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Ubuntu 14.10 Released With Ambitious Name, But Small Changes
Ubuntu 14.10, dubbed Utopic Unicorn, has been released today (here are screenshots). PC World says that at first glance "isn't the most exciting update," with not so much as a new default wallpaper — but happily so: it's a stable update in a stable series, and most users will have no pressing need to update to the newest version. In the Ubuntu Next unstable series, though, there are big changes afoot:
Along with Mir comes the next version of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop, Unity 8. Mir and the latest version of Unity are already used on Ubuntu Phone, so this is key for Ubuntu's goal of convergent computing — Ubuntu Phone and Ubuntu desktop will use the same display server and desktop shell. Ubuntu Phone is now stable and Ubuntu phones are arriving this year, so a lot of work has gone into this stuff recently.
The road ahead looks bumpy however. Ubuntu needs to get graphics drivers supporting Mir properly. The task becomes more complicated when you consider that other Linux distributions — like Fedora — are switching to the Wayland display server instead of Mir.
When Ubuntu Desktop Next becomes the standard desktop environment, the changes will be massive indeed. But for today, Utopic Unicorn is all about subtle improvements and slow, steady iteration.
To busy reviewing the Apple/Microsoft bling to realize that computer OSes really shouldn't be about what color the drapes are.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Does it still ship with the spyware-inspired keylogger which sends everything you search for to Canonical and others?
If "Utopic Unicorn" is an ambitious name, I'm afraid to see what comes next.
WHAT?
I'm not installing such a crap update. Why would they leave out the most important thing?
I have had quite enough reimagining thank you. Just make it smoother, more reliable, more options, fix bugs please.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Vivacious Vivisectionist?
I come here for the love
Haha! A stable update in a stable series? Ubuntu starts off from Debian Unstable and then Canonical adds their own bug-ridden spyware, init process, Unity desktop, etc. Ubuntu is by far the buggiest distribution in history, at last count there are are 115,000 open bugs in the distro. Well, to be fair, that number does seem to be pretty stable.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2014-October/038520.html
Refusing to fix critical/security updates? Throwing the work on their packages to upstream? Thank God we have OSX and don't need wannabe's.
Yes, they used to push everything new into LTS, figure ing they wanted it to be not ancient for most of its life . it was a mistake though , because they were always terrible , I think this is learning from said mistakes .
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Oh boy, I can't wait for all of the compromises you have to make to get a system usable on a small touchscreen to be ported over to my mouse and keyboard equipped desktop. I hope they go all the way and remove keyboard support so I can hunt and peck with the mouse on an onscreen keyboard with crappy predictive text. Also, make sure every app defaults to fullscreen, because that's what I want on a 3840x2160 display. I also hope they do away with onscreen menus and make everything gigantic buttons because I hate efficient use of screen space.
I read the internet for the articles.
So it meets a Slashdot anonymous coward's self-alleged needs, who is lying about using Ubuntu 14.10. 'nuff said about Ubuntu
I only ever install the LTS releases any more. I don't have time to waste upgrading the OS.
Consider how long Windows goes before a major version upgrade. The 6-month cycle of Ubuntu is too short.
As I have been saying for years, Ubuntu should do an LTS "core" released every 2 years or whatever long cycle. That core would not contain things such as Firefox, LibreOffice, etc. It would literally just be the core Linux services. Everything else can be upgraded on the fly with rolling updates.
What are your needs?
I finally switched to Mint with Cinnamon and love it. I appreciate what Ubuntu has done to make Linux usable on the desktop, but in that spirit I am now supporting Mint, which seems to have taken over that position with a great interface that promises consistency.
Twinstiq, game news
The main reason for a six month release cycle is to provide drivers for new hardware.
Since hardware drivers are integrated with the kernel and window system, supporting new drivers requires upgrading the core system.
If aren't upgrading your hardware constantly, there's no reason to update beyond the latest LTS. If you're buying this week's Nvidia card or a laptop with a new wireless card, then you'll want to use the latest Ubuntu release to get support for it.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Slackware. Just about.
Oh really, last I checked Linux Mint was kicking Ubuntu's butt, Mint being Ubuntu minus the suck.
Windows major version upgrades are fast as a tachyon, we have Windows 10 before 9 even came out.
Has the audio theme changed yet or is it still the jungle/bongo sounds?
So this version w/ small changes doesn't have Mir as yet?
However LTS releases periodically update the kernel, I assume for the same driver (as well as security) reasons, or is this different? The main drawback I see with LTS is that many application packages remain old, so you miss out on new features to LibreOffice etc.
To which Ubuntu forum users massively agreed that this would make a great release name !
I don't mind Unity so much and Ubuntu is still my distro of choice. Having a persistent taskbar is a hellofalot better than Gnome. But I have to nagging complaints about the utter lack of customization with Unity: 1. Cannot click a taskbar app icon to minimize. It's buried in Compiz settings somewhere but I didn't see it in 14.10, I'll look again. 2. Cannot move the taskbar to bottom. Just... wow.
Like Google has been doing with Android. Strip it down to it's core and then they release little things as apps. I think there is a lot of stuff that gets installed automatically in Ubuntu that I would never use. Most of my issues with ubuntu or it's variants have been with video and sound. Video seems to be greatly improved in 14.04 but now sound issues keep popping up. I'm sticking to the LTS releases as well. I'm sick of having new bugs or even old bugs reappear with each update. I also gave up on Unity. Unity runs way too slow for me.
The LTS releases do update the Firefox, Chrome and Thunderbird major versions. So far as I know, those are the only three packages which update major version numbers in an LTS, as the major version numbers of those software are as point releases of other software.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I just install Ubuntu Gnome, then Gnome Fallback (called Flashback now) that way I don't have Unity leftovers. Unity sucks donkey wang if you ask me.
To add further anecdotal evidence (surely they must eventually = facts, right?), it meets my needs quite well and I'm writing this from my laptop running 14.10.