Ubuntu 16.10 Released, Ready to Download (omgubuntu.co.uk)

After six months of development, Ubuntu 16.10, the latest stable release of the world's most popular desktop Linux distro, is now available to download. The ISO image file of Ubuntu 16.10 is a little larger (up from 1.4GB to 1.5GB). OMGUbuntu talks about the new features (condensed): Ubuntu 16.10 is not a big update over Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, released back in April. If you were hoping it'd be a compelling or must-have upgrade you'll be sadly disappointed. There are a number of small improvements to the Unity desktop and the Compiz window manager that powers it. Improvements that help everything work that little bit faster, and that little bit smoother. Ubuntu 16.10 also performs better in virtual machines thanks to the new Unity Low Graphics Mode. An all-new version of the Nautilus file manager also features, and is packed with some significant UI and UX differences. Plus, as always, there's a newer Linux kernel to enjoy.

Comments

Re:Most popular?

[Anonymous Coward]

Distrowatch itself affirms that its page rankings are "a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality, and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more."

https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F0278lsn,%2Fm%2F03x5qm

Re:Most popular?

[i.r.id10t]

Of course, there is also LMDE - Linux Mint Debian Edition. Rollign release based on Debian -testing plus some customized Mint stuff.

Re:systemd

[sittingnut]

ubuntu comes with a no systemd option.

Or stay on LTS

[Zo0ok]

I have always upgraded Ubuntu to the latest version. But 16.04 is LTS and the rate of change is not very high (it was long since I needed to upgrade to get something I did not have access to in the earlier version). So I think about remaining on LTS, for the first time ever. Thoughts on that?

Re:Or stay on LTS

[somenickname]

It's been a few years since the non-LTS versions were a compelling upgrade. Traditionally you'd upgrade if you needed a newer kernel (primarily for hardware support) or for some reason needed the newest version of a software package. These days those arguments are no longer very interesting because new kernels get backported to older versions and, if you just need a newer version of a specific package, using a PPA is easier than upgrading the entire system.

The entire ecosystem has really stabilized at this point (with a few exceptions). At a superficial level, I'm not even sure if I could tell the difference between 14.04 and 16.04. So, I'd probably stick with the LTS versions unless you just want to fiddle with the latest bits. Ubuntu LTS versions make for excellent workhorse machines (both desktop and server) so if you are trying to get real work done, LTS is where you want to be.

Re:Kubuntu

[blackomegax]

Try neon. Plasma 5.8 LTS is baller

Re:systemd

[Ungrounded Lightning]

ubuntu comes with a no systemd option.

Good to know.
  - How does one use it?
  - How do you KNOW no systemd hair is still tangled in your system?
  - Do all the components work correctly when you opt out of systemd? Nothing breaks or performs substantially more poorly?
  - Are they all supported as well in both environments? No obscure "gotcha"s?

Re:systemd

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Honest question: in what use case does systemd bother you?

I'm in a startup, still on angel funding and strapped for resources, building a multi-layered platform. One of the four-or-more layers is implemented on a machine about the power of a smartphone/credit-card-computer in the raspberry/beaglebone/etc. class. That layer needs an O.S., and it's internet-facing, so it needs to be secure - and auditable.

Posix-compatible OSes, such as Linux, should be ideal. But there's that little matter of being reasonably sure that they're not full of security holes or reliability issues, and doing so on a shoestring, using a handfull of people who have a LOT of OTHER stuff to do in order to get through the market window before the wolf gets to our door.

Even if systemd were solid as a rock and the best thing in init systems since pre-slicing was applied to bread, it's an extra complication - with its fingers in a lot of pies. That makes security auditing much harder and more time consuming. And THAT makes it "more expensive than money" for us - to the point that the current move of Linux versions to systemd may drive us to abandon Linux entirely for something else. (OpenBSD would be one contender. A plethora of other, stripped-down-to-minimal-functionality, OSes also come to mind.) (The main reason we haven't done so already is that we can't afford that effort, either, until our concept's proven and we must bite the security bullet in order to ship.)

One of the great things about pre-systemd Unix and unix-like systems was the design philosophy, which explicitly drove strong modularity, with simple modules that did single jobs and were easy to check - or encapsulate. (This was one of its big advantages over things like Windows, where all the apps were in bed with each other and any security hole in one became a security hole in many.) Systemd violates that philosophy.