Next versions of both Fedora and Ubuntu head into beta

Late April should see the release of the 36th versions of two of the biggest Linux distros: Fedora 36 and Ubuntu 22.04. Red Hat just announced the official beta of Fedora 36, whereas Ubuntu 22.04 should hit beta freeze on March 31. These are both quite mature products now. Both organizations generally put out new versions …

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

Fedora

I did the same with Fedora 35 and installed it in Virtualbox but ended up with the GNOME UI which I just don't like. But after installing both Cinnamon and KDE, I couldn't get either to work when trying to switch on login. Something wrong somewhere...

[Liam Proven]

Re: Fedora

If it's a new install with nothing much configured yet, then it's probably best to wipe it and try again with a different desktop.

I've tried Fedora with Xfce and MATE as well as GNOME. I personally prefer Xfce: it's smaller, simpler, uses less memory, and does a vertical taskbar very well.

Other people prefer MATE, which has the classic GNOME 2 look. It's not so good at vertical panels, though. That matters to me but it might not to you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please -- do the right thing -- don't allow your friends to follow fashion!!

Friends don't allow friends to use GNOME. (Hint: XFCE)

Friends don't allow friends to use btrfs. (Hint: ext4)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Please -- do the right thing -- don't allow your friends to follow fashion!!

Friends don't let friend waste their time with desktop Linux.

[Ozan]

Friends don't let friends install Fedora (Hint: Slackware :D)

[bombastic bob]

Rocky is an interesting alternative to Fedora. I'll have to check it out when it tracks the next RHEL, now behind Fedora (and CentOS). When I tried it last time it worked out of the box but did not have a lot of choice for GUI etc. The one thing I had to hack up was a result of them picking an arbitrary RFC1918 address for their internal firewalling. It happened to be in use by me, an IP block for the LAN that I decided on ~20 years ago so it would not affect routing when VPN'ing into a customer's network.

Anyway, Rocky works ok when I last tested it. But I forget what file I had to edit to make it work. I could just do a "grep -r /etc" for the IP address string, though, and it would be quickly found.

[quxinot]

..." though we still miss Unity"

No, we don't.

[Liam Proven]

Re: ..." though we still miss Unity"

I am not making any claim this is a universal opinion. :-D

But for me, it was the most polished desktop on Linux, it works very well on widescreens and multihead setups, and by modern standards it's light and efficient. All my Ubuntu machines still run Unity today.

[DrXym]

Re: ..." though we still miss Unity"

I think Unity was the way it was because Ubuntu gave all the devs 10" laptops with 800x600 resolution displays.

[Ian Johnston]

There was no dedicated swap partition or file: it chose to use zram by default.

These seem odd things to link. My understanding is that zram uses RAM to simulate block device storage, while swapping does precisely the opposite, using block device storage to simulate RAM. So while I can see that each might well be a good idea - I am typing this on an Ubuntu 18.04 machine with both a swap partition and /dev/shm - I can't see how one might be a substitute for the other.

What am I missing?

[druck]

The only time I've used zram is in a 1MB Raspberry Pi to prevent it swapping to SD card. On something which much more RAM, it hardly ever swaps and when it does I'd prefer it to go to a NVMe SSD.

[rcxb1]

Second sentence of the Wikipedia article on zram:

"The block device created with zram can then be used for swap"

[Ian Johnston]

Compression allows a RAM disk to store a bit more? Golly, that's new. Whoop de do.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Here we go again

-> Both versions default to using GNOME 42 on top of the Wayland display server, so they have quite similar desktops.

Both are indistinguishable on the desktop except for a few bells and whistles = duplication of effort.

-> After installation, running a software update offered 491 new packages, so it's still in very active development.

And penguins complain and jeer at Microsoft updates. 491 updates...

-> the new Text Editor

Well I had better make a beeline to see this new wonder of the world, a whole new text editor. They moved millions of blocks to do this, and even know researchers are unsure exactly how they did it.

-> to get it working on X.org, but it still didn't work using Wayland

It all just works, according to penguins.

-> Ubuntu did geolocate the test VM's IP address and automatically set the system locale to Czech

There you go, working right out of the box. Ready for your grandmother and Uncle Tom Cobley.

-> That isn't actually what this Anglophone vulture wanted, but it's probably handy for most people

Yes, that's exactly what is wanted in the Anglophone world - the locales set to Czech.

-> After installation, there were 290 updates outstanding, so this too is just a preview of an unfinished release.

A mere 290 updates. Don't even say it, penguins.

-> the GNOME dock is still vertical, which we feel makes more efficient use of a widescreen display

Apple would disagree with you. Out of the box.

-> we ended up with a 1MB BIOS boot partition and a half-gigabyte UEFI ESP volume, even though our VM doesn't have UEFI

Yes. Linux just does these weird things. You don't have UEFI? Well have this UEFI volume.

-> This is a known bug that has been left unfixed for a couple of years now

The community will fix it. With enough eyes all bugs become shallow. If the eyes can be bothered to fix the bugs rather than making YALD or a new package manager.

-> the classic GEdit text editor

+1 for Ubuntu. Cue the penguins: Ubuntu doesn't keep up with Gnome.

-> Ubuntu also has its own Software Store app because it uses Snaps rather than Fedora's Flatpak

Not content with multiple and incompatible package managers, let's have Snaps and Flatpaks too. They do much the same thing, which is deliver software. So don't tell me they are so different.

-> Neither of these releases is a huge change

So what is the point of them?

-> Fedora may use Btrfs now, but it lacks openSUSE's handy automatic snapshots

One of the main selling points of Btrfs is not available to you unless you read the mind boggling words which some people call 'documentation'.

-> we suspect neither has enough of an edge to tempt across those who prefer the other

AKA duplication of effort. They are both so similar in many ways that there is no point in having two of them.

And great bolshy yarblockos to those who give me thumbs down for pointing out a few unpleasant truths.

[nijam]

Re: Here we go again

> And great bolshy yarblockos to those who give me thumbs down for pointing out a few unpleasant truths.

And great bolshy yarblockos to those who give me thumbs down for making up a few unpleasant pieces of drivel.

FTFY

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Here we go again

Can you refute one thing I have written? If yes, refute it.

[LionelB]

Re: Here we go again

You appear to have completely missed -- or perhaps deliberately ignored -- that the article is about beta software (you do know what that means, right?)

Just more of the infantile and ignorant trolling we've come to expect from you.

[cheekybuddha]

Re: Here we go again

>> And great bolshy yarblockos to those who give me thumbs down for pointing out a few unpleasant truths. <<

Someone get of bed on the wrong side this morning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Here we go again

The quality of the disinformation seems to fall with the value of the rouble.

[bombastic bob]

Re: Here we go again

he was wearing the wrong hat (see icon)

[bombastic bob]

Re: Here we go again

Well, there's THIS "distinguish" between Wayland and X11

From the article: (re: desktop extensions for VirtualBox) but it still didn't work using Wayland.

Also the BIG thing that does NOT work with Wayland: export DISPLAY=MyWorkstation:0.0

(it would be IM!POSSIBLE! for me to get work done with Wayland because Wayland will not support this)

[Liam Proven]

Re: Here we go again

Well, no, it won't, because exporting a display is an X.11-ism.

But there are alternatives, such as VNC, RDP and so on.

Very few people do things like running X over the network any more, and the way we can tell this is that all the modern fancy stuff, like OpenGL and compositing, mostly doesn't work over a network connection.

Maybe sadly, but this is a tech whose days in the mainstream are numbered now.

[rcxb1]

Re: Here we go again

> Very few people do things like running X over the network any more,

I'd like to see some numbers on that.

> and the way we can tell this is that all the modern fancy stuff, like OpenGL and compositing, mostly doesn't work over a network connection.

$ ssh -X $host "glxgears"

Works fine here.

Which applications need GL to function? Seems only the DEs themselves insist on GL to start-up. Programs people might want to run are all happy without it.

[Richard Crossley]

Re: Here we go again

> I'd like to see some numbers on that.

Almost every line of code I write happens that way. I'd rather use the OS where stuff is being deployed than to try and fudge stuff on Windows.

[LionelB]

Re: Here we go again

That would be an instant show-stopper for me. I very frequently use X11 display export (over ssh) for performing routine tasks on remote systems, including, e.g., HPC systems. I even find it quite viable to do on-the-spot remote coding/scripting using a lightweight IDE like Geany (GTK3), which runs perfectly well with modern broadband speeds. Many if not most of the systems I need to access require tunnelling over ssh - I've tried this with various VNCs, and it sucks. (I've no idea how well this might work with Wayland, mind you.)

Just because there happens to be "modern fancy stuff" does not mean that the old unfancy stuff becomes redundant.

[Liam Proven]

Re: Here we go again

> Both are indistinguishable on the desktop except for a few bells and whistles = duplication of effort.

It's the same code from the same team. That is not duplication of effort except for the work of integration.

Ubuntu was originally started as a GNOME-based effort, and while from 2011-2017 it had its own desktop, it has returned to its original course.

This is what people asked for:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821

And it's what they got.

Why GNOME? I wrote about that a decade ago:

https://www.theregister.com/2013/06/03/thank_microsoft_for_linux_desktop_fail/

In my opinion -- and I've spoken to the GNOME team, and they deny this -- it was a response to MS threats.

Before that, every distro, and even Solaris, used GNOME 2.

> And penguins complain and jeer at Microsoft updates. 491 updates...

Yes. It's a beta. It's not finished.

> Well I had better make a beeline to see this new wonder of the world, a whole new text editor. They

> moved millions of blocks to do this, and even know researchers are unsure exactly how they did it.

OK, TBH, myself, this seems a bit redundant. But GEdit has grown into a complex beast and the project want simpler, easier tools.

> It all just works, according to penguins.

Ever tried installing 2 different nVidia cards that need dissimilar drivers in a Windows box? I have. It's a nightmare. Ever tried combining nVidia and AMD cards? I have. It was very tricky, but I got it working. Ever built a custom install of Windows to keep the home directories elsewhere? I have. It's a *lot* of work.

I have nearly 35 years' experience with Windows, and over 25 with Linux.

I will give you a fully-installed, configured and provisioned standalone Linux box in a quarter of the time it would take with Windows.

Of course, if you don't want choice of bits -- well, I put ChromeOS Flex on a spare machine last week. It took 20min to burn the USB key (so still quicker than Win10 using Rufus) and under 10min to install. Needed no tweaks at all, runs great, goes like stink. I have Firefox and MS Word for DOS running on it too now, as an exercise. It's not dedicated to Chrome.

> There you go, working right out of the box. Ready for your grandmother and Uncle Tom Cobley.

It is correct. I am in Prague. It says so in the byline.

> Yes, that's exactly what is wanted in the Anglophone world - the locales set to Czech.

I live in the Czech Republic and have for 8 years. My partner is Czech; my child is Czech.

Your point exactly?

> A mere 290 updates. Don't even say it, penguins.

It was not even in beta yet. That is not bad, fewer than Fedora, and afterwards everything worked perfectly, without a single error.

> Apple would disagree with you. Out of the box.

I disagree with a lot of people. Sue me.

P.S. I'm typing on a Mac. The dock is on the left, where it belongs.

https://www.howtogeek.com/706245/why-your-windows-taskbar-should-always-be-on-the-left-side/

> Yes. Linux just does these weird things. You don't have UEFI? Well have this UEFI volume.

Honestly, this upsets and annoys me too.

That's why I complained about it a year ago.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/20-10-needs-esp-on-bios-systems-existing-confirmed-unassigned-bug/21789

It is unfixed. That is why I pointed it out in the article.

It is not just me:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/mpkfv3/error_in_the_install_so_i_was_trying_to_install/

> Not content with multiple and incompatible package managers, let's have Snaps and Flatpaks too.

In a different thread *you* were demanding a universal package manager.

> So what is the point of them?

Testing future tech for RHEL, in the case of Red Hat. So that people can build current, up-to-date servers for Ubuntu.

Servers are where the money is. All this stuff needs constant maintenance.

> One of the main selling points of Btrfs is not available to you unless you read the mind boggling

> words which some people call 'documentation'.

TBH, on this one, I have to agree. :-)

> AKA duplication of effort. They are both so similar in many ways that there is no point in having two

> of them.

I used Red Hat 4.x in 1995. It was awful. It was competition from Debian that made the RPM distros improve their game.

Debian was bad itself until Corel LinuxOS and then Xandros and then Ubuntu smoothed out the rough edges.

Without Ubuntu, no Mint. Without ChromeOS, no CoreOS. Without Gentoo, no ChromeOS.

[Altrux]

Re: Here we go again

It's a development release - of course there are piles of updates, every day. Once the final release goes out, it'll calm down to be more like Windows. Wonderful, eh?

[MrBanana]

KDE?

I see KDE mentioned for RH, but no Kubuntu release yet? For me, any new, or old, version of GNOME is painful to use.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: any version of Gnome is painful

Can I correct that to:-

any version of Gnome greater than 2.* is painful

?

[bombastic bob]

Re: any version of Gnome is painful

FBSD supported the final version gnome 2 for several YEARS in its ports collection, until Mate.

In many ways it was EVEN BETTER since it became VERY stable, built properly, and had no major issues that were un-patched. I liked it.

[Liam Proven]

Re: KDE?

All the different desktop remixes (in Ubuntu terminology) and spins (in Fedora terminology) will be released at the same time.

The main difference is that Fedora has announced the versions that will be going into its spins, whereas Ubuntu hasn't and so these could, potentially, change at the last minute.

But I _expect_ it will include KDE 5.24 and LXQt 1.

Fedora has both a normal KDE spin, and a separate experimental OS using other new technologies as well as KDE, called Kinoite.

https://kinoite.fedoraproject.org/

I've not had time to try that yet, but it is on the list. :-)

[abs]

22.04 where art thou?

I've refreshed the Ubuntu downloads page more times than I'd like to admit this morning. Still no Ubuntu 22.04 :'(

Maybe I should get out more?