Ubuntu 16.10 Released, Ready to Download (omgubuntu.co.uk) 78
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.
Re:systemd (Score:4, Interesting)
ubuntu comes with a no systemd option.
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How? I'd do anything to get it off our systems. Seems like almost every day we hit a niggling bug and the bugtraq just shows "shrug, doesn't seem like a concern, will not fix". Absolutely driving us nuts.
Re:systemd (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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I mean, passion for a desktop environment, that I get. Or text editors. That's where your interaction with the system is. But such a low level thing as an init system / device manager / login manager?
Re:systemd (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I was going to say FreeBSD if you need something .... then read down where you mentioned OpenBSD :-)
If you really are not a super expert with security there are cloud options as Azure has a custom version of FreeBSD where MS backported the tools back to FreeBSD 11 and I am sure Amazon has an EC3 already configured with either BSD option.
It costs more money when you get hits but starting up you maybe fine using a cloud provider and then move to your own servers when you get the money rolling in where you can
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I don't use Linux on the desktop. I use it for servers. systemd is constantly getting into the way of system administration tasks. Viewing logs, creating and controlling services, stability and reliability, etc.
systemd isn't as "low level" as you think. Many people, myself included, have to interact with it directly on a daily basis. It has its fingers in too many things and is still trying to take over more and that's frustrating.
You do know you can do all of this. Binary logs is a feature as a hacker can rewrite /var/logs/x to hide his or her attempts with init. So you need to use the right tools and yes you can turn on text logging too if you want, but I agree with the decision of using binary logs as Windows, Solaris, Mainframes, and other platforms use binary logging.
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and for all those people who have such hate for systemd.... How many actually had used init.d?
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and for all those people who have such hate for systemd.... How many actually had used init.d?
You don't necessarily have to have experience with sysvinit to hate systemd. For many it is making such a compelling argument on its own that you don't need to compare it to other systems.
Xubuntu, here I come! (Score:2)
...Maybe in a few weeks. Thanks in advance to all you brave unpaid QA's!
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Re: Xubuntu, here I come! (Score:3)
No, it will not.
Most popular? (Score:3)
Hasn't it been Linux Mint for a while?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
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So, Debian?
Re:Most popular? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, there is also LMDE - Linux Mint Debian Edition. Rollign release based on Debian -testing plus some customized Mint stuff.
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Sigh. You're right.
http://www.infoworld.com/artic... [infoworld.com]
This sucks. Systemd, no codec in ISO...
Kubuntu (Score:1, Flamebait)
I'll wait for Kubuntu, thanks. The latest versions of Unity and Gnome are awful.
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The latest versions. You mean, the last 22 ones or so?
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Maybe you should try Neon [kde.org]? It's the latest Ubuntu LTS with the latest KDE binaries on top.
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- is it possible to go from the current Kubuntu version to Neon without breaking anything ?
- how stable is Neon and is it one of those pet projects that'll die off as soon as his only maker graduates from high school ?
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Sounds like it's basically just Kubuntu with a preinstalled KDE PPA. Given that it has it's own page under KDE's domain, I'm sure it's more than just a teenager in his basement hacking it together, but like all things in open source it all depends on having people willing to do the work. As far as the upgrade, it says it's possible in the aforementioned FAQ... at your own risk of course. You'd probably have to read a bit more depending on what software you use, it sounds like thin
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Re:Kubuntu (Score:4, Informative)
Do wireless dongles from TP-Link work now? (Score:1)
I found out the chip is the Realtek 8192CU.
Well, just seen some github thing to compile. Before that I had found some crap from TP-Link that said install these tons of devel packages, then try to compile it but we provide it only on Ubuntu 14.04 with kernel 3.16. Didn't try (had to lend the dongle to Windows 7 users)
But.. hard to download and compile things when you don't have internet on the machine, don't think so?
Anyway, had a look at TFS. It's using the file manager from Gnome 3. Well, if you're going t
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It's enough for limited internal testing. Who do you think the real QA team is here? Yup everyone who updates. I'll wait a while.
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Sounds like an artificial problem created by the likes of systemd.
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Ironically, 11.04 was a version I liked fine. It "offered" Unity (smooth, but empty), then after you spent a couple minute wondering how you get to launch a second terminal rather than constantly bringing the first one back, you could log out and choose a fully featured Gnome 2 instead.
12.04 seemed fine but on the machines I installed it on, it suffered a little name change and got called "Linux Mint 13" instead. I'd almost go back to it. I used to look forward new versions as they'd be faster, less buggy,
Or stay on LTS (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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You could give MATE + Compiz a shot, or TDE if you were a fan of KDE 3.x
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I'm doing the same thing. The differences are purely incremental, I haven't run into any significant bugs in current LTS, and some of the improvements (such as low-gfx mode) are going to be backported anyway, so.... I'm not going to update solely because I mindlessly covet the latest shiny.
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I honestly don't know. It was mentioned in the article. I personally don't care about that feature, so I didn't look into it further.
Re:Or stay on LTS (Score:5, Interesting)
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: (Score:1)
The vast majority of people are expected to stay on the 16.04 LTS release.
That is officially the expected behaviour. You stay on the 16.04 LTS release and upgrade (if you like) to the 16.04.1 (since July), 16.04.2 (early 2017) and so on.
You would only need to upgrade to the non-LTS release if you have very specific needs, like the updated Linux kernel.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm still on 14.04.
It's also LTS, still supported for a few years. Having migrated some stuff to Upstart I have no interest in migrating them again to systemd.
Maybe some time when I have a few spare weeks. Like after I've retired or something.
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(I originally left Ubuntu for Mint due to horror stories about Unity. To be honest, after using 16.04, I've now got used to it).
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I'm using LTS for all my work machines. The last round I rarely felt I missed out on anything compared to my updated machine at home. I think it's perfectly reasonable to stay with LTS if you want. You can still update to newer versions of, say LibreOffice and similar applications using snaps if you need it.
Re: (Score:2)
Personally I am waiting for Ubuntu 17.04 Don't Talk Back edition before I upgrade
New is not always better (Score:2)
Minimal install (Score:3)
Or, you can do without that unity crap and get the minimal install with only the things that are required to boot the system and install the rest. No graphics but you can install it later.
http://cdimages.ubuntu.com/net... [ubuntu.com]
The good thing with this is that you have a very customizable system but it is still Ubuntu, so it tends to be well supported by third parties. Debian has a minimal install too and it is pretty much interchangeable with Ubuntu.
Re: (Score:3)
No graphics but you can install it later
And what do you install later? "ubuntu-desktop"??