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Every year or so, I get the urge to replace Xubuntu with Debian on my desktop and development systems. Sadly, it just doesn't make sense to do so. Ubuntu still has a few huge advantages over Debian. In particular:

Ubuntu's bug tracking system is far more convenient than Debian's, provides richer categorization and relation tools, and integrates with upstream trackers. I waste less time when I have to report problems, and since more people are sharing knowledge in launchpad, I also waste less time on diagnostics and fixes. Average users find it more approachable, too, and can often use it to find a workarounds for problems that they need solved before the next Debian release cycle crawls around.

Ubuntu's personal package archive system is both a public build farm and an open software repository. This means I can share custom software packages with others, with no bureaucratic overhead, on any release schedule I choose, through a channel that's extraordinarily easy for users to install, with integration into the standard system update process. Oh, and I don't have to set up build environments for multiple architectures (or in some cases, any build environment at all). Of course, all of this also benefits non-developers, by giving them access to a lot of software that isn't part of the Debian archive.

Last time I checked, Ubuntu still had far better support for certain important hardware components, like my graphics card. I'm an advanced user, so I could probably jump through the hoops to get proprietary drivers working in Debian, but most people don't have that kind of knowledge or the time/inclination to develop it. I wish there was a way around this by simply choosing different hardware, but there simply is no good substitute for certain proprietary devices. (Linux gamers can either use nVidia hardware with the closed driver, or be stuck with inferior performance.)

Despite Ubuntu making some dumb decisions and pissing me off at times, it honestly has done a lot to advance linux. I'd like to switch to Debian, but honestly, it would just make my life harder. I hope it catches up soon.

Apparently it's a new DE for the next Ubuntu LTS release and forward.
Here's a project link.

It has the vibe of a Korora/OzoneOS or Elementary ripp, both of which look way more mature than this "Ubuntu Budgie" thing.

I don't get the buzz.
Looks like a project in pre-alpha stage, if you ask me.

All started because of this bug report, back in 2010 (!). Mark Shuttleworth itself replied many times there explaining why moving the Unity Launcher was never going to be a thing, because of design goals. And now we finally have it.

Right!

# apt-get install palemoon Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done E: Unable to locate package palemoon

Pale Moon on Debian Jessie:

echo "deb http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepi... mepis12cr test" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mepis.list
apt-get update
apt-get install palemoon

If you're running a 'buntu variant, add the ppa: https://launchpad.net/~marian....

If you're on some other Linux variant, (or on Debian or 'buntu for that matter), just run the install script available here: https://linux.palemoon.org/dow...

Really, it's not that hard. Hell, there's even a special version for the Raspberry Pi.

Has to get around stack overflow protection canaries (-fstack-protector-strong or -all), address space randomization, and a non-executable stack and heap. Ubuntu has run -fstack-protector-strong (covers functions calling alloca()) since gcc 4.9 release after 2015-05, according to #1317307. Kees Cook added the -strong feature to gcc, and is part of Ubuntu's compiler team, so it went straight into Ubuntu.

Good luck exploiting this bug.

Denial of service by crashing the process is of course not as nasty as remote code execution, but it can easily be nasty enough, especially if the properties of DNS would allow you to penetrate deep inside networks and services generally believed to be protected. My personal favorite vector here would be XML exposed to parsers that auto-load whatever DTD or other schema that is specified.

Has to get around stack overflow protection canaries (-fstack-protector-strong or -all), address space randomization, and a non-executable stack and heap. Ubuntu has run -fstack-protector-strong (covers functions calling alloca()) since gcc 4.9 release after 2015-05, according to #1317307. Kees Cook added the -strong feature to gcc, and is part of Ubuntu's compiler team, so it went straight into Ubuntu.

Stack overflow protections were defeated long ago, simply by not actually returning from the exploited function (stack overflow protections only verify the stack upon returning). Return oriented programming was invented to get around that. That's why we need ASLR and DEP/NX. They provide some protection against ROP. Unfortunately, Linux by default only provides a very weak form of ASLR. Even if Linux had strong ASLR - or you use something like grsecurity which provides strong ASLR - an information leakage bug may be all the attacker needs to get foothold and circumvent ASLR.

Good luck exploiting this bug.

Complacency is dangerous. You may feel smug and protected - right up until some script kiddie roots your server park. Good luck with that. Me, I'd trust the people who actually know about this sh** - and start making sure that *all* of the servers are patched and protected.

Has to get around stack overflow protection canaries (-fstack-protector-strong or -all), address space randomization, and a non-executable stack and heap. Ubuntu has run -fstack-protector-strong (covers functions calling alloca()) since gcc 4.9 release after 2015-05, according to #1317307. Kees Cook added the -strong feature to gcc, and is part of Ubuntu's compiler team, so it went straight into Ubuntu.

Good luck exploiting this bug.

It's free for open source products. Ubuntu get's an advantage when open source projects that are also in Ubuntu use it. It makes it easier for our developers to track the upstream bugs..

You can buy it for proprietary products - https://help.launchpad.net/Com...

Freshplayer Ubuntu PPA.
I successfully use their freshplayer debs (for Ubuntu Vivid), on Debian Jessie.

Sure, but some of us have had Just Plain Bad experiences with systemd, regardless of startup scripts.

A server (running Debian Stable) I was rebooting for a kernel upgrade wouldn't reboot -- it just hung at "Reached target Shutdown" (similar, I believe, to this bug). Of course, it had already stopped sshd, so I had no idea what was going on until I dug out a monitor and plugged it in.

Another server had an entry in /etc/fstab for an external USB disk that was occasionally used. One time after upgrading, systemd decided that, because the disk wasn't plugged in, it would just hang there because it couldn't mount an fstab entry.

Another time I go to turn off my computer and...it just hangs there, telling me the system is powered off (I had to physically turn off the power, though of course everything was cleanly unmounted so not a problem).


Yes, some -- or maybe even all -- of these problems can in part be blamed on me. The first one could be fixed with "systemctl reboot," the second one with "noauto" in fstab, and the third with "poweroff" instead of "halt." But that's not the point. The point is, when my *completely working system* decides to stop working on numerous occasions, and it can all be traced to one source, it just Isn't A Good Thing in my opinion. To each his own, though.

I get the error:
http://ppa.launchpad.net/webup... 404 Not Found
Is there a new address to use ?

Heard of launchpad? Often got ppas for newer releases, this one would have helped: https://launchpad.net/~openjdk...

The automount problem for exfat? Had that too, but I think that was with 14.10 and KDE 4 (And not sure if it was even KDE related...).

Overall KDE 5 is running pretty smooth here, especially for a early version :)

FREE is too expensive! When they offer me a free computer and pay me $50 per hour to beta test their crapware, then I'll bite. Until then, I'll continue to use Linux Mint because it Just Works

Linux Mint currently has 3853 open bugs.

Use of TRIM fights the deleterious effect of write amplification on lifespan, as well as reducing degradation of performance over time. Why does that "make no sense" for individual users?

There are two strategies for using TRIM.

The first one is "discard" in the mount options, which causes the drive to be informed via the TRIM command at the time a block is freed (file erased). The second strategy runs a utility (fstrim) periodically - for example, once a day - to TRIM all the blocks freed since the last time.

The first strategy somewhat slows down each delete in normal operation, and is considered to be dangerous. For this reason the second strategy is considered to be preferable. It is not clear to me why grouping the TRIMs and executing the groups infrequently is considered safer. But I have used the second strategy for a long time on my M500 SSD and never discovered any corruption.

References: 1, 2, 3

Apparently the new firmware now advertises that it supports queued TRIM, when in fact it doesn't https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

The old firmware did not advertise queued TRIM support, so it wasn't an issue. The solution is a kernel patch to blacklist queued TRIM on all Samsung 8xx drives.

Whoa there! The Samsung 840PRO in addition to all the 850 series were not affected by this issue. You are painting with a very wide brush. I sincerely hope this is not the kind of decision-making that makes its way into the Linux kernel (though I suspect that is sometimes the case).

Apparently the new firmware now advertises that it supports queued TRIM, when in fact it doesn't https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

The old firmware did not advertise queued TRIM support, so it wasn't an issue. The solution is a kernel patch to blacklist queued TRIM on all Samsung 8xx drives.

Does the brightness control skip steps?

You know what's different about consumer and pro audio? Nothing. As it turns out, consumers also want high-fidelity audio, and they want to be able to mix multiple streams. The only difference lies in what the industry is willing to sell us.

This not about spending money or HiFi, but on what you use the audio system for. On consumer audio you want low cpu and battery drain and accept the tiny latency associated with this; that a music stream start 20ms second later doesn't matter. It is also important that features such as streaming, bluetooth head sets integration etc. works out of the box etc.

With Pro audio latency is king. cpu and battery drain means nothing.

PA can provide both things, by suspending out if your need shift from consumer audio (PA) to Pro audio using jackd. No need to dedicate your box to either; they can both work for whenever people need different solutions.

Actually, pulseaudio has notably drained batteries in the past, because shitcode.

A bug from 2007 on Ubuntu that famously fouled up their PA implementation, hardly a serious complaint. This 2012 shows how PA even beat Androids audio stack (Audioflinger) regarding CPU and poweruse.
http://arunraghavan.net/2012/0...

There are several such benchmarks that shows how good PA is in this regard.

Please note that PA is for consumer audio, that means general purpose desktop and sound server use.

You know what's different about consumer and pro audio? Nothing. As it turns out, consumers also want high-fidelity audio, and they want to be able to mix multiple streams. The only difference lies in what the industry is willing to sell us.

It works great for that and doesn't drain batteries and so on.

Actually, pulseaudio has notably drained batteries in the past, because shitcode.

1. Intel HD 6000 has been supported since 2014Q2 release, https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/2014/2014q2-intel-graphics-stack-release. They didn't even do the Windows(tm) thing of installing the drivers from a driver disk or download after install. This complaint is the equivalent of installing Windows without installing the graphics drivers for your card and then complaining when the display looks horrible. Or, the could have done it the Linux(TM) way and installed a distro that included the drivers. 15.04 is in beta release.
2. Arch Linux is that way. It is a "just this side of roll your own distro". Those were not problems, those are things you do to get Arch up and running. Luckily their docs are awesome. There were a few issues on Ubuntu, but that was mainly because of all of his special requirements (3 OSes, sharing partitions, non-standard gui, etc). I think the screen tearing around docking and undocking from his docking station and the trackpad/trackpoint interaction were his only hardware issues.
3. The bug (527157) is extremely nitpicky. If the bug affects me, then it seems like a feature. I have 10 levels of brightness. Do I want 20?

I'd like to interject for a moment. Sadly, the desktop is still extremely glitchy. Let me show some examples.

1) Notebookcheck a new Intel NUC. Intel HD Graphics 6000 was missing Linux support at the moment of writing. That's not the end of the world, but how does Linux Mint report about it? Nope, you don't get an informative "device not supported" message, nor does X.org fall back to a VESA mode. Instead you get corrupted graphics! Nice failure mode there. Just look at the screenshot in the article. Does that look professional to you?

2) When you install Linux, various manual hacks are needed to correct all sorts of little glitches here and there. Read the installation report of this guy. Does that seem familiar?

3) Laptop brightness adjustment still goes in multiple steps! I can't believe this bug is still around. The same issue is in Ubuntu in Mint and affects most laptops. Bug #527157. Just try pressing the brightness keys of your laptop under Linux and you see what I mean. An everyday feature like this should Just Work without me having to even think about it.

Conclusion: I need an desktop operating system that is more deterministic in behavior. I want robust and predictable user experience. This is not rock solid at all.

Is this the same overlay scrollbar that maintains hard-coded list of incompatible applications?

Any platform requirements would have been useful in the original question. On Linux, USB gamepads can make xinput events. I only ever cared about it for the sake of disabling it, but the discussion in this Ubuntu bug may help get started on the right track. Basically you'll need xserver-xorg-input-joystick installed and may need to do some xinput set-props work (see starting around comment 24 there.)

News agencies all around the world are reporting about the astonishing event of the default wallpaper of Ubuntu being purple in color. Will Cooke, the Ubuntu Desktop Engineering Manager at Canonical, today posted the official Ubuntu 15.04, codenamed the Vivid Vervet, wallpaper. Even more shockingly, he also posted the official alternate wallpaper. As Ubuntu is extremely buggy, the announcement of the new wallpapers was reported as a bug too.

Yeah, bug 1 was resolved recently. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...
But as I see it, using systemd makes linux as useless and undebuggable than windows.
So there is no point to use linux, nothing different, sam black box as windows. Result: microsoft has won. Thanks Poettering.

Solving Bug 1 by making linux the same as Windows. Yeah! Sure, that's how you do it!

For anyone who wants to take a look, here's the current list of open SystemD bugs in Launchpad.

Btw, here's the bug

LMDE XFCE/KDE was forked into SolydXK and that is the distro you should try instead.

For Xubuntu this nice PPA should do.

I'm not sure about a dependency, but it seems that Xfce is still a bit incompatible with SystemD. See this bug: xfce4-power-manager does not inhibit systemd from handling buttons and lid events. As a sidenote, that bug has been open since Sep 2013, it's certainly nice to see how "fast" open source fixes bugs when they are found.

For Windows, the UI will seem to lag or not redraw in real-time while drawing or using it.
Disable Rulers (ctrl + r, or Menu: View -> Show/Hide -> Rulers) will fix it.
I spoke with the very helpful people on Inkscape's IRC Channel for this tip.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ink...

This may also apply to some versions of The G.I.M.P.

Depending on your OS the Windows link above will now take you to either the Windows, Mac, or Linux LO download page. If you have an Ubuntu-based distro you can apt-get install from the developer PPA at https://launchpad.net/~libreof...

I use a little program called Referencer to manage images of bills and checks. I spent a /lot/ of time looking for a simple program where I can organize a stack of images (or PDFs) by applying 1 or more tags to each. THAT'S ALL. Referencer is made for generating bibliographies for TeX documents, but it is STILL the only simple program I know of that can manage a database of files and tags.

If anyone knows of a better one, PLEASE let me know. I have a feeling the app will soon be orphaned.

I needed to replace my printer recently, I looked around for something that would work with CentOS 6 and the price of ink per page was reasonable. I was looking at a Samsung one - no mention of Linux; by the time that they replied to an email (10 days later) I had bought an HP multi function printer. So: they lost a sale because they could not be bothered to document what they had done.

The HP web site was excellent, each model of printer and what was supported by a wide variety of Linux distros. Unfortunately: I could not make it work, the support people said that it was a s/ware fault and then refused to do anything about it: https://answers.launchpad.net/hplip/+question/255970

I sent the HP printer back and then bought a Brother printer - no problem, worked once I downloaded the driver.

whiners: https://bugs.launchpad.net/lin...

See "Bug #1274672:
Fresh install of 12.04.3 fails to upgrade to 14.04" You can't upgrade Ubuntu because of a packaging problem related to Xorg. Ubuntu developers tried to deny the problem

I don't see that from the link you provided. In fact, in comments #6 and #7 the problem is identified, acknowleged and assigned to someone.

(You could argue it's a shame it hasn't been fixed, but 14.04 was in heavy development at the time so some issues (for instance regarding upgrade paths) are to be expected. They will in most cases be sorted out by the time they make the next LTS version available for upgrade from the previous one which as pointed out in other comments in this thread was in July. I am not familiar with this particular bug though, so I can't say whether it is still blocking upgrades or not)

At least they acknowlege the concept of "blocker bugs". Those doesn't seem to bother Ubuntu. See "Bug #1274672: Fresh install of 12.04.3 fails to upgrade to 14.04" You can't upgrade Ubuntu because of a packaging problem related to Xorg. Ubuntu developers tried to deny the problem, which has a few thousand hits on Google. Finally somebody installed the old version in an empty virtual machine and demonstrated that, even after a completely clean install, the upgrade wouldn't work.

(There's a workaround. Completely install Xorg and the GUI, and, from the command line, do the upgrade. Then re-install the GUI. Really. Wonder why Linux can't make it on the desktop? It's stuff like this.)

I my old printer died (low usage so the ink jets clogged - Brother). I bought an HP Officejet since HP claimed that in worked with RedHat 6 (I run Centos 6 which is the same thing). The only support available have admitted a ''something wrong going on in the code'' and and go quiet when I asked when they would fix it a week ago.

In a couple of days time I will return it to where I bought it and buy something from a different manufacturer.

I hope that they will provide better drivers that do what they claim for this 3D printer.

Because that is putting time and effort into developing features to support competitors.

Canonical put time and effort into the Personal Package Archive system, which supports competitors to the official Ubuntu repository. Each PPA is a Debian repository with a public key to verify packages, and a Canonical-managed PKI ties them together. True, a lot of that comes from the Debian project, but Canonical still polished it into PPAs starting in Ubuntu 9.10.

Don't test over Wifi. Not all interference shows up as conflicting wireless networks. Connect your laptop to the router using an Ethernet cable. Download a Linux ISO from a university mirror server close to you. (Here is a list of Ubuntu mirrors.) Some of these servers may be overloaded, but most can easily saturate a residential connection. Give the connection a couple of seconds to ramp up.

only on 14.04... 1.3 is coming, I'm told..

As for your screenshot - context please.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/431232

If the Debian maintainers / committees are anything like Ubuntu, then I'm not at all surprised. For many years, grep -P didn't work in Ubuntu. It took them *FOUR YEARS* to fix it, with a rather bizarre discussion in the mean time. A core UNIX utility is broken and it takes four years to fix it? The earliest discussed solution, which remained the preferred solution for quite some time, was to retcon the documentation to cover it up! After 7 months, it was somehow demoted back down to "unconfirmed", and it took another 1.5 years after that re-acknowledge it was broken, after many voices of sanity finally prevailed.

After experiencing this level of cluelessness and severe disconnect with reality, I swore off Ubuntu forever. If other Linux distros are anything like the Ubuntu maintainers, I can only imagine what poor reasoning and justifications have been put forward regarding switching to systemd....

Ubuntu 14.04 user here. Every time I login I am greeted with a stack of "System problem detected" warnings. Both Firefox and Thunderbird are extremely unstable. Firefox crashes a few times a week. Thunderbird does so twice a week (about). Now and then the whole system hangs when doing a rsync to an external disk (hangs, not busy).

Oh, I am sure Linux apologists blame me, my hardware, etc. But I've been running 10.04 for years on the same hardware, except that I replaced the 320G HDD for a 1TB one and switched to AHCI. Maybe that's the problem?

One issue I see often is this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu... It gives a very unfinished/unstable feel to 14.04

" I always just use split horizon DNS, and put everything under the corporate domain name, thus eliminating the problem."

I have something like that at home, a registered domain name example.com and a portion *.home.example.com that was only resolvable from my lan.

Then, a few months back, I upgraded to the new Linux Mint LTS, which did all queries simultaneously to my ISP (fallback DNS) and my LAN DNS, using the first response. Sometimes the ISP was faster, resulting in 'nonexistent host' errors.

It took me an hour to figure out what was wrong and how to repair it (networkmanager.conf, disable dnsmasq). Sigh. I wasn't the first to have this problem. The devs didn't really see the problem. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

Also, see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

Found a link which is pretty much the same issue.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

And apparently, according to some commenters, this has been around since the late 90s.

And still hasn't been fixed.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/p...

Source packages are on that page, follow the links to the builds for the binaries.

But that's why this "vulnerability" should be fixed:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu...

Imagine if by default if you don't uncheck a checkbox a popular distro has full disk encryption enabled and/or creates an encrypted container.

Then they can't use the "wrench" on everyone that happens to have that distro, because it really is very plausible that the person doesn't have the keys to the container.

As for the arguments against it - if you're in a country where they are still willing to use the "wrench" on someone who is likely to not have the keys, you're screwed already. In such countries if they're not happy with you, you're in big trouble whether you use crypto or not.

That's why the "bug" I submitted should be fixed: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu... ;)

On PC desktop the QA is still terrible. For example, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS ships with a media player which does not work properly with touchpad and which crashes when the subtitle setting is changed. Also the ACPI fan speed control is broken for a bunch of laptops. Sure, the correct solution here is simply to switch from Totem to VLC, and use a different kernel for the fan problem. Easy enough... but soon enough, some other glitch pops up. As long as Linux desktops (not only Ubuntu) are filled with these nasty surprises, the support costs will be enormous for fixing all these bugs or finding workarounds for them.

Who uses Ubuntu. I use
http://mirror.yandex.ru/fedora...

Everything works, has a great following too.