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On a personal level, I have always liked the NX Protocol. It's easily installable on Ubuntu or CentOS. You can choose between the free and open source route, or for an enterprise roadmap, NoMachine reigns supreme in my experience.

NoMachine packages its free client/server solution for what seems to be any gnu/linux distro. Its IOS and Android clients are due for release in the coming months and can solve the original poster's "problem". I have no affiliation with nomachine other than being a bit of a fan due to their community commitments.

In all reality it becomes a matter of servers, clients, and protocols that fit within your network's architecture with varying degrees of comfort and performance.

Can someone please step up and write a sane rc.d based init system so we can consign Systemd to the trashcan of history.

Seriously? BSD has had such a system forever. Linux used to have a "sane" init scripts system (admittedly for some subjective definition of "sane") until very recently. Debian's system used clean Bourne shell compatible scripts. This meant /bin/sh could be a symlink to /bin/dash. Dash is a very lightweight shell without all the Bash overhead. It is about 1/10 the size of Bash. Bash is an excellent interactive shell, and a very valuable scripting shell, but Dash is excellent to have where you don't need a vast profusion of features but you are interested in performance.

Here we learn that most of the performance benefit seen in Ubuntu 6.10 was due, not to Upstart, but simply by switching from Bash to Dash in the init scripts.

Redhat decided it was "too hard" to make their init scripts Bourne shell clean. They all reference /bin/sh in the shebang line, but they lie. They rely on Bash features. As a result, rather than do what Debian showed could readily be done, Redhat established and has adopted Systemd as the Only Supported Init System.

Now that Debian is caving in to systemd, it seems safe to say we can forget the fantasy of Systemd being relegated to any kind of "trashcan". Quite the contrary, as far as linux is concerned, it is the init script system that will be trashcanned.

There are honest pros and cons for the move. The pros are pretty compelling (and I say that as a holdout from the beginning). Linux is in many ways about monolithic solutions. This is just one of those ways.

For those who have doubts, not just about Systemd but about other monolithic consolidations and discarding many time tested and good working systems, there is still a refuge: BSD. That may change, but for now BSD is not jumping on all this stuff (quoting the AC near the top: Wayland, Gnome3, Pulseaudio, Systemd, Journald, "Alienating [subsuming] Udev"). BSD is still all about the Unix Philosophy, as expressed by Mike Gancarz.

It is really an embarrassment of riches that BOTH Linux and BSD are prospering as freely available systems.

"LTS is an abbreviation for "Long Term Support"."

For that you have Ubuntu Touch, built on top of base cyanogenmod. In fact, there are a lot of different linux mobile OSs that could be built over base cyanogenmod/android, Sailfish, or Firefox OS seem to be between those.

Took me about 5 seconds to find...
http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu

First word, second paragraph.

Ok

Where did it all begin?

Linux was already established as an enterprise server platform in 2004, but free software was not a part of everyday life for most computer users. That's why Mark Shuttleworth gathered a small team of developers from one of the most established Linux projects – Debian – and set out to create an easy-to-use Linux desktop: Ubuntu.

You're welcome.

China already has moved (or is moving) to Linux with Ubuntu Kylin http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/ubuntukylin As far as people in China still using Windows, the majority of them are pirated copies. That's why they want extended support, they won't buy Windows 8.1 or even 7 because they never bought XP in the first place.

Ubuntu for Android and a docking station. Android phone when you're on the move, drop it in to the docking station and it's a full blown desktop. With the added bonus that you don't have a crappy tablet UI on your desktop or a complex desktop UI on your phone.

Well, guys. As Mir can now be relatively easily installed, I'd like to hear comments about your experience with it.

Where on its websites and -pages does Ubuntu ever mention the word Linux?

No where, if you exclude lists, wiki and irclogs.

Try this site (thanks Desler) then the second paragraph down. I''ll even save you the bother of looking by quoting the second paragraph:

Linux was already established as an enterprise server platform in 2004, but free software was not a part of everyday life for most computer users. That's why Mark Shuttleworth gathered a small team of developers from one of the most established Linux projects – Debian – and set out to create an easy-to-use Linux desktop: Ubuntu.

(Ubuntu, which never ever mentions the word Linux on its websites and webpages)

That's demonstrably false. There's plenty of references to Linux on the Ubuntu site.

http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu

There were no interview, you dolt. There was this comment and a journalist spinning it in a full-fledged clickbait.

And now /. spins it further in an anti-Ubuntu FUD. Keep it classy!

Well, that's a big IF. It may depend on Dell proprietary drivers to make this install of Ubuntu work, and so may not be compatible with distros in general.

Take a look through Ubuntu's "Certified Hardware" collection. Note there's two types: stuff that works with the regular download Ubuntu, and stuff that only works with the OEM pre-installed Ubuntu.

Link code not working in preview. He're the raw link
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/

For the last year or so I've been using an Amazon EC2 small server, running Xubuntu Desktop (and accessed via NoMachine remote desktop) as my main development environment. I'm a LAMP developer who works at home a fair bit, and since I already had the EC2 server running a couple of client sites I decided to try and get remote desktop access to it, as described here:

http://aws-musings.com/4-easy-steps-to-enable-remote-desktop-on-your-ubuntu-ec2-instance/
(ps - see step 6 here also: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX or the 'sudo /usr/lib/nx/nxsetup --install' command won't work )

Why bother?

Well, I needed a static IP address to access certain things for work (private, ip-locked rss feeds for example). I had got around that previously by dialing in via GoToMyPC to my office Windows PC (where we have a static IP). The main problem there was it could be a bit laggy (especially when our office connection was being hogged by outgoing offsite backups), especially for some reason when I was using my virtual linux environment (running on VirtualBox).

It works really well - I have nice and reliable (linux) desktop environment that I can get access to from any of my machines, with the added bonus that I can demo things straight from my 'local' dev envirnoment as it's actually on the web.

So you're saying that Mark Shuttleworth did not actually apologise that somehow that apology letter is a new legal attack aimed at silencing the critic at https://fixubuntu.com/ with a quite specific and singular complaint with regard to targeted marketing incorporated in dash https://help.ubuntu.com/13.04/ubuntu-help/unity-dash-intro.html. A further article tackling this complaint might be useful https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks. Seems pretty genuine to me. As for disclosure http://www.ubuntu.com/privacy-policy/third-parties seems pretty clear to me, DASH internet search off.

So you're saying that Mark Shuttleworth did not actually apologise that somehow that apology letter is a new legal attack aimed at silencing the critic at https://fixubuntu.com/ with a quite specific and singular complaint with regard to targeted marketing incorporated in dash https://help.ubuntu.com/13.04/ubuntu-help/unity-dash-intro.html. A further article tackling this complaint might be useful https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/10/privacy-ubuntu-1210-amazon-ads-and-data-leaks. Seems pretty genuine to me. As for disclosure http://www.ubuntu.com/privacy-policy/third-parties seems pretty clear to me, DASH internet search off.

Ubuntu does have DVD versions.

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/alternative-downloads

My mistake, I wrote "script", but it is not, it is a job configuration file. The exec line defines the executable and its arguments. The example is a Minecraft server, which is written in Java, so the executable is java in our case.

The Upstart reference documentation is http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook. If you want man, then man 5 init describes the job configuration format.

http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#id66

That's all you need. Nothing else comes close under Linux. Nothing. Get the Ubuntu Studio distro from http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/ and go to town.

www.ardour.org

Right here:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/firefox

You *DID* catch that it is a browser based app, right?

You can always install CyanogenMod + F-Droid as market replacement for a more open source Android experience, that supports a lot of devices. The device drivers could not be very open, but in the end, Ubuntu Touch is based on android kernel and drivers too (what shortened the path to support a lot of devices). That approach is also used by Firefox OS, and I think that Sailfish will use it too, and for phones those 2 are good alternatives. Now, for tablets or for attaching a big screen/keyboard to make it behave like a desktop computer the option will be Ubuntu Touch.

The Nexus 4 can allegedly run both Android and Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/phone. I have not tried it, and I don't think there's a dual-booting bootloader yet, but it sounds interesting.

That is useful to a small extent, but if the purpose is to compare windows phones and apple IOS phones then it doesn't really get you there. From my understanding they are saying "apple phone gets X hours of battery life" and "windows phone gets Z hours of battery life" but the two phones are quite a bit different in terms of hardware, and neither can run the other's software, which makes the comparison dicey at best.

The Nexus 4 can allegedly run both Android and Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/phone. I have not tried it, and I don't think there's a dual-booting bootloader yet, but it sounds interesting.

I know they both use the same kernel (more or less), but the software ecosystem is probably quite different, including the power management.

Ekiga does not appear to currently support encryption (I came across some discussions about it being a planned feature). Ubuntu's Wiki has a page on Secure VOIP, though, which does list clients with support for encrypting SIP and XMPP voice/video communications.

Skype is not "secure" in any meaningful sense. It should be considered just as insecure as a normal phone conversation.

WUBI (Windows-based Ubuntu Installer) seems to meet all your requirements. Ubuntu is currently the OS most supported by Steam, and this probably means the SteamOS will be based on either Debian or Ubuntu. Customizing WUBI for SteamOS shouldn't be much trouble.

This is exactly it. It's designed to be as comfortable and easy to hold as a gamepad, but get as close to mouse + keyboard precision. There are Linux drivers for the PS3 Six-axis or Dual Shock 3 and XBOX 360 controllers (which should work just fine in Steam OS).

People criticizing this for *not* copying the tried and true gamepad design (two analog sticks, 1 d-pad, 4 side buttons, etc) are like people critiquing a pickup truck or sports car for not seating 4 and having enough room for all their groceries.

Sidenote - for thoese banging their heads against the wall trying to use a PS3 DS3 controller in windows using motion joy this guy made an awesome alternative that I got working with two controllers and works just peachy with Steam Big Picture .

This is exactly it. It's designed to be as comfortable and easy to hold as a gamepad, but get as close to mouse + keyboard precision. There are Linux drivers for the PS3 Six-axis or Dual Shock 3 and XBOX 360 controllers (which should work just fine in Steam OS).

People criticizing this for *not* copying the tried and true gamepad design (two analog sticks, 1 d-pad, 4 side buttons, etc) are like people critiquing a pickup truck or sports car for not seating 4 and having enough room for all their groceries.

Sidenote - for thoese banging their heads against the wall trying to use a PS3 DS3 controller in windows using motion joy this guy made an awesome alternative that I got working with two controllers and works just peachy with Steam Big Picture .

Linux never has had a really good presence in the marketplace (exception:android). I have been debating installing it on my phone, but I don't really have money to replace it if I brick it.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Install

I have two questions, and I will ask one per post, as is customary for Slashdot interviews. The first: Android runs on a kernel that's Linux with a few modifications. Ubuntu also runs on Linux. Is there a possibility of rebootless switching between Android and Ubuntu by running Ubuntu in a chroot? Canonical seems to think so.

I don't know - often its just a matter of knowing the tooling that's there, so if you don;t know the Linux ways you're not going to be as efficient as a Windows admin who does know the Windows tools. Pretty obvious.

However, In his presentation, Drumond also pointed out that the "Direct benefits (license costs) are only the tip of the iceberg (PDF Link). The force is also saving money with Linux's easier management and a " Huge decrease of local technical interventions on Ubuntu's desktops."

I guess a "huge decrease of local technical interventions" suggests that you're not right in that Linux doesn't have the same ease-of-management than GP has. I wish he's said more about it, but they're obviously making it work well. That means there must be an equivalent to GP (puppet maybe, or Canonical's proprietary Landscape tool, or possibly just webmin :) ) Maybe its because they didn't know how to administer XP, or that they had such an old Windows infrastructure they didn't have effective GP anyway.

Honestly?

Trackpads are shit and will always be shit until they move them out from under the users' palms. They need to be de-activatable.

That said, the right answer is to disable it and popup a window saying "Click here to confirm in 10..9.." if they can click there, they get to keep the setting. Just like video setting changes. Oh look, I'm not the only one with that idea!

I stopped working on Ubuntu because decisions were increasingly being made internally rather than anywhere that volunteer contributors could influence them. The "Click here to instantly break your mouse" thing was just the final straw. There's a component to the story that involves beer and a hilarious reply vs. reply all error on an iPhone, but I don't remember it being about anyone siding with Scott - there's a picture somewhere of me deactivating my Ubuntu membership a few minutes after sending https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2008-February/025141.html , which hardly gave them time to.

This is about the behavior of the display server, not the user interface. So no, this has nothing to do with using a unified interface for different form factors.

Hm. Let's see what Ubuntu says:

The purpose of Mir is to enable the development of the next generation Unity. (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir)

From the very beginning, Unity's concepts were tailored with a converged world in mind... (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnityNextSpec)

The purpose of Mir is to support their "converged interface." They are making design decisions of the display server based on the design requirements of their mobile interface, ignoring the existing desktop interface.

This is about the behavior of the display server, not the user interface. So no, this has nothing to do with using a unified interface for different form factors.

Hm. Let's see what Ubuntu says:

The purpose of Mir is to enable the development of the next generation Unity. (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Mir)

From the very beginning, Unity's concepts were tailored with a converged world in mind... (http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnityNextSpec)

The purpose of Mir is to support their "converged interface." They are making design decisions of the display server based on the design requirements of their mobile interface, ignoring the existing desktop interface.

Or even simpler, they could borrow something like ubuntu's wubi. Leave the low-level partitioning and such to power users, this is a simple Windows installer that will allow a dual-boot pretty damned quickly.

Who guarantees you that *all the other* packages are not taking a different path?

http://linux.die.net/man/1/tcptraceroute

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/gutsy/man1/paratrace.1.html

What you're describing would truly be boring. I guess you need AjaxTerm; knock yourself out.

Here is a pretty good list of CAD software available for Linux.

At home, I use Draftsight and FreeCAD. I had trouble with FreeCAD in the past, but it works quite well new. I tried gcad3d, but couldn't get used to it. I also used Cycas when I was designing a house, but it's a little different. Varicad is very nice, but it's too pricey for me.

The Unity desktop has for years suffered of terrible stability and performance issues. Part of the blame goes to Compiz, which makes for a quite heavyweight graphics stack for simple desktop effects. On certain computers Compiz also crashes every now and then. If you put the vanilla Ubuntu desktop to a small Atom / Bobcat laptop, you can easily see that even the basic functions are painfully slow and thus the desktop unusable. When we go up to relatively fast Core 2 Duo machines, even then opening the Dash is laggy and also dragging shortcut icons from Dash to taskbar is a jerky experience. Just try it.

Additionally there are some weird issues that seem to linger from release to another, some of which would be easy to fix:
* Brightness is changed in two steps at a time. Apparently the button press event gets handled by both OS and BIOS. Setting /sys/module/video/parameters/brightness_switch_enabled to 0 can be used as a workaround.
* Hibernation is disabled by default, while in practice it works just fine on most machines. (how to enable it manually)
* Bluetooth adapter on/off state is not remembered across reboots.
* I always get that "Your current network has a .local domain, which is incompatible with the Avahi network service and not recommended" popup. This just creates a bad out-of-box experience. What is Avahi? Why must I even care about it? Why did not the installer configure my hostname better then?

Now that Gnome Panel has a maintainer going forward, Gnome 3 can perform just like Gnome 2. For an example look at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PreciseGnomeClassicTweaks and try it. So I am SURE there will be workaround to get back the middle mouse instead of the middle finger.

Android when launched looked like never would be mainstream. And a factor in its success was cyanogenmod letting install it even on phones that didn't sold with android, like old windows phones.

If Sailfish releases a version that enable to install it in most android devices (i.e. this list could be a guide ) that way to gain market share and buzz around will be available. And when becomes popular enough the phones with it includes will be the natural continuation.

Also, not sure how much "secret sauce" it will have (or will try to have open source version or something close), but at the very least the company that makes it is not american. It could be less probable to have NSA intrussions compared with phones with iOS, Android, Windows Phone or even Blackberry. That could give it a push over the existing alternatives, at least in other countries.

Its totally fixable. Here is a blog on how to fix it.

Agreed. As someone who enjoys the fact that Microsoft is innovating and I can see a possible future of really useful devices, Ubuntu has actually come out with a strategy to get us much closer today.

But unfortunately it's Ubuntu, which means we'll probably be celebrating their reaching 2% tablet marketshare in 2018.

these parts [of mir] include Android’s input stack and Google’s Protocol Buffers. An implementation detail in memory management shared with Android is the use of server-allocated buffers which Canonical employee Christopher Halse Rogers claims to be a requirement for “the ARM world and Android graphics stack”.

So to me, it seems like the push towards Mir for Ubuntu is compatible with their vision of handheld, low power, devices completely replacing the desktop. This may well be the future of personal computing, and if I was Intel I'd want a seat at that table.

A version control system like GIT is definitely the way to go here. Failing that I would recommend using synchronized shared folders from any of the popular cloud storage providers.

I use Ubuntu One cloud storage for sharing *non code* files (documentation, release binaries, etc.) among developers and testers. This is a free service that grants 5GB to each users, plus additional storage for referals (both the referee and referer get an extra 500MB). Here is my (shameless plug) referral link that you can use to start off with extra space. There are clients for all the major operating systems (Windows/Mac/Linux/Android/iOS). The automatic synchronization is great and I've never had any problems. You can choose which folders you want to share (not everyone has to see the full list) and can also set granular level user permissions if not everyone needs to have write access.

Also in some point, for some models, will be released Ubuntu Touch, and maybe you can install on your phone Firefox OS too. Those uses android's boot (open source code, but not sure about device drivers), but what runs over there is afaik fully open source.

I'm sure Saucy will run on 3.11. There's already a release in the mainline PPA.

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.11-saucy/

Thanks, great, think I will do a complete re-install though as there are a few things I have messed up trying to compile a specialized ffmpeg dlna stuff. What I am trying to do is create a real time dlna output with audio straight from input. Not an easy task. Would make a neat interface if you could create a stream directly from ffmpeg recording input. I am sure it can be done with existing libraries but scripting it is not easy.

I'm sure Saucy will run on 3.11. There's already a release in the mainline PPA.

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v3.11-saucy/