer not to OS/DWM tinker and more use the laptop as a tool. THat wasnt the case as much 12 years ago where a LFS install or just making something work in a weird way was part of the fun. The Wayland default (and maybe they still default to wayland) is tough for me. Wayland struggles with Nvidia cards and specifically multi-monitor setups on an external dock/gpu. That said I moved back to X11 and its all cheeky on my laptop. I was on minor released from 20.04 to 22.04 mainly to try and get support for the newer intel graphics drivers on the 11th gen chips etc. Again was touch and go a bit, but it worked, just wonky. I specifically recall not liking the 16.04-18.04 upgrade path in that it would keep legacy options if you went the do-release-upgrade path, but if you did a fresh install of 18.04, changes were different. I think that was mostly upstart stuff, or maybe the network stack config options but also some of the desktop window management stuff.... Im sure that was to placate some of the complaints and keep the upgrade scripts sane, but it was weird in that certain options worked fine if they were carried over from the upgrade but the same config files did nothing if you copied them to a fresh install of 18.04. TBH though its a nitpick and i dont even think i can tell you more specifics that above at this point and frankly if they see a path thats better....who am I to judge. Im not keeping track of whether upstart or systemd is better maintained or scalable for an OS kernel etc.... 22.04 is pretty great honestly. I do need to reboot for the PCIe/eGPU changes but otherwise its pretty much plug and play. For prod servers even, i typically run a do-release-upgrade and just let er rip these days and worse case its a rebuild on 22.04 or something. EDIT: heres a good one i caught. 18.04 to 20.04 moves to netplan, and it no longer uses the MAC address for DHCP identifier, instead it uses a guid....thats annoying.
- lproven 4y ago
  Thanks -- I really appreciate a detailed answer like that. :-) I am no fan of Wayland either, but nobody seems willing to step up and bring us X11R8 or X12, sadly. I think the Linux world needs it. Most of the world is little-endian now, rightly or not. x86-64, POWERLE, Arm64, they can all handle it. So if the choice becomes "X dies" or "we have to brutally cut a lot of stuff to keep this alive", let's prune hard. No client font server support any more, only 24-bit colour or higher, no byte-swapped clients, etc. Gods, maybe even IPv6 only. :-) > its all cheeky on my laptop What does that mean? I don't recognise the word in that context. (To me "cheeky" means "slightly rude, mildly hostile and uncooperative".) Netplan... ahaa! Some of the people on the Ubuntu Users mailing list kept complaining about this. I told them not to fight it: let everything DHCP, get your router resolving names however it wants. They wouldn't have it. They wanted old-school fixed IPs and DNS. I let networking do its thing and don't fight it. I find it makes life much easier.
  - croutonwagon 4y ago
    Cheeky=fine. Yeah im not one to care much about the tools. Ie:systemd av upstart/init.d And the networking change isn’t ENTIRELY on canonical. The dhcp rfc says to use a machine identifier over MAC address when possible. The hiccup is that when you upgrade 18.04 to 20.04, net plan is there but unconfigured. But they now generate machine ids so any dhcp reservations are broken. And I’m not aware of the override that goes into /etc/networking/interfaces. And if there is one like ClientIdentifier=Mac, it’s not easily documented. So I had to comment out the interface configs and migrate to netplan manually where I can specify the override.
    - lproven 4y ago
      > Cheeky=fine. Oh right! I never would have guessed. Is that a regional thing? If so -- just curious -- where from? Aussie? > so any dhcp reservations are broken. Ouch!
      - croutonwagon 4y ago