Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Will Ship With Linux Kernel 4.4 LTS

Posted by timothy on from the up-the-ranks dept.

prisoninmate writes: The current daily build of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) remains based on the Linux 4.2 kernel packages of the stable Ubuntu 15.10 (Wily Werewolf) operating system, while the latest and most advanced Linux 4.3 kernel is tracked on the master-next branch of the upcoming operating system. In the meantime, the Ubuntu Kernel Team announced plans for moving to Linux kernel 4.4 for the final release of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system.

101 comments

  1. systemD by dattaway · · Score: 0, Troll

    Yes, but it will have systemD...

    1. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      And, it's dropping of stderr that makes troubleshooting problems starting services very difficult.

    2. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      systemd works just fine for casual desktop users. Of course on servers, swallowing stderr and a lot of syslog messages makes it a pain.

    3. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Just because it is old doesn't make it bad, Mr systemd fanboi.

    4. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hopefully someone figures out how to remove it!

    5. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who cares?

    6. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What moron modded this up?
      Hint: man 5 systemd-system.conf - DefaultStandardOutput and DefaultStandardError options.

    7. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone who wants their Linux systems to boot reliably will care!

      I used Debian for many years, without experiencing any problems booting it. Then systemd was included in Debian. The first update I did that installed systemd ended up rendering my system unbootable, and it was nearly impossible to debug. I finally got it fixed, after far too much effort. Only a week or so later, while doing another routine update of my Debian packages, my system was once again rendered unbootable thanks to a problem with systemd.

      As somebody who has also followed the Debian mailing lists and bug tracker for many years, I quickly became aware that I wasn't alone. What's more, there were a lot of people reporting a lot of different problems, all involving systemd. After my second disaster involving systemd, I resolved to never use it again. I backed up my files, and since then I've been happily running FreeBSD. In many ways it's like what Debian used to be, but it's also much better. Best of all there's no systemd!

    8. Re:systemD by ZorinLynx · · Score: 2

      Can someone explain why ALL THE MAJOR DISTROS have switched to systemd, when all I've seen is universal hate for it?

      Either distro maintainers are masochists, or there's someone pulling strings somewhere to get this bullshit into every distribution.

      We've slowed our move to newer versions of RHEL and Ubuntu at my workplace because of systemd. Eventually we're going to have to deal with it, but we're putting it off as long as we can. Everyone I know hates this thing. HOW did it become so pervasive?

    9. Re: systemD by buchanmilne · · Score: 1

      Except it doesn't. The examples provided in the past supposedly proving this used the wrong Type= value (should have been forking, not left to the default which is 'simple').

    10. Re:systemD by gQuigs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sure. systemd is fine. People hate change. Hate is louder than praise.

      I like it.

    11. Re: systemD by buchanmilne · · Score: 1

      This must be debian-specific. On my 4 personal machines running one distro using systemd, and all the systems at work running a totally unrelated distro that also uses systemd, I have never seen this (neither distro is Debian-based).

    12. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Most of us who dislike systemd have absolutely no problem with change. In fact, it's the one thing we've come to expect, especially those of us who are professional system administrators. People like us have each dealt with more versions of UNIX, Linux, Windows and other OSes than you could possibly imagine. Change is the least of our concerns. It's something we've dealt with every day, for decades on end, without even thinking about.

      The problem with systemd isn't that it's a change. The problem with systemd is that, in our experience, it suffers from a huge number of serious problems! We're talking about problems ranging from logging output that's not easily usable through to systems that unexpectedly stop booting properly and that are difficult to diagnose.

      We dislike it because it causes us nothing but problems, and these problems can't even be easily fixed. A bad architectural decision, like the use of binary logging, can't simply be patched away! The only reasonable way to "fix" it is to not use systemd and any Linux distro that uses systemd.

    13. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm sure there's plenty of reading material out there.

      It was written by the same cadre of villains responsible for PulseAudio. Unfortunately they're Redhat employees. Debian's governance bodies had slowly been stacked with Redhat sympathizers who snuck it in through the backdoor (used an inappropriate committee to make the decision) and a Redhatter cast the tie breaking vote. When the community demanded a general vote, there was one option for "let's just go with systemd" and like 4 options for differing levels of rejection. By splitting the opposition into 4 categories, the systemd-friendly option managed to get a plurality of the votes.

      Ubuntu had to follow suit because Canonical doesn't want to expend the resources to maintain an init system anymore.

      It is a genuinely surprising outcome. There are attempts to fork Debian (Devuon (sp?)), but it seems many people who are serious about avoiding it are moving to BSD (where systemd will not appear since it relies on features specific to the Linux kernel).

    14. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      universal hate? No, there's just a very very small vocal minority. in places that matter, like dev lists, people who want to make linux better welcome systemd. I think the hold outs are the ones that have never done reinstalls, customized their system to the max, etc. They already have 'fast' systems, and see any change to the old way of doing things as bad. They are the minority. Also, most of them are users and don't contribute back.

    15. Re:systemD by invictusvoyd · · Score: 2

      the only reasonable way to "fix" it is to not use systemd and any Linux distro that uses systemd.

      Which means pretty much every major distro out there .

    16. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      But stderr is dropped by systemd by policy. That makes it very difficult to troubleshoot start-up problems.

    17. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That doesn't work. systemd throws away stderr as is its policy.

    18. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Stderr is something no modern user understands so systemd is correct in throwing it away.

    19. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      systemd has a policy against logging stderr. On a desktop system that is fine, but in a server that is a showstopper.

    20. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And why does systemd by default throw away stderr?

    21. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why lie about it? The ruler of systemd said he hates stderr and people that use it so he decided to be an ass and throw it away. Throw it away.

    22. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only old morons that need to be put down care abt stderr.

    23. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your hero says we need to die for understanding UNIX concepts like stdout and stderr.

    24. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. systemd is correct in dropping it.

    25. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. Only old people care about stderr.

    26. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If that's true, then no modern user has the mental competence to be using a computer. Sad.

    27. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      And that is why people hate systemd. Its creator doesn't understand UNIX.

    28. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. stderr is no longer needed.

    29. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you don't make mistakes then you don't need stderr.

    30. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because stderr is not important.

    31. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree. stderr is just not important any longer.

    32. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      U only tink u need stderr.

    33. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. We need stderr, and systemd's policy against logging it makes life difficult.

    34. Re:systemD by thegarbz · · Score: 3, Informative

      Stderr is not and never has been dropped. RTFM.

    35. Re: systemD by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Informative

      Of course on servers, swallowing stderr

      It doesn't. Not per design, not per default configuration. stderr is logged and can be redirected to the console. That is if you ever bothered to read the manual.

    36. Re: systemD by carnivore302 · · Score: 1

      Try updating /etc/speech-dispatcher/speechd.conf and restart the daemon. Systemd will state everything is fine, but it isn't; it fails to kill the old process. Maybe this isn't casual desktop usage, but it's just not supposed to work that way.

      --
      Please login to access my lawn
    37. Re: systemD by dotancohen · · Score: 1

      And that is why people hate systemd. Its creator doesn't understand UNIX.

      Of this whole stupid shit-fest, THIS is the comment that needs to be modded up. And I'm typing this on a systemd-based Linux distro.

      --
      It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
    38. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If a professional UNIX sysadmin doesn't grok stderr, they aren't a professional UNIX admin.

      Oh. You said Linux admin. Nevermind.

    39. Re:systemD by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Can someone explain why ALL THE MAJOR DISTROS have switched to systemd, when all I've seen is universal hate for it?

      The hate isn't universal.

      It's certainly easier for distribution integrators than the old RC scripts. Also, there has been considerable external pressure because some of the major packages like Gnome more or less depended on systemd, so not having it meant no Gnone which was a showstopper. Actually you can now run Gnome without systemd but for a while that wasn't possible.

      Another reason for the hate is that there are a lot of awfully obnoxious systemd fanbois out there who make claims like:
      * You hate change (literally ad-homenim, attaxking the person not the message)
      * Making claims about things that are only possible with systemd that demonstrably are not (I debunked a bunch of these in the last thread)

      There's a lot of FUD on both sides, and frankly after the PulseAudio debacle, a lot of people have a deep distrust of Lennart Pottering (well justified IMO), and are incredibly leery of making the core of a Linux system depend on code written by a cowboy coder who doesn't seem to care about stability or quality.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    40. Re: systemD by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 1

      [sarcasm]the biggest gnu/linux server company (redhat) clearly does not know what they're doing by implementing systemd into their distribution. [/sarcasm]

      btw, i also hated systemd until i was forced to use/learn it. now i only hate aspects of it but overall perceive it as an improvement.

    41. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed. The systemd people know far better than you, the end users, what it is that you do and do not need. Let us worship the systemd team and their very finite wisdom.

    42. Re: systemD by kthreadd · · Score: 1

      That doesn't work. systemd throws away stderr as is its policy.

      Is not reading the manual also a policy among sysadmins these days? Hint, it doesn't throw it away. Just tell it where it should go and it will go there.

    43. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's certainly easier for distribution integrators than the old RC scripts. Also, there has been considerable external pressure because some of the major packages like Gnome more or less depended on systemd, so not having it meant no Gnone which was a showstopper. Actually you can now run Gnome without systemd but for a while that wasn't possible.

      Just to clarify. GNOME depends on a D-Bus interface that logind (a systemd component) implements. It does not depend on systemd itself, only the D-Bus interface. Anyone could implement it, and I believe at least OpenBSD and FreeBSD has patched ConsoleKit to do it. Also note that logind although it is part of systemd can run without the systemd init system. For example Ubuntu 14.04 has logind but uses Upstart.

    44. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem with systemd is that, in our experience, it suffers from a huge number of serious problems! We're talking about problems ranging from logging output that's not easily usable through to systems that unexpectedly stop booting properly and that are difficult to diagnose.

      I've used systemd in production since Fedora 15, that's four years ago now? Since then also on RHEL, Ubuntu and Debian.
      I have never EVER run into a system that couldn't boot because systemd did something bad.
      I don't use pre-production or beta versions though.

    45. Re: systemD by kthreadd · · Score: 1

      Debian had some early issues when they switched to systemd in the testing distribution, the one that you are not supposed to run in production or anything that you think of as important. But of course that's what people did. I have used Debian 8 now for a while and never run into something like that.

    46. Re: systemD by Eunuchswear · · Score: 1

      You claim

      systemctl restart speechd

      doesn't work?

      On what system, what does the unit file look like, where is the bug report?

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
    47. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Found the only intelligence in this whole exchange.

      You can tell when an idiot is talking because they say unfounded idiocy like, "people who have lived through absolutely nothing but change are scared of change." One has to be extremely arrogant and mentally retarded to make such declarations.

      I'm not sure how it happened, but we've had an entire generation grow up and with mental retardation and take hold of everything which was good - and they've fucked up, without fail, everything they've touched. Mental retardation is a bitch.

       

    48. Re:systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      God damn your misleading words. You write intentionally or incompetently missing the point. "Change" isn't the problem, it never was, it is people being stripped of options by fools pushing SystemD who believe they know better than everybody else. People who enjoy freedom to choose solutions based on their own use cases are being demonized.

    49. Re: systemD by daid303 · · Score: 1

      stderr is send to the logging facilities by default. Which makes debugging issues easier instead of harder...

    50. Re: systemD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      On what system

      It's clearly on his system.

      where is the bug report?

      It's here.

    51. Re: systemD by cthulhu11 · · Score: 1

      Wish I had mod points for you. Linux: *still* no bundled compressing file system.

  2. Doesn't matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Doesn't matter.
    systemd turns any LTS into a linux that s*cks.

  3. Re:But will unity suck any less? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Took me some time, but eventually could get used to Unity. Usable now, less bugs and quite convenient - again give it time to get used to it.

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  4. Re:But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Title says it all

    It is not bad with Mate or XFCE

  5. Re:But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Same experience here. I was KDE only but after using Unity for a while (since 14.04 IIRC), I think it's one of the best (if not the best) UI for a desktop.

    My only complain are notifications. Not being able to interact with them is just plain stupid.

  6. Re:But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    sudo apt-get install mate-desktop
    sudo apt-get purge unity*
    sudo reboot

  7. Re:But will unity suck any less? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    'sudo' is your prompt?

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  8. Re:But will unity suck any less? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

    Hmmm http://askubuntu.com/questions/187022/how-can-i-send-a-custom-desktop-notification
    To customize a few stuff like notifs time ... http://askubuntu.com/questions/110969/notify-send-ignores-timeout
    Also some applications, eg skype, allow to enter a script path in the settings, triggered each time a notification is sent.

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  9. LTS? by jamstar7 · · Score: 1

    I thought 15.10 was going to be a LTS release. They push it back to every two years now instead of 18 months?

    --
    Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
    1. Re:LTS? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

      nah

      --
      Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
    2. Re:LTS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know why you thought that. Ubuntu LTS releases have always been on a 2 year schedule.

    3. Re:LTS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Please tell us you haven't used odd-numered Ubuntu releases in production before due to the erroneous belief that you were running LTS versions. -PCP

    4. Re:LTS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Addendum: or even even-numbered released that don't end in ".04" ... -PCP

    5. Re:LTS? by umafuckit · · Score: 2

      No, thankfully 15.10 is not LTS. I don't know if the problem is widespread, but on my i7 X99 system I saw a big performance nosedive on some CPU-intensive tasks. Desktop locking up, computations becoming 3 to 4 times slower, etc. This happened both with an in-place upgrade from 15.04 and when running from the 15.010 USB stick. Downgrading to 14.04 fixed everything.

      --
      soylentnews.org
  10. Re:Xenial is for Cows by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 0

    fyi
    apt-get install cowsay

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  11. Re:But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    'sudo' is your prompt?

    No

  12. Re:Xenial is for Cows by armanox · · Score: 0

    sudo apt-get moo

    --
    I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  13. Re:Xenial is for Cows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The irony is that the apt-get package manager has super cow powers.

  14. Re:But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just install Xubuntu or MATE and don't worry about it. XFCE has advanced far enough to be a suitable replacement for MATE and is less resource hungry.

    Even the crap GNOME3 is better than Unity.

    KDE is the only "full" DE that doesn't kill OpenGL performance though. I don't care for it though, it's always been so buggy (does QT breed bad code or something? QT apps tend to be the buggiest). The only other alternative is to run something like OpenBox as the XFCE or MATE window manager, that keeps OGL performance where it should be.

  15. Avoiding systemd for now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We'll be sticking with the 14.04 LTS since it should be maintained until the 2018 LTS release. Hopefully by then systemd will either be an unpleasant memory or will have been beaten into shape (as PulseAudio eventually was, mostly...)

    But if it's still a hot mess in 2018 then we'll be moving to FreeBSD for sure.

  16. Re:But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes

  17. Re:Xenial is for Cows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    apt-get make me a sandwich

  18. Move along, nothing to see here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Recently, Kroah-Hartman announced that there will be one longterm kernel per year (the kernel released in January of each year). Linux 4.4 is expected for January 2016.

    Ubuntu LTS releases come out every other April. Makes perfect sense for them to employ the longterm kernel released a few months earlier. That would be Linux 4.4 for Ubuntu 16.04. Nothing newsworthy, really.

  19. Why SystemD was adopted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    SystemD is the big push by Redhat. Redhat is making a lot of other tools they provide dependent on SystemD. Most of the other distros don't see the danger.

    SystemD is hideously complex. It is far more than an init system but rather controls now video, sound, and a host of other things. Guaranteed, the overly complex nature of SystemD will BREAK MOST DISTROS. Period.

    The sole exceptions? Redhat and of course, CentOS. Redhat engineers will make sure that "Redhat Certified" systems with a subset of thoroughly tested hardware and software will just work. Everything else will break, hard and bad, when it goes past the limited ability of Distros to test things.

    Most of the people running Distros are technically adept but naive and stupid when it comes to politics and business. Redhat can only make LOTS of money by being the only Linux Distro that works. They are mildly profitable now but like all businesses want monopoly rents. Most distros are stupidly handing it over because they trust the technical people at Redhat.

    Ubuntu, Debian, etc. are making a big mistake embracing SystemD. ANY system running anything other than bog standard hardware and software packages will break, hard and bad, since the code base is so massive and complex.

    I certainly won't be running anything using SystemD. I'd rather use Windows as revolting as that sounds* than spend five consecutive weekends just trying to get my computer to boot and stay up.

    Add to it that Lennart Poettering ships legendarily bad code that has oodles of bugs, and you get the picture. [At least Theo Van Radt of OpenBSD ships pretty clean and pretty bug free code and fixes things fast when they break.]

    *Windows resource hogging, and system/software updates are horrific compared to Linux/BSD. But at least a vendor install boots up the computer.

  20. Re: But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    sudo apt-get purge systemd*

    FTFY

  21. Re:But will unity suck any less? by jones_supa · · Score: 2

    But will unity suck any less?

    Unity is one of the rare remaining DEs that don't have the amateurish flat look. Windows 10, OS X, KDE, GNOME, all went with it.

  22. Re: But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He stole my prompt!
    Bastard.
    Now I'll have to get a new one. Maybe open up a Kickstarter campaign to fund a project for it...

  23. What a coincidence by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3

    Just as I scrolled into this article, 15.10 hung on me again.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
    1. Re:What a coincidence by umafuckit · · Score: 1

      Ah, so you're experiencing this sort of shit too, then?

      --
      soylentnews.org
    2. Re:What a coincidence by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      This is on an HP Pavillion 11 inch laptop. Not the best hardware and almost certainly my last HP device. It seems to be associated with use of an external monitor connected with HDMI. I had one or two hangs over several months on 15.04 but on 15.10 its every day. I will most likely go back to 14.04 for the time being.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    3. Re:What a coincidence by umafuckit · · Score: 2

      This is what I did for my desktop. Back to mint 17.x (which is 14.04). I do image registration with elastix and my registration times jumped from about 10 to 15 minutes with 14.04 to about 45 to 50 minutes with 15.10. I also work with the MATLAB parallel computing toolbox. Connecting to parallel workers normally takes a few seconds. With 15.10 it took over five minutes or never happened at all. Also the desktop (KDE) would lock up for many seconds at a time when the workers were running. Total train-wreck. Same symptoms running off a freshly downloaded 15.10 USB stick.

      --
      soylentnews.org
    4. Re: What a coincidence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have the same problems with 15.10 and 15.04 running from a USB stick. Can't even install either of them without the installer freezing the entire machine. 14.04 has no such issues, haven't tried 14.10.

  24. Re:But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No thanks. Mint with CInnamon for me.

    It is the top distro on Distrowatch for that reason, since 2010 year on year growth to top #1.

  25. Re: But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe.

  26. Re:But will unity suck any less? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    PS1="sudo "

    ...I must say that putting PS1="${PS1}sudo " in your shell's dot rc file would make a pretty fun prank.

  27. Re: systemD better than UNIX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    UNIX and POSIX will become obsolete.
    Better and more powerful systems and concepts will take their place.
    It was a good standard for it's time but now UNIX/POSIX is becoming outdated and insufficient.

  28. Re:But will unity suck any less? by Teun · · Score: 1

    And KDE is about the only one left that you can configure to your own taste, including non-flat.

    --
    "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
  29. Re: systemD better than UNIX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > UNIX and POSIX will become obsolete.

    I think you misspelled "mature standard."

    > Better and more powerful systems and concepts will take their place.

    Yep.

    > It was a good standard for it's time but now UNIX/POSIX is becoming outdated and insufficient.

    Then why not replace it instead of breaking it? There's an old saying: "If it works, don't fuck with it."

  30. Re: But will unity suck any less? by xd1936 · · Score: 1

    Amateurish? Gradients look tacky and 90's; Flat and clean is so much nicer. All of those OS' you named moved to clean designs for a reason...

  31. Re: But will unity suck any less? by jones_supa · · Score: 1

    I don't mean gradients but a sense of depth.