Ubuntu Linux 18.10 'Cosmic Cuttlefish' Arrives (zdnet.com)

Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish, the latest version of Ubuntu, is now available to download. From a report: Under the hood, the Cosmic Cuttlefish boasts the 4.18 Linux Kernel. This updates comes with better support for for AMD and Nvidia GPU, USB Type-C and Thunderbolt, a way for unprivileged users to mount Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) can be mounted by, and CPUfreq performance improvements. On top of this, you'll find the freshest version of GNOME 3.30. You can, of course, use other desktops, but GNOME, since Ubuntu 17.10, is Ubuntu's default desktop. You'll be glad to know that GNOME is faster than it has been for a while. That's because some nasty memory leaks have been patched. Canonical has also added some performance tweaks that didn't make it into the GNOME 3.30 upstream. Ubuntu 18.10 also comes with a new desktop theme, the Yaru Community theme installed by default, for your visual enjoyment. Further reading: Ubuntu 18.10: What's New? [Video]; Ubuntu 18.10 Review; and Ubuntu 18.10 Flavors Released, Ready to Download.

Comments

slow memory leaks?

[Jodka]

from the ./ summary:

"You'll be glad to know that GNOME is faster than it has been for a while. That's because some nasty memory leaks have been patched."

That's not what memory leaks do. Unless you leak so much memory that the system starts paging out RAM contents to the swap partition on the drive. Was it really that bad?

Re:slow memory leaks?

[slack_justyb]

Yeah. It was pretty freaking bad.

Re:slow memory leaks?

[Tough Love]

I still don't get why anybody puts up with Gnome when KDE is available. I really don't get why Ubuntu ships with Gnome standard. A whole lot more Windows users would make the switch if Linux presented with a normal desktop by default instead of whatever Gnome is trying to be, which seems to change every year and never seems to have a lot to do with what users need.

Re:slow memory leaks?

[dunnomattic]

Funny how things change. I recall when KDE went from 3.x to 4.0 and the exact opposite rationale was common. I stuck with KDE through the painful early 4 days and still use it today -- was an apologist during the rough years, but now I agree that it is the easiest transition for Windows users.

Re:slow memory leaks?

[Tough Love]

Where to begin, there's a bunch of misinformation in your post. KDE was nearly always great except for the premature release of 4.0, which was only alpha quality but distros somehow didn't get the memo. You don't need to learn any new applications in KDE, the ones you already use work perfectly fine, including Nautilus, gnome-terminal, browsers, whatever. Look and feel exactly the same except window decorations will be whatever you set up in KDE, which can be almost anything you want.

BTW, the reverse is also true: KDE applications like Kate (great editor) work just fine under Gnome. This is thanks to the cross-DE APIs developed by freedekstop.org, thanks much for that.

Re:slow memory leaks?

[iampiti]

I do like KDE better than Gnome but there's still many things about it I dislike. Nowadays I usually use Xfce, switching to KDE from time to time to see what's new.

Re:slow memory leaks?

[KiloByte]

I still don't get why anybody puts up with Gnome when KDE is available.

Heck, even when twm is available. Anything available in that field is better than Gnome3. It's the epitome of what "UX designers" stand for. There are two valid directions for an UI to go for: ease for new users, and ergonomy for advanced ones. Gnome3 blows both to a ridiculous degree, at the same time trashing efficiency, portability (works on x86 only), and so on.

I really don't get why Ubuntu ships with Gnome standard.

Nor do I. It's the systemd of window managers.

Re:slow memory leaks?

[youngone]

I still don't get why anybody puts up with Gnome when KDE is available

I don't either, but Gnome is the default desktop on three of the big distros (Ubuntu, Redhat and Debian) so there must be a good reason.
I have given up trying to figure out what that reason is though, and just use KDE. Budgie seems like a nice option too.
Isn't it nice to have choices?

Re:slow memory leaks?

[kbahey]

Mod parent up ...

I used KDE for about 12 years, then the move to 16.04 ruined a few things in it. Basically in two categories: a) things are no longer customizable, e.g. persistent notifications, and b) they removed some add ons, e.g. a working weather widget.

So, almost 1.5 years ago, I switched to XFCE and never looked back. It is not as rich or customizable, but more than adequate for full time desktop use.

Try Xubuntu 18.04 LTS. You will not regret it.

Re:slow memory leaks?

[Tough Love]

Isn't it nice to have choices?

Yes, choices are great. Nice defaults would also be great.

Went back to Debian

[Tough Love]

For something like 8 years, nearly everything on Ubuntu: desktops, laptops, severs. Because it was easy, with frequent updates. BTW, with KDE, not funky Gnome. But Debian progressed a lot in terms of not randomly breaking Sid like it used to, and "testing" stays a lot more current, so gradually started switching devices over, and everything new gets Debian instead of Ubuntu. Now just one laptop and one mostly unused desktop still on Ubuntu, probably will make the switch on those eventually, just for consistency. Netinst on a USB stick makes this super easy. There isn't really anything wrong with Ubuntu, they do a lot of good development that advances the whole community, and it's way better than Red Hat. But Debian, it's the real thing.

Generally the difference between Ubuntu and Debian is completely invisible except when it comes to upgrading. Upgrading across major versions is no big deal in Debian but it can be a real crap shoot in Ubuntu.

Re:Went back to Debian

[Tough Love]

I'm not dumping on Ubuntu, it makes perfect sense as a factory preinstall or a no-fuss install for first-time Linux users. And it is perfectly fine for professional and power users. But pretty much anything you can do on Ubuntu you can also do on Debian, and usually in exactly the same way, so I prefer the one without the training wheels.

Debian drivers isn't a big deal, you do need to add nonfree to sources.list and you might need to apt install some firmware. Without this your first boot can be pretty funky - a firebreathing GPU without the firmware tends to look like a primeval PC XT with a color graphics adapter. But it works well enough to run an editor and do the obvious fixups, turnaround time typically just a minute or two. I disagree that this feels like installing Windows drivers, maybe you forgot just how clunky the Windows driver experience really is. On rare occasions you might need to download and compile a driver or two from source, but that most probably won't be for base functionality. It's cool that you can even do that. BTW, it's amazing how many vendors offer Linux drivers on their sites now. I'm even seeing Linux-specific bios options in recent machines. I guess that means there are a lot of Linux users out there, and also, lots of in house Linux expertise at the vendors. My how times have changed.

Anyway, I'm ok with Debian ideology. Without it, Debian would not be as good as it is, and there would be much less pressure on hardware vendors to do the right thing and open up. When ideology collides with proprietary stupidity, Debian hardly gets in the way, it basically just makes sure you know you're loading a bunch of mysterious binary crap, and you need to ask for that explicitly.

Re:A Good Linux that Works?

[Tough Love]

What should I run if I just want a headless server with docker?

Debian Buster or Stretch are good. I run Buster on a headless NUC with typically infinite uptime, just reboot every 6 months or so for a kernel upgrade. I removed Network Manager and just use old school Debian networking, more solid for a server. That was easy, basically just apt remove network-manager and set up /etc/network/interfaces in the usual way.

I used to run Ubuntu on a server and there's nothing really wrong with it. But there's no advantage vs Debian either, and with a server, less is usually more. When it comes to security patches, Debian is about the best in the business.