Canonical To Release Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS 'Xenial Xerus' Tomorrow (betanews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Canonical announced today that it will be releasing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on Thursday, April 21. The sixth major release of Ubuntu Long-Term Support (LTS) features the new 'snap' package format and LXD pure-container hypervisor. "The addition of 'snaps' for faster and simpler updates, and the LXD container hypervisor for ultra-fast and ultra-dense cloud computing demonstrate a commitment to customer needs that sets Ubuntu apart as the platform for innovation and scale," said Dustin Kirkland who leads platform strategy at Canonical. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS introduces a new application format, the 'snap', which can be installed alongside traditional deb packages. The snap format is much easier to secure and much easier to produce, and offers operational benefits for organizations managing many Ubuntu devices, which will bring more robust updates and more secure applications across all form factors from phone to cloud.

Comments

Might be asking too much

[ilsaloving]

I may be asking too much here, but I would love to know what people think of 16.04 from a real-world, practical perspective. What can you do with it that you couldn't with previous versions? What, in your opinion, has improved? Any issues? For example, I haven't been keeping a close eye, so this is the first time I've heard of this new snap system. Is it any good?

But I suspect the forum will just be filled with the usual "systemd sux!" and "pulseaudio sux" and "I can't stand Unity, and Shuttleworth is an asshole, use linux mint or instead!"

But here's hoping for a civil discussion for once.

Re:Might be asking too much

[xtronics]

Snap is a really bad idea - instead of a common version of a lib - there are many - so code depending on a bug never gets fixed. Think of Windoze bloat..

The beauty of the apt system is it polishes code over time.

There is a way to install custom libs for development etc. - snap is mostly aimed at making microsoft happy and moving people away from other Debian based distributions.

Full disclosure - I don't trust Canonical the for profit company behind Ubuntu - and the name stinks too.

Re:Might be asking too much

[Okian Warrior]

I may be asking too much here, but I would love to know what people think of 16.04 from a real-world, practical perspective. What can you do with it that you couldn't with previous versions? What, in your opinion, has improved? Any issues?

I'd be happy to oblige, except...

If I mention one problem, people are going to say "that's not ubuntu, it's the desktop!"

If I mention another problem, people are going to say "that's an easy fix! Just go to /etc/mumble/bimple and edit fragbum.cfg file. Navigate to the "Enable Blather Frills" line and set the 1 to a 2 and that'll fix it.

(Don't believe me? Try changing the swappiness: "sudo bash -c "echo 'vm.swappiness = 15' >> /etc/sysctl.conf". What the heck is swappiness anyway, and why did I need to change it?)

If I mention a problem in any application, it's always "It's free. If you don't like it, why don't you build your *own* video editor?".

I can't just report a bug on a project website, I have to register and "become part of the team!". Ten years after, and I'm *still* getting E-mails from the GCC project from a bug I posted. ("Respond with Unsubscribe" doesn't work, because my E-mail provider changes the subject line.)

I've given up on both bug reporting and learning about programs.

Basically, when I get an error message I just cut/paste the error into the search bar, click on the stack exchange link of the *first* person to get that error, and cut/paste the answer into my system. Usually it starts "sudo apt-get ".

(I just recently fixed my emacs to not show the intro screen on startup. It took me 2 tries: firstly, I cut/paste the requisite line "(setq inhibit-splash-screen t)" only to find that I *already* have that in my config file! So then I tried adding "(setq inhibit-startup-message t)" and that didn't work either.

I had to navigate: Options -> customize emacs -> top-level customization -> environment group -> initialization and set "inhibit startup screen" to on.

All that seems reasonable if you know ahead of time where that option lives, but I defy anyone to find that option, knowing what you want to do and knowing that there's an option somewhere that does it. You have to sort through mounds of pages and options.

Oh, and the options aren't always in alphabetical order, so even if you are following the StackExchange answer, it's always 'jest a liddle bit harder' than normal.)

Re:Who is...

[narcc]

I don't see what all the Ubuntu hate is about these days.

This is normal. Ubuntu was exciting, a Linux distro that was suitable for the desktop. They'd even mail out free disks for you to distribute to friends and family, spreading the Good News, the gospel of Linus. Slashdot loved it. It was easy enough for your grandmother to use, painless to setup, and required very little maintenance. Everyone was happy.

Then, it became popular. It was easy to find answers to questions, support, drivers, whatever you needed.

Slashdot hates popular things -- especially popular things that are easy to use and support. If you want to be cool, be intentionally obtuse. Slack, Arch, and Gentoo are a safe bet for now.

Re:What in the world is a snap?

[doom]

Okay, so software libraries were invented to have a standard place to put shared, common code, which allows bug fixes and so on to be applied in one place.

And so stuff like "snap" packages are much less annoying, because every app gets it's own different versions of the libraries.

But this means that if, for example, you try to fix a bug by updating a library, the snap package that uses that library won't get the fix, because it's go it's own variant of the library.

And to actually fix a bug in a library, you need to update the version embedded in each snap package...

(Someone please tell me this is wrong.)

Re:What in the world is a snap?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that's it.

But what's worse, you need to update the whole snap package. That assumes that whoever built it is tracking for vulnerabilities and updating the snaps. If statistics on docker images is any indicator, that's going to be very poorly done, if at all.

So yeah, welcome to the year of Linux Malware....