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.
Look on the bright side (Score:2)
Look on the bright side - two more and they'll be out of letters.
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Not even close: ...
17.10 "[Leftemous [Brackfish"
18.04 "\Backetty \Slashhound"
I figure that there's room for at least 10 more years of releases.
Re:Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
when it circles around, again, I think they should consider 'boaty mcboatface'. I've heard the name is available...
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Look on the bright side - two more and they'll be out of letters.
After that The Artist formerly known as Prince will get a Ubuntu disto named after him.
Fortunately Zebra [wikipedia.org] will be getting that honor before Prince.
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They've already used HH twice (5.04 Hoary Hedgehog, 8.04 Hardy Heron) and WW twice (4.10 Warty Warthog, 1510 Wily Werewolf)
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I suppose that's better than using unicode. Just, by a whisker.
About time! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:About time! (Score:4, Informative)
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Now there's a rarity... a company on the Isle of Man that has an employee on the island
Ubuntu "Tax Evaders Edition" (Score:5, Funny)
Mangy Manx
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How many pubs compared to how many shell companies for tax "efficiency" purposes?
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Canonical seems to be a UK company. Head office is Southwark St London from what I can see.
Oh good (Score:2, Funny)
just 2 more letters and this naming crap will die?
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That actually would be funny for three releases from now.
Might be asking too much (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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)
It includes ZFS as a standard supported file system. That's the most interesting new feature from my perspective.
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Solaris is dead at this point. OpenIndiana/Illumos hasn't been updated in +-2 years, and isn't even capable of booting anymore on current generation hardware. You may have better luck using one of the derivative projects that are based on Illumos, but then you have to worry about compatibility.
If you don't use ubuntu, then your best bet is to use FreeBSD. (I'm currently using FreeNAS, which is based on FreeBSD. The UI could really use an overhaul, but the underlying system is solid.
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ZFS and GPL (Score:5, Informative)
An AC said: "Which could get Canonical into hot water with the GPL."
Whether or not this is a licence violation depends on Linus Torvalds and The Linux Foundation. They are the ones that set the terms for how Linux is licensed. Under U.S. law at least, it's the copyright owner's intent that matters, and not some third party interpretation interpretation of the licence text.
Torvalds has previously stated that a kernel module can't violate the kernel licence agreement unless it is a derivative work of the kernel (and the module licence violates the GPL). At the very least, it needs to have been designed with knowledge of the Linux internals. Since ZFS was developed independent of Linux, it seems unlikely that The Linux Foundation will be suing Canonical.
If you want to thoroughly understand the issues, you could read Eben Moglen's opinion (he's the lawyer behind the GPL 3): https://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2016/linux-kernel-cddl.html
Re: ZFS and GPL (Score:3)
ZFS on Linux consists of two parts. The ZFS part is independent of Linux (not a "derivative work"), and uses the Solaris kernel API. The other part is SPL (Solaris porting layer), which implements the Solaris API using Linux. The SPL is Linux dependent, but it has a GPL licence.
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While true, it's the copyright holder who has to pursue the infringement.
So, basically, how likely is it that Linux will sue Canonical?
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It hasn't so far, and yet they've included ZFS tools and kernel modules buildable from their own repo for years now. I don't see why publishing the actual model would make it any differently, and as far as the legal hot water rises they've all but said "come and sue us so we can test this and prove you wrong".
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Re:Might be asking too much (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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
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To me, it's very interesting that the results of packaging being done right (which was basically done to avoid actual dependancy hell) is now being called dependancy hell.
It's way easier to maintain statically linked libraries, naturally.
That, essentially, is the problem.
Developers taking short-cuts.
This shortcut will be "tons of fun" when every program has an essential security lib which contains a massive security flaw.
Now, instead of updating that lib, every program needs to update it's lib first.
It's no
Re:Might be asking too much (Score:4, Insightful)
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.)
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>Look, I get that Linux might be harder at some things, but damnit, learn to use the fucking man pages.
To be fair, man pages are terrible. They were bad when I was in computer science grad school 20 years ago, and they haven't gotten any better since.
They're useful if you already know how UNIX operates and what the utility does - like you need to remind yourself of a flag or something - but for someone coming in new to UNIX, like the GP is, then it's much better to just read a web page.
For example, take
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As I mentioned, it is in the addendum, not on the first line, as it should be, and the description is extremely lacking in explaining even its most basic functionality.
Re: Might be asking too much (Score:2)
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That's funny considering that I've never found it distinctive enough from Ubuntu to be with moving to. Since Ubuntu has no problem with this, I would expect the same out of Mint.
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Me too. I never understood the vitriolic hate towards systemd. It's infinitely cleaner and more powerful than the mishmash of init shell scripts.
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If everything is working you're golden, but if it's not you are in for a world of pain.
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And so, things that are hard for individual's to understand, are often too large in scope. Basically, to me anyway, it smells a bit like X does, i.e. overly complicated and hard to maintain.
But like I say, I've not been expos
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Why would an average user even have to? An average user wouldn't be able to fix an old style init file either.
Unity 8? (Score:2, Interesting)
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?
What in the world is a snap? (Score:2)
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.
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I've never found either of those to be terribly problematic.
Linux "dependency hell" seems to be an invention of trolls more that anything else.
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I could see this as having been a much bigger problem before broadband being common. To download dependencies that you need could take forever on dial-up when you try to apply something you took the time to download from work. Instead of working with the new software/game/whatever, you spend all night downloading.
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First goddamn result: Build apps | Ubuntu developer portal [ubuntu.com]
Haha I see a 'Snappy Store', I get the impression this is Ubuntu's attempt at a play store similar to android and other smart phone ecosystems. Developers can 'sell' their apps to Ubuntu users.
I have an android tablet, and the 'free' apps are usually littered with ads or constant nags to 'buy additional content features'. No thanks Ubuntu.
Re:What in the world is a snap? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
Having one central version and each app having its version both have pros and cons. The pros for each are both good, so the pendulum keeps swinging back and fourth. It will continue to do so until someone makes the effort to get both supported in an elegant way where everything is shared by default but programs with issues can be easily and automatically converted to the other way.
From a developer's perspective, if your source control tree doesn't include every library you're using you're doing it wrong. Anyone should be able to checkout your code and run a single command to do a build. The only dependency should be the build tool (even better if there aren't any dependencies).
From a system admin's perspective, trying to manage every program's libraries is a nightmare and wastes disk space.
People who don't understand the pros and cons keep building system ontop of system to switch their current method to the one. They don't bother to consider why their current exists the way it does and instead only look at the pros of the new system. "I'm smarter than the guy before me, so we must do it this 'new' way." Most developers have no respect for current designs and know nothing about how we got there. For instance, almost no software follows the original OOP design. What people program now is a bastardization of the original principles. How is OOP on topic? The original OO design requires programs to include their own copies of libraries.
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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....
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This is what I had feared, Ubuntu is moving to the Windows version of "handling" the library dependency tree.
Actually, this is the Macintosh version.
Hipster Hate Comment Thread. (Score:2)
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.
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Ubuntu server is actually very decent : no unity bullshit.
Linux Mint + MATE is just about perfect for my desktop needs,
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I run Mate on Debian - All the goodness of Mate but without the Ubuntu bloat!
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Re: Hipster Hate Comment Thread. (Score:2)
Being that Ubuntu is one of the more popular distributions, that means is must be hated on slashdot.
You go on telling yourself that but the majority of slashdotters don't hate things that are popular but rather things that suck.
Any useful comments? (Score:2)
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
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Sorry, I rewrote the post cause I thought Slashdot glitched and lost the previous one.
Re:Any useful comments? (Score:4, Informative)
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).
Re:Any useful comments? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.kubuntu.org/news/ku... [kubuntu.org]
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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"?!
If theyve not fixed Gnome terminal, it ain't ready (Score:2)
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.
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I just opened a terminal & pressed F11. It full screened.
root@server:~# gnome-terminal --version
GNOME Terminal 3.16.2
root@server:~# cat
Ubuntu 15.10 \n \l
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Last Ubuntu LTS without systemd was 12.04 right? (Score:2)
It should be supported 1 more year, at least for servers. Then it's time to make a decision.
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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.
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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.
Here's looking forward to the release of (Score:2)
16.10:
Yammering Yobbo.
I think I wait for Zippy Zebra. (Score:2)
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Re:Ubutntu usuable when? (Score:4, Interesting)
My wife isn't a computer person and is totally fine using Ubuntu Linux. She thinks it's basically the same as Mac OS, but with a different color scheme.
Manjaro (Score:2)
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I tried Ubuntu a couple of weeks ago when setting up a VM for a quick dev/testing environment.
It was a fucking mess. Nothing made sense. The desktop quirks reminded my of Windows Vista pre SP1. The Linux core was tweaked just enough that the CLI I spent the most time in was my browser's search bar.
Nuked that VM from orbit.
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LOL - "no even Linux anymore." - how do you figure? It's Linux sure enough, and works just fine. I don't see what all the Ubuntu hate is about these days. The biggest difference between Ubuntu and say Fedora is the package management (and Ubuntu has the option for the Unity desktop, which I rather like. There are just a few small things that I wish were changed and it would be awesome).
Re:Who is... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I loved Ubuntu right up until they fucked it up with Unity. I went back several times but I just can't deal with it. I'm glad you like it, that's what I love about Linux. I just turned around and started testing distros until I got the right one. Every once in a while I try out the latest Ubuntu but the fit is never right now.
Re: Who is... (Score:5)
Wait... you installed a completely different distribution because you didn't like Unity? You didn't just sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop or xubuntu-desktop or whatever?
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I did but it was never the same as when Gnome was the default. I struggled on for a few months but finally went looking elsewhere.
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Why XUbuntu is IMHO much nicer (and more responsive) than KDE.
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I personally like Unity. It feels like a modernized WindowMaker/AfterStep. But if you didn't like it, that's fine - there are plenty of other DE/WM to choose from. I run TDE (KDE 3.x) on several systems, and currently toying around with CDE and MaXX on older machines (Pentium III and older) since they are super lightweight (and MaXX because it provides the fonts for remote IRIX programs to work right)
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I've settled on PeppermintOS.
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Yeah, Unity is painful. For the casual home user who just needs to launch a browser, it'll do the job, but I can easily understand why it's a deal-breaker for you.
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I loved Ubuntu right up until they fucked it up with Unity.
It's trivial to switch desktop window managers, or was it that the thing you loved was just Gnome.
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Slashdot hates popular things -- especially popular things that are easy to use and support.
My Linux machine boots from a RAID because I was short on SSDs when I built it. Thus I didn't want systemd in case I had a problem sometime and needed to troubleshoot boot. Therefore, I installed Mint Rebecca. If it weren't for systemd, I'd be using Ubuntu. I'm not eschewing systemd for its popularity, but for its being known to cause complications with the sort of problems I anticipate down the road.
I chose Ubuntu because of its popularity, and that was what I liked best about it. People bothered to do stu
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I think they're keeping with having both systemd and upstart available (I'm running 15.10 here with upstart).
Re: And the systemd unit files... (Score:5, Interesting)
I use MySQL on Debian - have zero problems with systemd -- could it be your chair?
It took me about a day to get used to systemd - I didn't ask for the change - but it seems to be somewhat helpful in the long run. Mostly invisible on the servers I run - just don't notice the difference. Worst feature of systemd? This command is too long to type when I'm sleepy:
# systemctl list-unit-files --type=service
Needs an alias.
For the old farts that can't adopt ( I'm 61 - so you must really be old ) - there is help:
https://wiki.xtronics.com/inde... [xtronics.com]