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Operating Systems Software Ubuntu Linux

Canonical To Release Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS 'Xenial Xerus' Tomorrow (betanews.com) 207

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.
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Canonical To Release Ubuntu Linux 16.04 LTS 'Xenial Xerus' Tomorrow

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  • Look on the bright side - two more and they'll be out of letters.

  • About time! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Maelwryth ( 982896 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @02:17PM (#51950201) Homepage Journal
    Thursday, April 21....where? Can't we just do it in UTC. It is Thursday, April 21 in New Zealand (18.23% PURE and dropping) already but there is no release. Is the date based on South Africa? U.S.?
  • Oh good (Score:2, Funny)

    by fredrated ( 639554 )

    just 2 more letters and this naming crap will die?

  • by ilsaloving ( 1534307 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @02:27PM (#51950301)

    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.

    • by geek ( 5680 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @02:37PM (#51950393)

      Its quite good and I say that as an Arch user.

      Snap is basically sandboxed apps the way Mac OS and now Windows is doing. It greatly simplifies deployment and dependancies. It also creates a number of issues but you should google it for more info.

      Unity is greatly improved and very stable. The biggest change to me is the use of the GNOME software center instead of their own. I experienced a number of bugs with it and I'm not sure I care for it over the commandline yet. But for those who care, it's there.

      It's an LTS tho so people who prefer LTS should jump on this as it will have the newest packages fit for an LTS (in Ubuntu's standards of LTS which differe from that of Debian).

    • ZFS (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dmoen ( 88623 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @02:56PM (#51950609) Homepage

      It includes ZFS as a standard supported file system. That's the most interesting new feature from my perspective.

    • For me, it's simply having newer versions of things in an LTS release.
    • by xtronics ( 259660 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @03:57PM (#51951093) Homepage

      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.

      • Think of Windoze bloat.

        I'm thinking of downloading a program on Windoze and it works. No need for the blessings of a repo maintainer to resolve a clusterfuck of dependencies. No need for not being able to run a new version of something because it depends on something which is unable to be upgraded because another core function can't handle the upgrade. No completely screwed up package management because you dared to do something special.

        I not to fondly remember it being easier to get the latest version of Zoneminder running in a

        • For some reason, I don't have problems with that on Debian. (Of course sticking with the repository fixes MANY problems).

          The times I want to run a bit of development code, yes - but realize there are broken bits and most packages should not use this for day-to-day stuff. That is the point. You don't want to break the backbone infrastructure all the time. Bleeding edge is bleeding edge..

          Anyway - there is a better way - seeing as you are running something that might be buggy - a virtualized container makes

    • by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @05:16PM (#51951801) Homepage Journal

      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.)

    • Well it's an LTS release that formally supports Bluetooth SMART function (with Bluez5) so I can use my spiffy Logitech MX Anywhere 2 in bluetooth mode
  • Unity 8? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Prien715 ( 251944 )

    It looks like the dev team has been waffling about whether or not ship 16.04 with Unity 8 (which under the hood, dumps Gnome for Qt) as well as Mir. Has anyone tried it out since the rocky betas I looked at in 15.x? Does anyone know what the defaults or plans are from the good folk at Ubuntu?

  • And how/why is it better than deb/rpm/tgz?

    I found this: https://insights.ubuntu.com/20... [ubuntu.com] but is it full of marketing speak without any real information as to what a snap actually is and how it is better. Sounds kind of like Canonical doing the not-invented-here thing for packaging.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Being that Ubuntu is one of the more popular distributions, that means is must be hated on slashdot. Granted it is one of the distributions that comes with a good selection of drivers available. As well decent defaults for standard desktop usage.

    Would I use it for a server? No, but for an OS on my laptop for standard stuff and some development. I have no complains at least with the last version. It is much easier to deal with than Windows 10.

  • I know this is probably too much to ask, but I am really hoping that people who have poked at it can give constructive, practical comments on what they think of the new version. I haven't been paying attention cause I'm too busy. I'm looking forward to zfs-on-linux, but this is the first time I've ever heard of this new snap package system. Is it any good? Any gotchas?

    Have there been any notable improvements? Anything you can do now that you couldn't before (eg: is it easier to manage multiple displays

    • Sorry, I rewrote the post cause I thought Slashdot glitched and lost the previous one.

    • by dlenmn ( 145080 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @02:58PM (#51950631)

      Scroll down for the release notes on

      https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xenial... [ubuntu.com]

      I've skimmed over it, and truthfully, I don't see major changes for my use case (normal desktop user of Kubuntu).

      • by zwede ( 1478355 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2016 @03:36PM (#51950955)
        Plasma 5.5 is the default in kubuntu 16.04. If you're on KDE4 now you'll notice quite a big difference (for the better , IMO).

        http://www.kubuntu.org/news/ku... [kubuntu.org]
        • by burbilog ( 92795 )

          Plasma 5.5 is the default in kubuntu 16.04. If you're on KDE4 now you'll notice quite a big difference (for the better , IMO).

          "For the better"?!

          Just installed Kubuntu 16.04 in virtualbox and tried to add a quicklaunch. Too small, need to resize. How to resize? No hints whatsoever. Hovering mouse cursor does not work, right-click does not work, nothing works. Some googling reveals brand new shiny and completely "intuitive" method -- left click and wait. Wow. Look, I use computers for more than 20 years and I had to google how to do it. 100% user friendly!

          And where are screensavers? Gone...

          You call that "better"?!

  • Last time I checked, I couldn't use F11 to full-screen Gnome Terminal [launchpad.net] and then F11 to get it back to it's original size. Advanced feature I know, but I use the terminal a lot!

    And that's what I really really really fucking hate about Ubuntu LTS releases... so much stuff is broken, and never actually get's fixed. So I wind up having to faff with PPAs afterwards and then hoping that the next LTS will have things fixed.
    • by tpgp ( 48001 )

      I just opened a terminal & pressed F11. It full screened.


      root@server:~# gnome-terminal --version
      GNOME Terminal 3.16.2
      root@server:~# cat /etc/issue
      Ubuntu 15.10 \n \l

  • It should be supported 1 more year, at least for servers. Then it's time to make a decision.

    • It should be supported 1 more year, at least for servers. Then it's time to make a decision.

      April 2014 was the time to make the decision. If you're not in the testing phase for systemd or an alternate distro at this point you're not doing your job.

      • by Torp ( 199297 )

        It should be supported 1 more year, at least for servers. Then it's time to make a decision.

        April 2014 was the time to make the decision. If you're not in the testing phase for systemd or an alternate distro at this point you're not doing your job.

        I'm not a sysadmin any more, i just run my own toy servers. There ain't much to evaluate for those.

  • Or whatever, and what are they going to do after that? It is almost as ominous as naming generations of humans after the last few letters of the alphabet....

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