Disco Dingo fever: Ubuntu 19.04 has an infrastructure bent, snappier GNOME and another stupid name

Pull on those flares and perch atop your most precipitous platforms – Canonical has emitted Ubuntu 19.04, aka "Disco Dingo", with its sights set firmly on infrastructure. Although, as this is not a Long Term Support (LTS) version, enterprises are likely to hold off a while – the Dingo is only getting support until January 2020 …

[CAPS LOCK]

New Icons?

Well I never...

[zb42]

I personally find the Ubuntu graphical user interface to be infuriating and laggy. I have installed various versions of ubuntu on virtualbox, KVM and an old desktop and had problems with the display not redrawing properly. Debian with XFCE works and does not annoy me so that is what I use.

On an older version of Ububtu on the old desktop I use for testing unplugging a USB keyboard repeatable caused xwindow to crash.

I know a couple of people who think Ubuntu is great, maybe it's just me.

[georgezilla]

It's not just you.

[Crazy Operations Guy]

Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world. A huge bulky mess of code that tries so hard to meet every possible use case that it ends up sucking at all of them. Maybe its just me being curmudgeonly, but anytime a Linux Distro has it has higher listed Minimum System Requirements than the current version of desktop Windows is a total failure of a Linux Distro.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/SystemRequirements

https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/windows-10-specifications

[Updraft102]

It could also be that one of them is being unrealistic. I tried Windows 10 on a 2.2 GHz single-core Turion laptop with 1 GB of RAM, which meets the Windows 10 minimum requirements. Sure, it ran. If I tried to do anything, it crawled along so slowly as to be functionally useless, but yes, it worked, if your definition of "worked" means it didn't bluescreen or lock up immediately.

And that's with a CPU more than twice as fast as what 10 requires, supposedly.

Meanwhile, I've run Ubuntu-based Linux (Mint Cinnamon) on a dual-core CPU not much above 2 GHz, and it runs quite nicely.

The only real issue I have with Ubuntu is GNOME, and before that, Unity. If I wanted a half-baked UI that tried to straddle the line between touch and traditional mouse/keyboard, I'd go for Windows 10.

[Sil]

Exactly what does suck so much in WIndows 10 ?

Apart from the telemetry, wich is decreased each time the EU or one of its DPA complains, I don't see much to complain, especially for the price.

I'm still using a ~12 y.o. firewire audio interface/control surface/mixer whose last driver was for Windows XP. It works superbly. With brand new daw code only compatible with W10/x64. Without any issue.

Last week I flashed a c++17 application on an Arduino Uno under WSL/Ubuntu with avr-gcc.

I can remote debug a Raspberry Pi native app from free Visual Studio Community.

There are pretty much best in class applications in all domains.

[Waseem Alkurdi]

I'll leave this here: https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html.

[The Original Steve]

Considering the previous article in that same blog is titled "why every version of Windows sucks" I'm not enitely sure how objective it is.

TL;DR

Lists 3 reasons:

1. Telemetry.

2. Lack of control on Windows Updates and that the inbuilt and free AV isn't as good as he's like.

3. Feature updates are too frequent for him (every 6 months).

The telemetry can be reduced to such a low level these days... Not saying its not an issue, but I thought these days people have basically gotten over it?

There's a lot more control on WU that when W10 first shipped (thank god!). Personally I would like more control a la W7, but again I'm not sure if this is the deal breaker it's made out to be for the vast majority of people.

Accept his 3rd point. Bring back major version changes every 3 years please.

There's a lot (still!) wrong with W10, but considering the average end user and the coverage of W10 now, I'm not convinced that the 3 points he's made are on their own reasons to stay well away from the most popular client desktop OS.

[Crazy Operations Guy]

1) The lack of control and visibility with operating system internals

2) Ridiculous number of daemons / services that are needed for the system to start

3) large number of undocumented system APIs that some pieces of software use, then the APIs are stuck in the OS forever to prevent incompatibility with those applications

4) Configurations are stored in a set of overly-complex files

5) Dynamically linked libraries required for the kernel to even boot

6) Has many built-in language interpreters (Visual Basic, .net, DirectX, etc) and none are cross-platform (No perl, no python, no Java)

7) case-insensitive file systems

9) no support for adding mount points during install (EG, home directories -must- be on the same volume as the rest of the OS)

10) Hiberfile.sys always exists, wasting gigs of storage in the root disk even on systems that never had and never will make use of hibernation.

To be fair, I have these same complaints about a lot of Linux distros as well (Especially Ubuntu and Red Hat).

[druck]

Try Ubuntu Mate.

[Bronek Kozicki]

You can also use Xubuntu. Or turn Ubuntu into Xubuntu with just a one package xubuntu-desktop.

[Gene Cash]

Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian"

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like Linux except :]

>>> I personally find the Ubuntu graphical user interface to be infuriating and laggy ..

Use Lubuntu or install any one of the Alternate Desktop Environments.

>> anytime a Linux Distro has it has higher listed Minimum System Requirements than the current version of desktop Windows is a total failure of a Linux Distro

Use Lubuntu or one of the other Lightweight Linux Distros.

> Ubuntu is Swahili for "can't install Debian"

How sad, only six users of Linux on this here advanced technical forum :[

[Kobblestown]

Re: I really like Linux except :]

Well, you can also use the text-based minimalistic installer and select which desktop you want (Caveat emptor - I think it doesn't do EFI boot):

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/disco/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/mini.iso

You can also install several desktop environments simultaneously and change them from the login manager.

For a KVM virtual machine there's even a better way - dig down a little deeper in the directories:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/disco/main/installer-amd64/current/images/netboot/ubuntu-installer/amd64/

And download the kernel and initrd image of the installer. You can pass those to a KVM virtual machine to boot from.

I love the flexibility of this thing. I think that some time ago, if you started the installer kernel over a serial console it would even add the serial console option to the Grub defaults so you could access the virtual machine over serial console right after installation. This doesn't work with 18.04 so you better do this manually before rebooting the newly installed system. But I digress...

[Esme]

Re: I really like Linux except :]

Don't be silly, there's way more than six Commentards that use Linux, but we don't all read every article or all the comments on every article, or, indeed, feel the need to comment on every article. whether mentioning Linux or not.

It's been my experience that no matter how happy you are with your Linux distro at some point in time, that eventually some developer will adjust something in a way that annoys. My current annoyance is with the Linux Mint developers who for some bizarre reason decided that it was a good idea to make Xfce on Mint not look like, well, Xfce, and amongst their changes forcing it to have stupidly thin vertical scrollbars, which this old biddy, for one, finds noticeably harder to grab and control properly than the traditional normal-width ones. Worse, said developers have given NO option to be able to have Xfce unfettled by Minty developeritis. Grrr! (and no, I'm not tecchy enough to be confident enough to try to delve in and fix the problem myself, assuming I had both the time required and the will to do so.)

OK, personal vent over, Windows minimum requirements have always been a bad joke, IMHO as a user (up to Windows 7). Linux always has had better performance on the same hardware, in my experience (since Mandrake Linux waaay back). Since I encountered Linux, it;s always been my experience that teh best way to boost teh speed of a Windows PC is to put Linux on it (provided, of course, that you don;t NEED Windows for some particular purpose! Luckily, I do not).

[Waseem Alkurdi]

Re: I really like Linux except :]

Worse, said developers have given NO option to be able to have Xfce unfettled by Minty developeritis.

Nope - you can do either of the following:

* Download XFCE from the project's website and build it, giving you the "stock" XFCE experience

* (NOT RECOMMENDED) Use Debian packages of the version that your version of Linux Mint is based on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I really like Linux except :]

@Esme: “Don't be silly, there's way more than six Commentards that use Linux, but we don't all read every article or all the comments on every article, or, indeed, feel the need to comment on every article. whether mentioning Linux or not.”

You are not of the body.

In relation to this release of Ubuntu, I see mostly negative comments across the Intertubes. If I was paranoid I would suspect some public relations company such as Wäggener Ædström was being hired on to put negative spin on the subject. For example and working from memory:

Not yet ready for the desktop, no separation of system from application (wha'), might work for experienced user but too many convolutions for the average family member, the installation attempt wiped the windows partition and/or damaged the hardware.

[Claverhouse]

Re: I really like Linux except :]

Plus, straight from the United States Department of Fudge and Misdirection, it is part of a sinister hacking toolbox of foreign origin used by Manning and Assange to tamper with the most holy secrets of US policy.

[Claverhouse]

Re: I really like Linux except :]

Dear God, the Devs' New Margins !

I'm using a KDE Desktop on my Mint 18.3 Desktop ( Mint has now discontinued KDE because of course they have ) and the thin margins --- which also disappear into the frame of the Desktop hideously, and very poorly for work-flow --- are one of their worst innovations. I prefer Opensuse, but it's too miserabilist atm.

Apparently it was done to cater to phone-people... Devs were never satisfied with introducing Fat Slab Style; Infinite Scroll; and Lazy Load to make websites unusable, they then had to go after the little things...

[Ian 55]

Re: I really like Linux except :]

Stopped using Mint when they broke being able to do (as superuser or via sudo)

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

apt-get dist-upgrade

to reliably upgrade from one version to another.

[Bronek Kozicki]

I don't know, installation of Debian to me seems simpler than Ubuntu. But I like Ubuntu anyway.

[Bronek Kozicki]

... forgot to add: but without Gnome.

[Anonymous Coward]

or "can't install Devuan"? ;)

[Zola]

Still got the systemd-udev bug pegging CPUs at 100%

launchpad

Basically, apply this patch to /lib/udev/rules.d/97-hid2hci.rules and reboot.

[Howard Hanek]

Migration

I've been urging my Windows clients to migrate for years. It can do much more than Windows, is easier to maintain and more stable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everything Linux have to have a silly name?

[jgarbo]

Windows is a smart name for a computer system? Why not Boot, Desktop, Just Do It? Linux is so much more intuitive...

[Anonymous Coward]

grub, yum, gnome, red hat... the list goes on and on

[wayne 8]

Blame Unix. For one example, "PINE", "P(ine)I(s)N(ot)E(lm)".

[Mike Tubby]

Smart name?

Windows is a smart name for a double-glazing company ... not so sure for an operating system ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Smart name?

Windows 10 with extra telemetry maybe OpenWindows(?) because everyone, three letter agencies and advertisers, can know what your doing :P

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Smart name?

Know what my doing?

[wayne 8]

Re: Smart name?

Spook humor.

"Windows" through which they peep.

"Intel Inside" manufactures the chips inside the box that runs Windows.

[The Original Steve]

Silly names

That's my biggest bug bear with a lot of OSS - idiotic names.

Yes, if you care enough to learn why something that updates applications is called YUM or APT, then sure - it makes sense in a geeky way.

But most people couldn't give two shits about that, most people would be wondering simply why its not called "Update".

Windows has many, many faults - but it's very hard to argue that it's considerably more intuitive and logical to non-geeks than a lot of OSS (granted MS have gone slightly down the stupid naming path with recent releases).

A 30 something office worker could probably take a solid guess at what these all do and get most of them right: Windows Update, Control Panel / Settings, Windows Media Player, File Explorer, Internet Explorer.

A lot of OSS is considerably better than its closed source and commercial cousins, but the open source community needs to understand that your average man on the street doesn't want to have to think about this stuff, they want ease of use above all else. They certainly don't want to feel stupid for not knowing that APT is what's used for updates.

Addressing this would, in my very humble opinion, help a lot towards usability and therefore adoption.

[Mike Tubby]

Moving to Devuan to avoid systemd entanglement on Servers

We are originally a RedHat house until the split between RH9 and Fedora and moved to Ubuntu, but alas Mr. Shuttleworth's creation has fallen in to the quagmire of 'systemd'.

We use Linux for servers, you know, those thing that run the DNS, mail relays, web servers and all sorts of stuff that glues the interwebs together - not a desktop environment. Systemd is becoming all pervasive, breaking things and is the wrong direction - for servers.

The problem is that all the big distros are going systemd ... Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat etc. which is why we have decided that we have to jump ship and move to Devuan (a systemd free fork of Debian) - because the big three aren't really providing a 'Server OS' any more - they're providing a hacked down desktop OS and that isn't the same thing.

Mike

[Down not across]

Re: Moving to Devuan to avoid systemd entanglement on Servers

The problem is that all the big distros are going systemd ... Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat etc. which is why we have decided that we have to jump ship and move to Devuan (a systemd free fork of Debian) - because the big three aren't really providing a 'Server OS' any more - they're providing a hacked down desktop OS and that isn't the same thing.

Ditto. I have some old CentOS or Debian Jesse (cleansed from systemd) systems amongst BSD. My preferred platform is FreeBSD (or OpenBSD) but have some Linux servers for their support of more esoteric hardare and convenience of some software "just working" on them rather than having to beat them into submission.

Anything new will be BSD or devuan. In fact just resurrected an old Dell laptop with devuan and I have to say I am very pleased with it (devuan).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Moving to Devuan to avoid systemd entanglement on Servers

I was a slackware diehard for many years and found no need for systemd. The problem however is that most distros have moved over now and so has the development effort. Hacking a mainstream distro to remove systemd is introducing a lot of change, and introducing change introduces risk.

I moved to arch and haven't looked back. I did use Ubuntu for a while for my laptop and actually liked unity, to an extent. I did use slackware for a while too but found it a pain to maintain. Arch has the benefit of being minimal if you want it but with the bells and whistles on recent hardware if that's what you need. Yes it's systemd which isn't very Unix but then again neither is having fancy graphics and WMs. I also prefer having the same os everywhere.

I understand the logic of refusing it but there comes a time when you need to at least consider moving on. I discovered that it does the job pretty well.

[Dedobot]

Linux as desktop , Ubuntu particular, is great for my 2.5 yrs son .

In virualbox , to do not f*"c my win7 host:).

I cant think of other "linux desktop" implementation.

[Zola]

Hey dad...

You might want to stop your son from posting nonsense on the Register as well!

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Dead Dingo

Tried it on an unused Mac laptop. It has no GUI except a purple screen due to video driver problems, just like every other major Ubuntu update. A clean install permanently powers off the display and keyboard while booting.

As usual, need to wait until everybody has posted how to fix a corrupted installation.