Ubuntu 15.10 'Wily Werewolf' Released (omgubuntu.co.uk)

LichtSpektren writes: Ubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" is now released and available, along with its alternative desktop flavors (MATE, Xfce, LXDE, GNOME, KDE, Kylin). This release features Linux 4.2, GCC 5, Python 3.5, and LibreOffice 5. The default version is still using X.org display server and Unity7; Mark Shuttleworth has said that Mir and Unity8 won't arrive until Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial Xerus." Not much has changed beyond package updates, other than replacing the invisible overlay scrollbars in Nautilus with the GNOME 3 scrollbars.

Phoronix brings us the only bit of drama regarding this release: Jonathan Riddell, long time overseer of Kubuntu, has resigned with claims that Canonical has "defrauded donors and broke the copyright licenses." Another reader adds a link to a Q & A session with Riddell.

Comments

Ugh

[metrix007]

I never liked Ubuntu. I cam from Slackware and it always left a horrible taste in my mouth.

Cutting edge, poorly tested software like PulseAudio was included in a desperate attempt to keep up with windows, and easy to manage config files was replaced with junk like NetworkManager..and then Unity happened.

How is it these days? Better? How does it compare to Mint or Fedora or Debian? How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?

Re:Ugh

[metrix007]

I cam from Slackware and it always left a horrible taste in my mouth

Sigh...phrasing Lana!

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

"How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?"

That's easy. Millennial valley hipsters + money.

Re:Ugh

[LichtSpektren]

Speaking as a user of Ubuntu MATE: It has the best hardware support of any distro I have ever used, it has the best selection of default software (except that obnoxious GNOME Keyring/Seahorse, which I replace with KeePass X). I have not had any problems with PulseAudio, NetworkManager, or systemd.

Mint is about just as good honestly, so if you have some moral qualms against Canonical (e.g. because of the Amazon search plug-in), it's a perfectly viable alternative. Fedora is too crashy for me to use--that's just my experience. I like Debian a lot, but I have to fiddle with the defaults far too much for my taste (I give lots of Ubuntu MATE USBs to my friends and co-workers to try out, it's a lot more user friendly than Debian is).

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Fedora is cutting edge and introducing all kinds of new stuff for testing, tech debate, and fun.

Ubuntards fail to understand this and copycat everything Fedora does, thinking it is smart and cool. The maintainers can't tell meth from table salt. No tech originality at all.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?

It was (and still is) dead-easy to install. Even the first iteration had an extremely streamlined installation-process (the less questions you ask, the easier the process) and stellar hardware auto-detection. Coupled with one-click download of non-free drivers it is pretty obvious why Ubuntu became the mainstream-linux.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I never liked Ubuntu. I cam from Slackware and it always left a horrible taste in my mouth.

Cutting edge, poorly tested software like PulseAudio was included in a desperate attempt to keep up with windows, and easy to manage config files was replaced with junk like NetworkManager..and then Unity happened.

How is it these days? Better? How does it compare to Mint or Fedora or Debian? How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?

There's something missing. PulseAudio, NetworkManager and ???????. What could it be?

Re:Ugh

[LichtSpektren]

I don't use Ubuntu because it's cool, I use it because it allows me to get my work done. I'm sure Fedora is perfect for its users, but in my experience it's less stable.

Re:Ugh

[Grishnakh]

You must not have been paying attention ~10 years ago. Ubuntu rose to #1 because they put an emphasis on easy installation, and achieved it at a time when all the other distros were broken in one way or another. Back then, installing Linux was always a bit of a chore; there was always something broken that you'd have to go manually fix, which of course dissuaded most casual users who weren't familiar with the Unix command line, manually installing device drivers, editing your "easy to manage config files" with vi, etc.

Ubuntu came along and managed to make an installer that really worked, and a casual user could pop into a CD drive and install without any command-line intervention. The rest was history.

Of course, other distros finally caught up mostly, but Ubuntu was the first one there.

Of course, that was long before they came up with crap like Unity, the Amazon lens, etc., and this was also well before Mint came along, since Mint is itself an Ubuntu derivative.

My advice: if you want an easy-to-install distro where you don't have to screw around with stuff, and want a sane though more traditional UI, just pick any one of the Mint flavors. I like the KDE one personally, but the others all have their fans too and seem to be good. All of them have more traditional UIs, and haven't gone for the radical new UI concepts seen in Gnome3, Unity, Windows8+, etc. The whole reason Mint is so popular now is because of Unity; before that, Mint was a tiny derivative of Ubuntu, but then Unity and Gnome3 both came out and pissed everyone off, and Mint launched two projects that were Gnome2 derivatives, and tons of users switched from Ubuntu to Mint in response.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?

People like yourself who seem to think that Linux has to be hard to use or else it's not cool.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer Windows 10. It fully supports any hardware and it offers free updates. It's rock solid and all my software just works. The amount of time horsing around with teh OS I've saved would pay the cost of the OS 50x over.

Re:Ugh

[LichtSpektren]

Mint is superior to Ubuntu in many ways. The only reason I prefer Ubuntu MATE to Mint MATE is because of the automatic security updates and backup tools, which are more convenient for when I install Linux on my co-workers' or friends' computers.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer Windows 10. It fully supports any hardware and it offers free updates. It's rock solid and all my software just works. The amount of time horsing around with teh OS I've saved would pay the cost of the OS 50x over.

Obvious troll is obvious.

Re:Ugh

[reiscw]

I run Ubuntu on a desktop and four laptops (two ThinkPads, an Inspiron, and an older HP G60). I upgraded them all yesterday to 15.10. It has gotten a lot more stable lately (15.04/15.10). It used to be that when I ran it (back it the 13.04 / 13.10 / 14.10 non-LTS releases) that you'd get a lot of random crashes ("your system has encountered a problem"). With the 4.2 kernel and the bug fixes they've been putting into Unity it works pretty well. I'm not a full-time developer (a math / cs teacher), but I like Unity. I like being able to do super+F to search files, super+A to search applications. It is a very keyboard friendly interface (at least to me it is).
 
The other thing that makes it better (again, to me) than Gnome 3.14/3.16/3.18 is that it also utilizes space better (no annoying title bars, and integrating application menus into the top panel is also nice). I used to run Debian (stable) for stability but now that Ubuntu is getting more and more stable (and frankly, more stable in my opinion than Cinnamon on Mint) I've moved pretty much full time to Ubuntu.

Re:Ugh

[fnj]

Cutting edge, poorly tested software like PulseAudio was included in a desperate attempt to keep up with windows, and easy to manage config files was replaced with junk like NetworkManager..and then Unity happened.

None of that crap has anything whatever to do with Ubuntu except Unity. PulseAudio and NetworkManager (systemd too) are in just about all the distros - certainly in Fedora and RHEL. In fact they were pushed on all of us by Red Hat, with all of the distros falling over themselves panting to adopt them, eyes blazing with faith in the Master.

Re:Ugh

[Dutch Gun]

How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?

This is sort of a strange way to phrase this, considering that Mint is built on top of Ubuntu (except for the newer Debian edition) . It's basically Ubuntu with a more traditional desktop and a few additional utilities. Canonical hasn't always make the best decisions, in many people's opinion, but you can give them a lot of credit, especially early on, by helping to popularize a very "friendly" version of Linux on the desktop.

Re:Ugh

[squiggleslash]

It's pretty straightforward. Ubuntu "just works". And it "just works" in part because of the stuff you denounce, like PulseAudio and NetworkManager, neither of which are perfect, but they are designed to ensure that people don't have to "manage" (easily or not) a bunch of config files.

Ubuntu isn't the only distribution with those technologies BTW, but it was the first to really polish and test the hell out of the combined, modern, GNOME/GNU/Linux system to produce something that would produce a usable installation out of the box on almost everything.

Is it perfect? No. Unity was brave but not something anyone is particularly happy with. I'm dreading the Mir/Wayland BS foreshadowed in the summary above. But before Unity, for the longest time, a GNU/Linux based software distribution was the second easiest to use operating system out there (after Mac OS X), and arguably the most productive of the big three. That's why it's popular.

Re:Ugh

[tristes_tigres]

The latest releases now have sustemd, so it is getting worse.

Re:Ugh

[jedidiah]

Meh.

Ubuntu was always little more than Debian with a few tweaks. They are a little bit more "desktop centric" but that about it. This persistent myth that Ubuntu was the first distribution to be "easy" is just bullshit. Most of what Ubuntu interesting was cribbed wholesale from Debian.

This bogus "legend of Ubuntu" seems to be the best explanation of it's success as anything. It's all empty marketing.

In the old days, lot of the "manual" futzing was a product of primitive hardware that was never designed for PnP. Ubuntu came along by the time that era was over.

Re:Ugh

[metrix007]

No, I only stopped paying attention about 3 or 4 years ago. I got tired of the pointless "Year of the desktop" nonsense, and outgrew my need to have a loyality to any one OS, understanding that some things are better for different purposes than others. Something most of the FOSS community hasn't matured enough to realize.

10 years ago, Linux was a thing for hobbyists and people interested in computers to learn more. The config files were never difficult, although understandably for non-hobbyists/enthusiasts it was. Thing is, The Ubuntu stall and process wasn't anything special. We had a few distributions that had the same goal and all did a pretty decent job. Mandrake comes to mind, as well as OpenSuSE.

Hell, I'm pretty sure Mandrake predated Ubuntu with the easy install and live CD by quite a few years. Long before they came up with stuff like Unity and the Amazon deal, they were buggy as hell. Always. People kept pushing it on new users (when there were more stable, just as easy options available), and somehow it stuck.

I guess I missed something along the way, because I don't know how Mandrake faltered and Ubuntu thrived. Money, I guess.

Re:Ugh

[jedidiah]

The single best feature of Ubuntu is apt-get and that's something that Ubuntu stole from Debian.

Much of the rest is just kernel level stuff and the advent of PnP standards for hardware that make automation a no-brainer. Most of what Ubuntu gets credit for was probably developed by kernel contributors like Redhat (kudzu).

Re:Ugh

[metrix007]

Fedora is known to be cutting edge, that's the point. Beat software should nto have been pushed on end users, that is directly attributable to the Ubuntu dev team.

Re:Ugh

[bluefoxlucid]

Begs the question: "In Many Ways"? What ways? Is the Gnome3 shell more up-to-date and running on Wayland?

Re:Ugh

[metrix007]

Huh, I disagree, but that's an interesting opinion.

I disagree because Ubuntu was often the least stable, and there were easier to use distros available. No doubt they are stable now (I mean, all major operating systems are these days). I'd say Mandrake beat Ubuntu by quite a few years on being an easy to use, polished distro.

Also, OS X is not easy to use. It's counter-intuitive as hell.

Re:Ugh

[jedidiah]

Pulseaudio really has SQUAT to do with "ease of configuration". That already existed with ALSA. What pulseaudio added was "features" that ALSA didn't have.

Ubuntu (and the rest) "just worked" fine before pulseaudio. If anything, adopting pulse too quickly caused Ubuntu to "not just work" anymore for a lot of people. It still has a bad reputation because of this.

People are choosing to have selective amnesia when it comes to Ubuntu+pulse now.

It's the same amnesia that cause people to pretend that Ubuntu is something special.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux mint rocks! I switched my work and home workstation to mint and it is great.

Sounds like the op just likes making excuses to sample cum.

Re:Ugh

[Mostly a lurker]

Ubuntu, in the early days, was Debian made easy. You could download and install an early Ubuntu release in about the same time it took you to decide which Debian CDs you needed, and what you probably wanted to install. Of course, for experienced Debian users, Ubuntu offered little new. However, it made the system accessible to the masses.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

So, how exactly do you select and connect to wireless networks with your easy to manage config files?

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we still doing that.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually ditched Windows completely due to better hardware support on Linux, better install and upgrades, better privacy, better control and better overall experience. Gaming is great on Steam and Netflix is supported on Chrome Browser. The amount of fiddling on Ubuntu is minimal, but still there (still had to download graphics-drivers manually to get it to work), however, is nothing compared to all the fiddling I'd have to do on Windows and still not be happy / in control.

Best of luck, whatever W10 will become. I'll keep my W7 inside VirtualBox, for special applications only use. Works for me. Happy that W10 works for you.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the audio and fonts are better on ubuntu out of the box than any other distro out there I always have to configure the other distros. But hey, Ubuntu(spyware can be turned off) is a lot more stable and less spyware than Windows 10(some spyware can be disabled while it's still sending some data out which MS has not stated what that data is).

Re:Ugh

[AthanasiusKircher]

Ubuntu came along and managed to make an installer that really worked, and a casual user could pop into a CD drive and install without any command-line intervention. The rest was history.

Well, sort of. Ubuntu certainly got a lot closer to that sort of experience, but it wasn't a decade ago. I still tried installing it on stock computers from major manufacturers 5 years ago and would have to go through command line hoops to get some stuff working.

Mint pulled ahead of Ubuntu around this time because (at least in my experience) it was even more focused on the casual user experience. Even when it got the hardware right, Ubuntu presented you with broken media plugins and such. Mint just focused on a polished product, and it didn't hesitate to use proprietary drivers/plugins to make things work when the open-source versions still weren't stable. While giving up some of the idealistic "purity" of Ubuntu, Mint made setup easier and more stable... which most desktop/laptop computer users want.

The whole reason Mint is so popular now is because of Unity; before that, Mint was a tiny derivative of Ubuntu, but then Unity and Gnome3 both came out and pissed everyone off, and Mint launched two projects that were Gnome2 derivatives, and tons of users switched from Ubuntu to Mint in response.

Mint wasn't exactly a "tiny derivative of Ubuntu" before Unity. It's always difficult to estimate these things, but the data of page hits over at Distrowatch puts Mint in the #3 spot of all Linux distros in 2008-2010 (pre-Unity). This analysis written in 2010 shows Mint as the rising star of the newer distros. Here's another page from early 2010 asking whether Mint had finally "killed distrohopping."

So, Mint was definitely having a meteoric rise BEFORE Unity. Unity was just the final thing that dethroned Ubuntu from the top distro spot when a lot of users abandoned Ubuntu. But many Linux users had already figured out that Mint was a lot easier and made the switch in the years before.

Re:Ugh

[cdwiegand]

Also Ubuntu was vastly more up to date than Debian, which always was running 2+ years old libraries. Great for long term servers, not great for cutting edge development and deployments.

Re:Ugh

[plazman30]

I would disagree about OS X. People that don't have a good knowledge of PCs seem to take to OS X pretty quickly without the need for a lot of hand holding.

Re:Ugh

[i.r.id10t]

Mint pulled ahead of Ubuntu in my mind when Ubuntu went to Unity/Gnome 3 and Mint still had MATE ...

Re:Ugh

[smooth wombat]

The phrase you were looking was: Raises the question.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I cant understand why people use Ubuntu, its buggy and slow. I used to think Linux in general was poor quality until I switched to Debian. Linux is actually excellent quality its just a shame distros like Ubuntu give it a bad name.

Re:Ugh

[AthanasiusKircher]

Ubuntu, in the early days, was Debian made easy. You could download and install an early Ubuntu release in about the same time it took you to decide which Debian CDs you needed, and what you probably wanted to install.

Hmm... that must've been in the VERY "early days." I remember trying out Ubuntu in 2006 and found it still to be a pain to even get basic things going. I owned one of the most popular Dell monitors on the market with one of the most popular and basic video cards sold in a standard Dell business desktop (which was not even a new model), and I was writing my config files manually just to get the display resolutions to work.

Anyhow, I was distrohopping a bit at the time, and I decided to give Debian a try again. (I hadn't used it since the late '90s.) Anyhow, while setting up X was probably about the same as Ubuntu, I immediately gravitated toward Debian, which seemed to (relatively) "just work." Ubuntu had bleeding-edge nonsense that broke audio, media playing, and such. Debian was much more stable: it may have required the explicit installation of proprietary stuff, but when it was installed, it seemed to work much more consistently than Ubuntu..

Rather than "Debian made easy," it seemed more like "Debian made broken." (Not surprising given then Ubuntu was based on the experimental branches of Debian software. And I was NOT a big Debian supporter before Ubuntu, so I have nothing invested in this...)

Point is -- we can debate the relative merits of the Ubuntu philosophy, but Debian was not significantly harder to install even in the early years of Ubuntu. I don't remember what Debian install was like back in the early 2000s, but if they changed things to compete with Ubuntu, those changes were pretty fast (particularly relative to the general snail-pace of Debian stable releases at the time).

Re:Ugh

[AthanasiusKircher]

I think that's what I said. The move to Unity "dethroned Ubuntu from the top distro position." My post was just clarifying that Mint was not a "tiny" distro before that -- it may have been as high as #3 earlier, so hardly a minor player.

Re:Ugh

[AthanasiusKircher]

Fedora is known to be cutting edge, that's the point. Beat software should nto have been pushed on end users, that is directly attributable to the Ubuntu dev team.

But that was a pervasive policy in Ubuntu -- it was trying to be as "cutting edge" as Fedora anyway. Ubuntu based a lot of its packages at the time of Pulseaudio, etc. adoption in Debian "experimental." It's not surprising that software that was alpha or barely beta releases would break all over the place (which was my experience with Ubuntu back around that time).

Re:Ugh

[alexgieg]

OS X is not easy to use. It's counter-intuitive as hell.

It depends on your background. If you already know a UI, switching to another one will feel annoying and counterintuitive unless the new one works almost exactly like the first. But I remember reading that complete computer illiterate beginners, including small children, get up to speed in Mac OS X's UI in less time than they do in other UIs. If that's accurate, the claim that Mac OS X is in general more intuitive would be correct.

Re:Ugh

[bluefoxlucid]

Begging the Question is a fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true or (directly or indirectly) assume that the conclusion is true. "Many ways" as in "What many ways?"

Re:Ugh

[mindmaster064]

Fedora is always more stable than Ubuntu unless you use the LTS release. If you need total stability and enterprise features just get CentOS which is basically Red Had Linux w/no support/subscription. Fedora, CentOS, and Red Hat all work similarly enough that there is no problem switching between hem. I'd put Ubuntu LTS and CentOS pretty close to even... Ubuntu is great until you have to install the software on a raid or do something fancy -- any flavor of Redhat basically does this out of the box. I think for servers Red Hat or CentOS are the only game really.

Re:Ugh

[serviscope_minor]

How does ALSA deal with hotplugging?

Pulse Audio has kinda-sorta lumbered into a working position now. I mean sure, on one machine I had to compile a newer version from the source because if the volume was too loud it would flip to headphones at random, and sometimes just rapidly flip back and forth. And on the other machine I have to kill it every so often because the sound gets corrupt.

But 99% of the time it works.

Oh and this is the message you get when you try to download it:

Typically PulseAudio would be provided by your OS distribution. As PulseAudio forms part of what is typically preferred to as the plumbing layer of Linux userspace, it is a non-trivial job to integrate it fully to form a complete system. This is why we strongly encourage you to go via your distribution whenever possible.

Fuck you Pulse Audio team. When the hell did linux become "it's a black box don't touch it" instead of "here's the source, go nuts and submit a patch".

The rot is really setting into the community it seems.

Re:Ugh

[MMC Monster]

Not just that, but Ubuntu was probably the first with a cleaned up repository with reasonable dependencies.

Back then it wouldn't be uncommon to have circular dependencies or installing one application will force another one to either not work or get removed.

Re:Ugh

[Kjella]

It was (and still is) dead-easy to install. Even the first iteration had an extremely streamlined installation-process (the less questions you ask, the easier the process) and stellar hardware auto-detection. Coupled with one-click download of non-free drivers it is pretty obvious why Ubuntu became the mainstream-linux.

Well yes, but you had other distros that were easy and desktop-oriented too. Under the hood though, it was quite glitchy. Debian had (and has) a very good reputation, but they were clearly building a server distro - release cycle, text-mode installer, asking obscure questions, no LiveCD, installing it felt more like an entry-level exam than a welcome mat. And I think quite a few Debian users liked it that way and were rather unhelpful and hostile towards n00bs. Ubuntu just took that "Debian for the desktop" and ran with it, Debian was the solid rock they built on and Ubuntu provided all the polish and user-friendly bits. And provided forums where even complete n00bs wouldn't get crucified. Of course a bit simplified, but I think Debian's reputation won over the existing Linux users and what you said the new Linux users. At least it won me over, I wasn't using it full time but I went from Debian to Ubuntu (for a while, different story).

Re:Ugh

[Dragonslicer]

Hmm... that must've been in the VERY "early days." I remember trying out Ubuntu in 2006 and found it still to be a pain to even get basic things going.

That sounds similar to my experience when I tried Ubuntu in 2006. I think it was 8.04 that was the first version that worked well enough for me to use it full-time.

Re:Ugh

[swv3752]

Mandrake, the company, made some bad business decisions. They brought in some American MBA's and started branching into some stupid directions like E-learning.

Re:Ugh

[thegarbz]

It's worth remembering why Ubuntu included software like PulseAudio and NetworkManager and why it wanted to keep up with Windows. Windows was an "it just works" system. Install Windows, Install drivers, done. Back then installing Linux was a challenge, once it was installed you had to go find your missing hardware, if you got it going then you spent ages trawling through text files, figuring out why the the default OSS output was the headphones despite nothing being plugged into it, why your network didn't work out of the box (god forbid you were on a laptop and your network actually changed).

Ubuntu became number 1 because it strived to be as idiot proof as possible. It was the first Linux variant which just worked across a wide variety of devices, and not just lucky edge cases.

Re:Ugh

[tepples]

The single best feature of Ubuntu is apt-get

How does it compare to yum in Fedora and CentOS?

Re:Ugh

[squiggleslash]

There was a period, around the late naughts, where it was true that Ubuntu's default installs were a little unstable (and they have a habit of making LTS releases initially really bad), but by that point Ubuntu was already the distro with the mindshare. The question I was trying to answer was how did it get this way, which subsequent history would not affect.

OS X... obviously people's mileage varies, but bring a newcomer to a computer, and OS X seems to be the one they're most likely to quickly understand. OS X is significantly different from Windows, which in turn had a heavy influence on GNOME and KDE, so it's not surprising you'd not necessarily feel comfortable or find it (initially) counter-intuitive.

(To explain my comment further: I felt GNOME 2.x was the best implementation of the Windows 95 UI ever designed, beating the real thing by miles. Hence I put Ubuntu's implementation of it, itself a good idea, just behind OS X. )

Re:Ugh

[LichtSpektren]

In my time of using Ubuntu (every version since 14.04), the only technical problems I suffered were some glitches with Unity (that has since been avoided because I moved to MATE). I've tried both Fedora 21 and 22 and both of them would terminally crash on me; if I had cared enough to force it to work, maybe I could've fixed it, but what's the point when Ubuntu works perfect for me out of the box? So your claim that "Fedora is always more stable than Ubuntu" is demonstrably false in my case.

In regards to CentOS: it's worked fairly well for me in my experience. But there's four reasons I prefer Ubuntu. The first is that enabling automatic security updates, the firewall, and the scheduled backup takes about two minutes total in Ubuntu, so it's much faster and easier to install it on my friends' and co-workers' computers. Plus these tools all have an extremely rudimentary GUI (Software Updater, gufw, and Deja Dup respectively), so it's easier to manage for those people that are not technically saavy. The second reason I prefer Ubuntu is because it supports MATE out of the box, which is superior in many ways to GNOME fallback mode in CentOS. The third reason is because Ubuntu has broader hardware support; correct me if I'm wrong, but CentOS does not yet support UEFI boot, does it? I would have to roll my own kernel to a newer version. The Ubuntu family has better driver support in any case. And the fourth reason is because my friends and co-workers want to use MP3s, DVDs, TrueType fonts, Flash and Java, which can all be enabled out of the box from an Ubuntu install, whereas you have to know how to hack in support when using CentOS.

Re:Ugh

[KGIII]

I like a simple DE so LXDE for me and, thus, I use Lubuntu. It was trivial to enter a few commands in the terminal and get my distro upgraded. I own a whole mess of hardware and, yet, it just works. I don't have to play around. I do but that's not important. I don't have to and that is important. I grabbed 15.10 within an hour of it dropping. I'm also seeding all the various family's distros (64 bit only). A quick look shows Kubuntu in the lead (I haven't actually used that much - only in a VM and a Live USB) with Ubuntu Server way at the bottom. When ever they do a new release, I seed it for a few months. I usually seed a bunch but this time I did the whole family but 64 bit only.

Re:Ugh

[KGIII]

You know that Mint is Ubuntu under the hood, right? It's a fork and still uses the Ubuntu package repos. I do use Cinnamon quite a bit. In fact, my laptop that I'm using now has Cinnamon on it if I were to actually boot to that partition. I'm booted to Lubuntu, however.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

The single best feature of Ubuntu is apt-get and that's something that Ubuntu stole from Debian.

You sure you want to go with that wording? Inherited, maybe.

Re:Ugh

[petermgreen]

Hmm... that must've been in the VERY "early days."

mmm, the days when we were wondering if sarge would ever be released.....

Re:Ugh

[loufoque]

Ironically, I found installing Ubuntu very painful the last time I tried. It insisted on fetching stuff from the Internet even though I was behind a proxy it couldn't auto-configure and it took an extremely long time to load and configure the manual partitioning tool. Why I'd want partitions to be chosen automatically for me is beyond me.

Re:Ugh

[loufoque]

The Mint themes are ugly.
Ubuntu, once you've removed unity and installed GNOME3 flashback instead, has a desktop that actually looks good.

Re:Ugh

[loufoque]

What is Debian testing I wonder.

Re:Ugh

[LichtSpektren]

Neither Mint nor Ubuntu have Wayland or Mir yet. I prefer Ubuntu because its scheduled backup and security update tools are easier to automate. Mint's "software center" is far superior to Ubuntu's, though. I've also found WINE and multi-monitor support to be better in Mint.

Re:Ugh

[LichtSpektren]

Yes, Ubuntu and Mint are almost the same under the hood. However, as far as I can tell, there's no way to automate security updates in Mint without writing a cron script. Plus I prefer Deja Dup/duplicity (in Ubuntu by default) to whatever Mint's backup tool is.

Another issue is the fact that Mint is based off of 14.04 LTS packages, whereas 15.10 packages are much newer. Since I write Python 3 scripts, that's a bit more convenient for me.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

ALSA was a nightmare to configure as was pulseaudio when it was introduced.

The difference is that when pusleaudio worked it worked well but ALSA still needed to be configured to work well.

Pulseaudio increased the cases where it worked out of the box. The results are obvious improvement in user experience.

Re:Ugh

[LichtSpektren]

Why exactly would you use GNOME fallback over MATE...?

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please, they added a disclaimer to the source. That doesn't mean you can't go and play with it and make it work. It is just giving you a fair warning.

Re:Ugh

[serviscope_minor]

No, it's indicative of a very fundemental shift in attitude and culture compared to the old days. One that saddens me because it was the opposite culture which built Linux in the first place.

Re: Ugh

[loufoque]

Because you get integration with the rest of Ubuntu and working applets.

MATE is useless anyway, I don't see any point in forcing yourself to be stuck with old gtk.

Re:Ugh

[Knuckles]

What is Debian testing I wonder.

When Ubuntu rose it was not recommended to use (no security updates and so on) and normal people do not care for gigs of updates every day and an ever changing system and UI that has old bugs gone and new bugs appearing all the time.

Re: Ugh

[LichtSpektren]

I'm not exactly sure what about MATE allegedly doesn't "integrate" with Ubuntu, but its applets work just fine. v1.12 will support GTK+3, so that argument will only be valid for a little bit longer.

Now for the downsides of of GNOME fallback mode: it is much more resource intensive, a lot of the GNOME tools (particularly Nautilus) are still missing a lot of their gutted GNOME2 functionality which MATE restores, and GNOME3 comes with a lot of crapware (who the heck uses "Web" over Firefox or Chromium?).

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu, in the early days, was Debian made easy. You could download and install an early Ubuntu release in about the same time it took you to decide which Debian CDs you needed, and what you probably wanted to install.

Hmm... that must've been in the VERY "early days." I remember trying out Ubuntu in 2006 and found it still to be a pain to even get basic things going. I owned one of the most popular Dell monitors on the market with one of the most popular and basic video cards sold in a standard Dell business desktop (which was not even a new model), and I was writing my config files manually just to get the display resolutions to work.

Sorry to hear you had such problems. I've been on Ubuntu since the beta of Breezy Badger (around mid-2005), and it worked fine on my hardware. At the time, I used a Sony VAIO VGN-A117S laptop. It had a whopping 80GB drive, 1GB RAM, and a gorgeous 17" WUXGA display. Everything worked except the special Sony keys (screen brightness and suchlike), and support for them arrived before long. That laptop was retired only a couple of years ago, a few years after migrating it from Ubuntu to Xubuntu, and upgrading the hard drive.

Re:Ugh

[pak9rabid]

How does it compare to yum in Fedora and CentOS?

Nowadays, they're pretty much equal. Years ago that didn't used to be the case. APT used to have far more packages available in the default repositories as compared to YUM, and used to perform quite a bit better. At some point YUM switched to using sqlite to store it's metadata which improved performance quite a bit, and the availability of the EPEL repository greatly increased the number of packages available to be on par with APT.

Re:Ugh

[KGIII]

I did end up wiping it off one computer. Xserver wouldn't stay running - it crashed. The most I could get was a few days of uptime which is antithetical to my use of Linux. It crashed and sent me to the tty screen. No amount of tweaking ever made it work on that desktop. So, I gave Lubuntu a try on it - still running it. In fact, I updated it to 15.10 via VNC last night - nary a problem and VNC still ran on boot so I was happy. (That was fun to configure...*sighs*)

Re:Ugh

[butchersong]

Ubuntu around 2004 (warty) was were I began and even though I'd played around quite a bit in years past with Linux, where I finally took the plunge and went with Linux as my only OS. Thinking back on it, it was probably equal parts the community which was great at the time in IRC and the distro. My first experience in IRC in #debian a few years earlier... did not go well.

Re: Ugh

[loufoque]

The right file manager to use is Nemo anyway, which is gtk3-based too.

If you'd actually install MATE on ubuntu, you'd see you lose access to the ubuntu all-in-one app indicator, which covers sound, battery, network, bluetooth etc. Alternative gtk2 applets are entirely missing from the ubuntu distribution, and even if you add them through ppa they're largely inferior to the ubuntu one, most notably in how they fit the theme.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling it "begging the question" is a fallacy in which the premises include some idiot who either did not understand English or who did not understand Latin mistranslating "petitio principii" (Seeking/petitioning the principles). The logical fallacy so named has nothing to do with begging, nor anything to do with questions.

Re: Ugh

[Blaskowicz]

I tried LMDE Cinnamon, and the fact it comes with some "new style" Gnome 3 apps was the feature I disliked.
(or you get them when installing them, such as the gnome minesweeper). I don't feel like caring for the "proper" version of gtk3 : the applications feel more out of place than Windows, Java or Qt ones.

Cinnamon's "fallback" is very crude : you get a good looking desktop but window management is disabled. "Survival mode" really (where the best thing you can do is to switch graphics driver back to run the 3D desktop, or sudo apt-get install lxde)

Mint Mate has applications that fit with it (like pdf reader etc.) and the Mint tools like update manager etc. fit well on all desktops, I can't tell without checking or trying hard if they're running gtk2 or gtk3. The panels are fully working with drag'n'drop too. Applets are not plentiful or are old but what's there is useful.
Perhaps on straight Ubuntu (or even on something like Red Hat and Fedora) you feel more "integrated" with Gnome fallback and thus there's more of a rationale for it.

Re: Ugh

[loufoque]

GNOME flashback has nothing to do with cinnamon. It is part of standard GNOME3 and emulates the GNOME2 experience.

Re: Ugh

[LichtSpektren]

Nemo and Caja are about the same to me (I don't think I could name more than two differences off the top of my head), but by using either one, you're admitting that GNOME3-Nautilus is the worst of the bunch.

As someone that's been using Ubuntu MATE for over a year, I have no idea what you're talking about. Sound, battery, network, and Bluetooth indicators are all visible and working on my top bar out of the box.

Re:Ugh

[Blaskowicz]

I never had that problem, both in ubuntu and contemporary debian (lenny, etc.)

But another major aspect is there are many thousands of packages, all accessible after a default installation. No need to enable additional or dubious repositories yourself and for a few occurrences using a ppa is easy enough.
You can look for all sorts of unusual, cool or useful software with a few apt-cache search|sort commands, even software you would never have found about or didn't know you needed (or have a use for).

There was one surprise with the package manager, "apt-get remove plymouth". Let's get rid of that splashcreen with uses CPU and hides stuff. The result : "this very long list of every package installed is the sum of what will be removed, do you want to destroy your whole system for no reason? [y/n]" (wording mine)
Ummm... a good thing I wasn't tempted to say "yes".

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

The single best feature of Ubuntu is apt-get and that's something that Ubuntu stole from Debian.

Thanks for proving how out-of-touch you are. The vast majority of people new to Linux have no clue what apt-get is nor is it the reason they chose Ubuntu. Attitudes like this are why the vast majority of users will continue to choose Ubuntu and stick with it. They'd rather not deal with people like you and the GGP.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been trying it against Mint as a desktop and developer OS. Ubuntu never really feels right for a Linux based OS, even Android feels better to me than Ubuntu. Mint on the other hand with it's more recent changes is incredible. Only reason I really used Mint before was because it was easy to manage for Linux but still had the raw power under the hood when I needed to dive deep. This latest release just feels right for Linux, just the right balance between ease and power.

Re: Ugh

[Blaskowicz]

I know, I described what happens in "no Gnome 3 for you" land.
Well, even on Mint 17.x Mate there's gnome-disks from gnome 3.10 as the "official" partition manager and I have the gnome 3.10 games installed. Printer manager says it's from Red Hat.

Re:Ugh

[Beat The Odds]

The single best feature of Ubuntu is apt-get and that's something that Ubuntu stole from Debian.

They didn't "steal" anything. Ubuntu is based on Debian.

You know, Open Source.

Re:Ugh

[nickweller]

@metrix007: "How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?"

The large userbase, works best out of the box, installing/upgrading can't be any easier using Synaptic and you've got a choice of desktops.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I again ditched Ubuntu when the Unity and marketeering "search" arrived. I haven't been to their website in a while, but it was very hard to ever find a download link. Blah blah for pages and pages about all the features, how wonderful Ubuntu is, etc -- but give me a link, darn it.
Haha - watch someone post a link here in 3-2-1 .. but can you find it from their front page in 2 clicks or less? As I said, I haven't been back so maybe they fixed this.

I get my work done, in Linux. But its not Ubuntu. They were super to put Linux on the map for users, but have in my opinion, deviated from the core purposes and values of Linux (free, freedom, no-spy).

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

So either you use a proxy at home, or you were installing the grandma distro at work?

Re:Ugh

[Grishnakh]

WTF? What kind of home user has a proxy? And why would a nontechnical user want to set up their own partitions manually?

Re:Ugh

[Grishnakh]

I never had that problem, both in ubuntu and contemporary debian (lenny, etc.)

He's not talking about Ubuntu having repo problems, he's probably talking about other distros like Red Hat. A lot of stuff back then was really broken in Linux-land. Ubuntu really helped out a lot, and raised the bar greatly; it's too bad they had to screw things up later.

Re:Ugh

[Grishnakh]

A quibble: Mint didn't "still have" MATE when Gnome3 and Unity came out. At least that's not how I remember it. MATE was created by the Mint community, alongside Cinnamon (a parallel project), *when* Gnome3 came out and pissed everyone off. MATE was really a fork of Gnome2, ported to use the Gtk3 libraries.

Re:Ugh

[walterbyrd]

I don't remember Linux being difficult to install right before pulseaudio, and networkmanager; and then being easy to install afterwards.

WAY before pulseaudio, Linux may have been difficult to install, for a lot a reasons; but not just before.

Besides, how often do you install an OS? A debian install used to last for years.

Re:Ugh

[Grishnakh]

I got tired of the pointless "Year of the desktop" nonsense, and outgrew my need to have a loyality to any one OS, understanding that some things are better for different purposes than others. Something most of the FOSS community hasn't matured enough to realize.

Hey, if you like having all your keystrokes sent to Microsoft, knock yourself out. But to say that it's "immature" to not want a keylogger installed on your system is rather asinine IMO.

Re:Ugh

[metrix007]

No one is saying it's immature to not want a keylogger on your system.

It's funny, there is a good chance whichever browser you are using acts as more of a keylogger than Windows 10 does. In any event, the only keylogger risk, and it's a stretch to even call it that, is with Windows 10.

It's asinine to assume that a product is sending keystrokes and personal information just because it is closed source. The many eyes theory doesn't just apply to code.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong. :-) At least CentOS 6 & 7 support UEFI.

Re:Ugh

[Grishnakh]

Windows 10 is widely acknowledged to have a keylogger. Even Microsoft admits it. It's not about closed-source software, it's about Windows, which is the only other viable OS on commodity hardware besides Linux. And it's not just Windows 10, the keylogger was added into Windows 8 and 7 with Windows Updates.

So, it's a really simple choice: either you use Windows and have a keylogger with all your passwords being sent to Microsoft, or you use Linux. (Or you spend thousands for a Macbook.)

Re:Ugh

[Gavagai80]

Even 10 years ago, Ubuntu wasn't the easiest to install or use. MEPIS was better on those criteria, but was a one man project without any marketing money.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late. "Begging the question" has now entered common usage as meaning "raises the question." You can keep jousting at that windmill or accept the reality that it has two definitions and the stupider one is the prevalent one.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

"brought in some American MBA's"

The death knell for any company, it seems. Score some short term profits, leave the company a worthless husk. Parasites.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

To say it is better, one has to look at its fan base. This is the pointy-clicky generation, that loves to whine when something is not working. They jump to the conclusion that 'it is broken' and to 'fix it' one has to simply google for a solution arrived at by 'pasting from a search engine's results'. And they never really figure out why...until I tell them that it's all there in the documentation, yet these people will never know what a man page is, or how to process a README.TXT file.

Want an example, try searching for Why isn't conky processing my homemade config and you will get a million hits, with about a handful saying that the man page includes an example of using your own config. So there you have an idiocracy who have never heard of a man page.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of pulseaudio, which still manages to fuck up (dropping bits, using 20% CPU just for playing fucking audio) I recently installed FreeBSD in a virtualbox VM to see what it's like. Looking at its sound system made me fall in love with it, its sound system implementation (OSS) and the kernel parts of it are truly beautiful, a masterpiece.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

This is insightful, by turning around saying, Yes, this is about you ?

No, not hard to use. Just try to figure out how to make things work, and understand how to keep things working, in true geek fashion. Instead of just clicking and hoping for the best. Understand that this is how MS got to be where it is today, by letting you click on the EULA, and absolve them of anything/everything, when something is wrong with the code, and your plane falls from the sky or the ATM refuses to dispense your money, it's not our fault

And we get to where we are today, where jobs are filled yes, but these are for idiots that only know how to memorize scripts to tell you to press CTL ALT DEL, or please fill out the form and we'll get another idiot to enter those tick marks on the board, and we are wondering when we are ever going to Mars, when we refuse to go beyond our own moon. And we need bold thinkers like Elon Musk or a Branson to get our collective asses from our office chairs.

Re:Ugh

[antdude]

So, switch to testing or unstable then. Or experimental. ;)

Re:Ugh

[thegarbz]

Re-read my comment: I didn't say that PulseAudio and NetworkManager made installing Linux easier.
I said It's worth remembering why they were trying to keep up with Windows, and why (by extension) they adopted software LIKE PulseAudio and NetworkManager.

Those two are just another 2 programs that moved Linux to an easier to manage, easier to administer OS that works as opposed to what it was back before Ubuntu was popular; a toy / serious tool for nerds willing to dedicate serious time to making it work.

People may dis Ubuntu for Windowsifying Linux, but I applaud them for doing so. I don't miss the 90s or early 00s Linux at all.

Re:Ugh

[shellbeach]

I prefer Windows 10. It fully supports any hardware and it offers free updates. It's rock solid and all my software just works. The amount of time horsing around with teh OS I've saved would pay the cost of the OS 50x over.

That's funny -- I prefer Ubuntu. It fully supports any hardware and it offers free updates. It's rock solid and all my software just works. The amount of time horsing around with teh OS I've saved would pay the cost of the OS 50x over.

It's clear that you're a time traveller from 2002, so you may not realise that everything "just works" under linux these days too.

I know, it's crazy. Welcome to the future.

Re:Ugh

[shellbeach]

Meh.

Ubuntu was always little more than Debian with a few tweaks. They are a little bit more "desktop centric" but that about it. This persistent myth that Ubuntu was the first distribution to be "easy" is just bullshit. Most of what Ubuntu interesting was cribbed wholesale from Debian.

"easy" != "interesting". What made Ubuntu popular was that it was all the Debian goodness of apt, combined with all the useful goodness of software that wasn't three years out of date, and a mature, elegant theme wrapping the whole thing up. To me, Ubuntu has been the only distro I could recommend to newbies without any doubt that everything would work, and work well. And these days, when I no longer have time to build everything by hand, Ubuntu is the OS that gets out of the way and just lets me do my work.

I don't think Ubuntu would ever demure on the debt they owe Debian. But if you think the Debian installer had anything on Ubuntu's installer back in Warty Warthog days, you're kidding yourself. It was way easier to install, and that in and of itself was probably the reason for its popularity. (And, you know, up-to-date software. Stable Debian releases ... well, they were rock solid, but almost completely useless in a desktop context.)

(I suspect that ease of install has always been a prime mover in distro popularity -- before Ubuntu, I seem to recall it was Mandrake that was the easiest to install and top-of-the-pops.)

Re:Ugh

[shellbeach]

he's probably talking about other distros like Red Hat

Heh, RH 7.0, anyone? Probably the most upsetting distro experience ever, and one that turned me off RedHat for life.

Re:Ugh

[shellbeach]

The single best feature of Ubuntu is apt-get and that's something that Ubuntu stole from Debian.

I'm pretty sure apt was and still is GPL'd open source. Quite how that amounts to "stealing" is beyond me ...

Re: Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu is also not phoning home with everything you type, photograph, or browse.

Re: Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I started with Ubuntu 9 (?) and upgraded through 10, 12, and 14. I loved the 9 and 10 DE, but the ux has consistently worsened with each release. 14 in particular seems to have problems with hardware that ran fine on 12. Also Firefox goes into some kind of memory-consumption death spiral any time I run video. Even outside of ff. I have a rickety old laptop with crunchbang (RIP) on it and occasionally snagging "unstable" packages is way easier than dealing with Ubuntu's crap.

Tl;Dr I have so many complaints about Ubuntu that people think I am old.

Re: Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly this. Ubuntu let's me fix my coworkers Windows installs that seem to have at least one machine that breaks once a month (black Tuesday).

Re: Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is this "4-chan?"

Re:Ugh

[rochrist]

Anonymous coward is anonymous.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, what it is indicative of a change in the demographics of the user-base of Linux. That strong recommendation to not try to do it yourself is likely because many people who do try then end up making a mess and go crying to the pulseaudio team asking for help to fix it.

But it is only a recommendation, and those who really know what they are doing or those who really want to figure out these things for themselves will ignore the recommendation anyway.

You may not be wrong in saying there is a shift in the attitude and culture compared to the old days, but saying that ignores the reasons why the attitude and culture has changed. A change in the typical user necessitates a change in the attitude and culture to deal with them.

Re: Ugh

[sectokia]

I use Ubuntu, i just don't use unity. Run the latest Ubuntu and install xfce4. None of the ui crap, just lightning fat simple function desktop.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 10 supports a tiny hardware subset of any random distro.

Even shitty ones like Ubuntu and Debian.

There is lots of Windows software in widespread use that won't run properly on 10.

Plus 10 is nothing but a spyware platform.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Just works eh? You try setting up those nvidia drivers yet? I realize you'll now tell me "how easy it is" but it's not exactly "just works" is it?

Re:Ugh

[mjwx]

How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?

People like yourself who seem to think that Linux has to be hard to use or else it's not cool.

I'm a sysadmin who manages over 100 RHEL servers (186 to be exact) many without GUI's at all and I use Linux Mint precisely because it isn't hard to use.

That being said, RHEL's GUI tools have become pretty damn good over the last few versions, especially in the most recent release (RHEL7). It's almost to the point where you rarely have to use the command line if you don't want to. Speaking of the command line, I haven't used the CLI in Mint for ages, but then again Mint is a desktop distro so I use it in the same way I'd use a Windows desktop (email, youtube/netflix, browsing the interwebs).

I think the only thing that's hard to do in RHEL's GUI is LVM (setting it up for VMWare so it's easy to expand disks) but I haven't looked at RHEL 7 in this regard yet.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

"How did it become the only real viable desktop distro aside from maybe Mint?"

People do not give openSuse enough credit. I installed it couple weeks ago on my desktop and it's working perfectly fine. Install was easy. Everything just worked: browser with flash, internet, audio and video*, word processing, one click mount of other drives, etc etc. Everything that 90% of people will use.
It also has Yast, which is a nice to have.

*some codecs had to be installed via 3rd party repo.

Re: Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Alsa still is pain to configure...

Re:Ugh

[morgauxo]

I think network manager is pretty reasonable on a laptop. I have absolutely no use for it on a desktop though and prefer simple config files for that.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

So smug, yet so wrong.

Re: Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Win10 doesn't support my 5 year old dell printer, nor will it let me install the 7 driver it shipped with.

Re:Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all the time. http://www.linuxmint.com/downl...

Re:Ugh

[KGIII]

I've yet to try that. Any good? And they mentioned MATE - which is Ubuntu under the hood.

Re:Ugh

[bhiestand]

Too late. "Begging the question" has now entered common usage as meaning "raises the question." You can keep jousting at that windmill or accept the reality that it has two definitions and the stupider one is the prevalent one.

And "literally" has now entered common usage to mean "illiterally". But people who use it that way are still literally ignorant.

Re:Ugh

[metrix007]

No, Windows 10 does not have a keylogger, it has telemetry which sends some data like what applications are being used, websites visited. That is something I am not happy about, but it is quiet different from a keylogger.

The updates in 7 and 8 are optional, and not enabled by default. Meaning you have to explicitly choose to install them, even with automatic updates enabled.

Stop spreading FUD about things you don't understand.

Re:Ugh

[Grishnakh]

You're a liar, and likely a shill.

http://thehackernews.com/2014/...

http://www.geek.com/microsoft/...

Windows 10 DOES have a keylogger.

Re:Ugh

[metrix007]

Not a shill, just not a rabid anti-ms fanboy. I use slackware, netbsd and windows 7.

You don't understand what a keylogger is. Kill yourself.

After Z it wraps back to A.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm holding out for 18.10, Anal Annihilator.

Re:After Z it wraps back to A.

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll be "Amazon (as) Always", and everything will take you to Amazon, as always.

Re:After Z it wraps back to A.

[tadas]

I kinda wish they'd called this release "Wascally Wabbit".

Ubuntu release names has been irrelevant...

[Anonymous Coward]

... since they missed the historical opportunity of honoring the creator of Linux kernel by naming 10.10 "masturbating monkeys".

The suspense is killing me!

[Gaygirlie]

Will "do-release-upgrade" manage to update the machine this time around without breaking Grub or anything else? Anyone wanna place bets?

Re:The suspense is killing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bet on it.
I've been burned too many times by too many operating systems.

I finally learned my lesson from the 12.04 upgrade: Never do a release upgrade again. EVER.

Re:The suspense is killing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never had an issue with doing a do-release-upgrade.

Re:The suspense is killing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoiler: no.

Source: I just upgraded a couple hours ago.

Re:The suspense is killing me!

[KGIII]

I've done it three times with 100% success and no issues except needing to reconfigure some samba settings - it even warned me about this and was unable to merge them together. I could have kept the original but I opted to wipe and just reconfigure.

Re:The suspense is killing me!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to hear that. What broke?

Linux 4.0 Raid Issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know if 4.2 fixes the RAID0 issues from 4.0 and 4.1?

So what does it change into during a full moon?

[sims 2]

Windows?

Re:So what does it change into during a full moon?

[theVarangian]

Heh... I'd mod you up but I don't have points, but here is something you might get a laugh out of: http://wumo.com/wumo/2013/01/3...

Re:So what does it change into during a full moon?

[fisted]

That would be a wolfwere though.

Ubuntu with tweaks

[iTrawl]

Installing cairo-dock, and, optionally, running xfwm4 as the WM, makes Ubuntu actually very usable in my case. Greased lightning usable. And cairo-dock even has some bling thrown in! It put it to the left and made it autohide, so it kind of looks like Unity when in use.

I like Unity's menu-in-titlebar feature. I lose that with cairo-dock, but that's compensated by not having a gnome-style top bar - well... you do, but it goes under the applications and comes up when you hover the clock (which overlays a small part of the titlebar (when application is maximised) that is otherwise useless anyway).

The root of my preferences lies in this need: as much space for _my_ application and as little as possible for the OS, but easily accessible when I need its functions, without running any occult desktop environments :)

Re:Ubuntu with tweaks

[erapert]

The root of my preferences lies in this need: as much space for _my_ application and as little as possible for the OS, but easily accessible when I need its functions, without running any occult desktop environments :)

Have you heard of tiling window managers? I use AwesomeWM myself; though I hear that i3 is really cool and the same for dwm and xmonad.

Going to the data center with Silver bullets to re

[Joe_Dragon]

Going to the data center with Silver bullets to reclaim the windows farm.

Scamonical

[Khyber]

If Canonical truly is fucking with 'community-intended' money, then they need to be taken to task. FTC, SEC, and a couple other alphabet agencies should be taking a close look at Canonical.

Re:Scamonical

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't. Riddell has had a bug up is his ass since Canonical made Kubuntu an entirely community supported distribution and laid him off as the sole employee who worked on it. Ever since then, he whines like a spoiled brat about Canonical every time he doesn't get his way about some trivial shit. One example of his childish behavior was the crying about Canonical not rubberstamping an expense for some pizza for some hackathon event for Kubuntu. He wanted blank check approval for the expense before the event, and Canonical told him to submit a expense request afterwards and they'll pay it then. Of course, since he works for another company he could easily asked them to provide the funds for his little pizza soiree and then be compensated by Canonical later, but instead he chose to yell and abuse the Ubuntu Community Council because he still hasn't got over his butthurt at being let go. Kubuntu is going to be just fine. In fact, it'll be better off without that fucker.

Re:Scamonical

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod up. +1 Informative.

Yeah, but...

[Rei]

I look forward to the next release, Xenophobic Xenu. And they say that there's going to be some big changes with Yogic Yosafbridge.

Re:Yeah, but...

[PincushionMan]

Personally I'm voting for Yawning Yggdrasil. I doubt a distro that folded in 2000 would mind too much. It was pretty innovative for its time, though with intelligent autoconfiguration, and making those darn Plug-N-Pray (err, Plug-N-Play) hardware devices work. Even had a LiveCD in 95 - assuming you had hardware capable of understanding El Torito booting.

Oh, darn. Yggdrasil is from the Norse Mythology, Yggdrasil is a just a Tree of Life, and not an animal. I'm disappointed.

I learned my lesson, dont want ubuntu

[FudRucker]

too many broken things right after a fresh clean install of ubuntu, ill stick with trusty ol Debian

it has been almost two years since slackware Slackware released a distro, thats a long time but at least Debian and Slackware can be depended on to actually make something rock solid and stable.

Re:I learned my lesson, dont want ubuntu

[Anonymous Coward]

here here

Re:I learned my lesson, dont want ubuntu

[Teun]

Where?

Me...

[Chris Mattern]

I'm looking forward to Xenophobic Xylophone...

Re:Me...

[Shirley Marquez]

That one has already gotten a name - Xenial Xerus. And last I checked, a xylophone is not an animal.

The release after that has not yet been named. I'm pulling for Yakety Yak from the 1958 song by The Coasters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Or if they prefer they can use the alternate spelling Yakkity Yak from the animated series from Canada and Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What I really want to know is what they will call the release after Zebra. Aambitious Aardvark, aanyone? It can also be argued that they won't actually have the alphabet crisis until they reach D, since the first three releases did not follow the alphabetic naming scheme that started with Dapper Drake. The first two were Warty Warthog and Hoary Hedgehog, and the third was inexplicably Breezy Badger rather than something beginning with C.

Perhaps the second alphabet series will be named for something other than animals. If they do musical instruments we could eventually have Xylophone.

waiting

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been waiting for like seven years for the prophecy foretold in an ancient Digg post to be fulfilled, but alas, I've been deceived. Wanking Walrus was only a myth it seems.

I used to love Ubuntu...

[plazman30]

I started using Ubuntu in the 5.x series. I loved it. I loved Gnome way more than KDE. The Gnome 3 came out. I thought that Unity was better than Gnome 3 and I happily continued to use Ubuntu. Then Gnome 3 became really good. I moved to Fedora, and started to flip flop back and forth every six months to compare the changes in Unity vs Gnome 3. I got to a point where I thought Gnome 3 had pretty much kicked Unity's ass and I saw no reason to go to Ubuntu.

Then I discovered Arch Linux. I don't think I could go back to a static distribution now. Getting the latest and greatest Gnome about 2 weeks after it comes out is awesome. And with 3.18 adding Google Drive support, I wanted 3.18 as fast as possible.

Outrageous!

[Anonymous Coward]

How could they not name it "Whiptail Wallaby"?!

ubuntu's side of the story, re: jonathan riddell

[dmoen]

https://web.archive.org/web/20150618010547/http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2015/05/29/community-council-statement-jonathan-riddell/

I'm not taking sides, just providing extra information that's not in the original post.

Where do they get the NAMES???

[courcoul]

On a related topic, where in the hell do they come up with these wackyfunny names for the releases???

Someone obviously has vast amounts of free time and a giant encyclopedia collection.

Re:Where do they get the NAMES???

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really hoping the following version gets named "Yakety Yak".

Re:Where do they get the NAMES???

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably generate them with one of several available mission-critical enterprise-class web-scale Rubygems:

* https://rubygems.org/gems/bazaar
* https://github.com/usmanbashir/haikunator

(...though this is still my favourite...)

Version numbers just make too much sense and are too easily usable in software (e.g. $version >= 1510000). It's much more efficient to use random strings mandating a gigantic case block. Better write a Javascript framework that handles all this.

Re:Where do they get the NAMES???

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't talk back!

Re:Where do they get the NAMES???

[Anonymous Coward]

They have version numbers, and in fact don't use the names on their main website. But what the names provide is better search terms for when you have problems and want to do a search related to your release, numbers don't tend to work very well for that.

Re:Where do they get the NAMES???

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, someone clearly has a lot of free time, because coming up with a new name once every 6 months would be sooo time consuming.

Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[tepples]

I actually ditched Windows completely due to better hardware support on Linux

For desktops or laptops? GNU/Linux seems to support desktop hardware fine, but lately, Windows supports small (10.1" or 11.6") laptop hardware better. I've been having trouble finding an 11.6 inch or smaller laptop that works well with GNU/Linux.*

The amount of fiddling on Ubuntu is minimal, but still there (still had to download graphics-drivers manually to get it to work), however, is nothing compared to all the fiddling I'd have to do on Windows and still not be happy / in control.

On a few laptops such as the EeeBook, volunteers for the DebianOn project couldn't get sound, Wi-Fi, or suspend working at all. Should I instead ask on Ubuntu Forums for what small laptops sold now work well with Xubuntu 15.xx?

* By "works well", I include at least graphics, multi-window window management, audio, Wi-Fi, suspend, and a bootloader that doesn't beg the user to wipe the drive every time it is turned on the way a Chromebook with Crouton does.

Re: Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Tepples you keep posting this shit, and you are gonna get the same answer. Get a fucking MacBook Air and be done with it. For Christ sakes man. Too being so dense.

Re:Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[LichtSpektren]

I'm currently running Ubuntu 15.10 MATE on an HP Stream 13 and everything works perfectly.

Re: Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[tepples]

Windows supports small (10.1" or 11.6") laptop hardware better

Get a [...] MacBook Air

For three times the price. That just supports Windows fans' "Windows is more affordable than UNIX" canard.

Re:Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[Blaskowicz]

Ubuntu 15.10 is likely precisely what's needed - linux 4.2 feels bleeding edge.
Should work with recent Intel graphics (never buy anything with PowerVR unless it's strictly for Windows or Android..) and acts as a stop gap to Ubuntu 16.04 or Mint 18.
Then everything will be great - in a very small window before new hardware is released again.

Re: Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[khellendros1984]

So? Is paying the price for hardware that does what you want the problem, or is it the idea of inadvertently supporting the argument of someone that you disagree with? It looks like the Lenovo S21e will work with kernel 4.2 (and has some issues with earlier versions, due to the touchpad and wifi). Something like Dell's XPS13 "Developer Edition" comes preloaded with Ubuntu. Although it's a 13" screen, it's got a tiny bezel, so it should be similar in size to a smaller-screened laptop. Of course, it hits on your apparent cost constraints again ;-)

Canonical has 161 laptops certified for Ubuntu 14.04. You could cross-reference that list with a list of 10 and 11.6 inch machines to find one that you'd consider suitable.

Re: Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[tepples]

The problem is that (warranted) hardware that does what I want and fits in a nondescript bag used to cost $300. Now, after the decline of netbooks, it is thought to cost $900. But thank you for recommending the Lenovo S21e. I've added it to my short list.

Re: Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[khellendros1984]

Well, from past discussions, it's clear that your requirements often seem to run counter to what the market is doing. Netbooks have basically split three ways: Ultrabooks (often still small, often expensive, almost always Windows-only), Chromebooks (often cheap, locked into ChromeOS if you like your warranty, often small), and tablets/convertibles (usually ARM with binary blob drivers, usually difficult to get an alternate OS on). So, I see the dilemma; you're basically relegated to unpopular use-cases of hardware that may not be supported long.

Re:Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[shellbeach]

For desktops or laptops? GNU/Linux seems to support desktop hardware fine, but lately, Windows supports small (10.1" or 11.6") laptop hardware better. I've been having trouble finding an 11.6 inch or smaller laptop that works well with GNU/Linux.*

You mentioned chromebooks with crouton, but I've got perfect hardware support for two chromebooks (Dell Chromebook 11 and Toshiba Chromebook 2 13") running Ubuntu natively (no useless ChromeOS is present on either chromebook). (The great John Lewis has a simple script to rewrite the bios and bootloader; I highly recommend it). Hardware support was flaky a year ago, but since 15.04 it's been pretty much native support out of the box (the only exception being the Toshiba's microphone, which should be fixed in 15.10 with kernel 4.2).

The end result is a very cheap, light and functional linux laptop. I'd especially recommend the Chromebook 2 -- the screen on that thing is amazing.

Re: Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use cheap hardware at your own peril

You know...

[rochrist]

Maybe all these developers and outfits could begin to forgo the cutesy release names. It's really getting old, not to mention harder to find decent names.

Re:ubuntu's side of the story, re: jonathan riddel

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically admitting they were in the wrong and wound up J.R. so much, he appeared to lose the plot in frustration. Hardly anything new. When money is your primary objective, things will get worse for everyone else.

Still no Unity 8

[Merk42]

Mark Shuttleworth has said that Mir and Unity8 won't arrive until Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial Xerus."

Just like 6 months ago we heard it wouldn't be in 15.04, but would be in 15.10 and 6 months before that we heard it wouldn't be in 14.10 but would be in 15.04 and 6 months before that...
Wager on hearing the same thing 6 months from now? "Well 16.04 is an LTS, it's all about stability, so no risk taking with another version of Unity. It will be available in 16.10".

Looking more and more like a Microsoft product

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon the leading Linux desktops will reach the degree of obnoxiousness that we all have come to expect from Microsoft.

LMDE still systemd free

[walterbyrd]

Systemd Will Be Adopted Starting With Linux Mint 18 And LMDE 3
http://linuxg.net/systemd-will-be-adopted-starting-with-linux-mint-18-and-lmde-3/

Still able to avoid that awful crap for another few years.

Does parent post even make sense?

[walterbyrd]

> Ubuntu "just works
> Is it perfect? No.

Can't I say the same about Windows, or OSX, or Android, or anything?

Ubuntu used to be a great distro, until that awful Gnome3 distro (10.11?). Going downhill fast since then.

Re: Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

I own the XPS 13 developer edition 2015. Not usable out of the box. Dell really fumbled on that product. The Linux experience was very much the patch and recompile your kernel one.

Re:ubuntu's side of the story, re: jonathan riddel

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for the link! It forces me to ask the question:

Is the Community Council on crack?

They described Riddell's actions thusly:

Over the course of the next two and a half years Jonathan became increasingly confrontational in his interactions with the Community Council over these two items. At times his wording caused offense and were potentially harmful to the community due to his making worst case assumptions. [1] One of the best examples of this behavior is the March 19th Community Council meetings. Jonathan was demanding that the Community Council make a statement that agreed with his position and was unwilling to accept the decision that the Community Council made with regard to waiting until Canonical had finished a review of the IP policy. In that same meeting Jonathan was insensitive to the requests that he be more respectful and that he was making the situation more difficult.[2]

Now, we see the references at the bottom [1] and [2]:

[1] On the 23rd of February 2015 Jonathan made the following statement:
âoeIf the funding from October 2012 really isnâ(TM)t included in the current community fund and it simply has been stolen by Canonical this is worse than I had thought.â

[2]On March 19th of 2015 Jonathan made the following statements:

        âoeczajkowski: best stop giving in to their stalling and just make a statementâ
        âoemhall119: make a public statement saying it is untrue and irreleventâ
        âoepleia2: so make a public statement that it is untrueâ
        âoeczajkowski: so time to give up on the canonical legal dept, they have been stalling for a year, enough alreadyâ
        âoeIâ(TM)m astonished that the CC doesnâ(TM)t understand the basics of free software or how it can be harmed by claims that our software is not Freeâ

Given how they described Riddell's statements, I thought there would be cursing, vulgarity, personal attacks, trashing other people's hard work, and general rubbing people the wrong way.

All I see here is someone saying, "Please answer me, I've been waiting a long time." in direct no-nonsense language. At worst, it makes him an incessant whiner, if (and only if) the issue is not important.

Considering he's asking if Canonical is embezzling donation funds (among other things), I'd say that issue is pretty f****** important.

Seems to me Riddell is asking why the emperor isn't wearing any clothes, and the tailors of the Community Council are starting to look a little uncomfortable.

I'll check back again

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as they drop Unity. And Mark Shuttleworth.

Re: Better HW support in Linux: desktop or laptop

[khellendros1984]

That's sad to hear. The impression of a review that I found was that the system's flawed at even a hardware level (basic things like the mouse and keyboard, even). It looks like a beautiful machine, and I'm sure it would be great if the kinks can be worked around in software, but I don't think I'd blame anyone for returning the thing as defective , especially if they're going pay a premium for nicer hardware.

If not now, not until a while later...

[Shirley Marquez]

If Mir and Unity 8 aren't out now, then they should be postponed to Yakkity Yak or whatever they end up calling 16.10. An LTS distro is not the right place for the first public release.

Oh yay

[Anonymous Coward]

A new version of a shitty distro based on another shitty distro is out.

Ubuntu: The PHP of the Linux distros.

Debian + Fluxbox works great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Debian + Fluxbox. I don't understand need of all flossy things provided by heavy GNOME and UBUNTU by default. I do active development on Android studio, and C++ application dev on Emacs. It works great on my laptop battery. For mailing gnus is great.
HDMI with xrandr works good (sometimes audio card selection gives problem). The only issue started occurring is after I started using systemd. Boot time is longer with longer to start wifi network, disk checking blah blah. It takes real long time.

I am not OS expert, but this suits my requirements well. No bloated softwares, only the things that you need(except systemd).

Linux MInt

[Anonymous Coward]

LMDE Linux Mint Debian Edition is something I look forward to. Ubuntu and unity and default behaviour are not something I can get accustomed to. Besides, Mint developers will be knowing going with Ubuntu can be risky for longer term. Debian is here to stay. LMDE 2 is good enough.