 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 890, 2 November 2020 |
Welcome to this year's 44th issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Just over a week ago Canonical released Ubuntu 20.10, which was accompanied by the distribution's many official community editions. One of the key features in this new version is GNOME 3.38 which is reported to bring improved performance. This week we begin with a look at Ubuntu's Desktop edition and explore its strengths and its issues. One feature we touch on is that Ubuntu 20.10 offers the ability to run GNOME on a Wayland session or on the X.Org display server. Have you tried these two session options? If so we'd like to hear what you thought of them in our Opinion Poll. In our Questions and Answers column we address speculation on whether Microsoft is going to port its Windows operating system to the Linux kernel. We discuss some arguments for and against Microsoft fully embracing Linux. Last week Canonical announced plans to speed up Snap package load times and we share the details in our News section, along with a report that ReactOS is hiring a kernel developer. We also share tips from Fedora Magazine on how to upgrade Fedora's Silverblue edition and report on Linux Mint making its own Chromium packages. Plus we are pleased to share the releases of the past week and list the torrents we are seeding. Finally, we are pleased to announce the Arch-based Snal Linux distribution has been added to our database and details on this young distribution are included below. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
- Review: Ubuntu 20.10
- News: ReactOS hires a kernel developer, Ubuntu speeding up Snap package load times, upgrading Fedora Silverblue, Linux Mint builds its own Chromium package
- Questions and answers: Considering a Microsoft Linux distro
- Released last week: Fedora 33, FreeBSD 12.2, NixOS 20.09
- Torrent corner: Fedora, FreeBSD, FuguIta, GParted Live, IPFire, Linux Lite, KDE neon, OpenIndiana, Nitrux, NixOS, Snal Linux, Swift Linux, Voyager Live
- Opinion poll: Does Wayland or X.Org provide a better experience?
- New additions: Snal Linux
- Reader comments
Listen to the Podcast edition of this week's DistroWatch Weekly in OGG (18MB) and MP3 (13MB) formats.
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Ubuntu 20.10
Just over a week ago Canonical pushed out their latest version of Ubuntu which was accompanied by seven official community editions. The new 20.10 release features version 5.8 of the Linux kernel and the main desktop edition runs GNOME 3.38. Developers and tinkerers will be happy to learn Ubuntu 20.10 includes version 10 of the GNU Compiler Collection and can run on Raspberry Pi 4 computers. This release also includes the ability to connect to Active Directory domains at install time and features nftables as the default firewall backend which replaces iptables. Ubuntu 20.10 receives a mere nine months of support and security updates, making it a better platform for testers and enthusiasts rather than people who need a stable, long-term support operating system.
While there are Server and single board computer images for Ubuntu, I downloaded the Desktop edition which is 2.8GB in size. Booting from the live media automatically starts a self-verification check on the media. Once this passes the live disc brings up a window asking which language we would like to use and we can pick our preference from a list. There is also a link to the distribution's release notes which will open in the Firefox web browser. The window also includes buttons labelled "Try Ubuntu" which launches the GNOME desktop and "Install Ubuntu" which launches the Ubiquity system installer.
The live GNOME desktop worked just fine for me and I will come back to describing it later. For now I just want to acknowledge that it ran without any serious problems and that I soon clicked the system installer icon on the desktop to launch Ubiquity.
Ubuntu 20.10 -- The GNOME Help documentation
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Installing
The system installer provides a streamlined, graphical interface that quickly walks us through a few configuration options. Ubuntu's installer has not changed much in recent years and the screens asking us to pick our language, keyboard layout, and time zone are largely the same as in past releases. We are also asked if we wish to set up a Normal or Minimal installation. The Normal option includes a handful of desktop applications while Minimal appears to pretty much be the base system, GNOME desktop, and a web browser.
The installer asks if we want to download updated packages during the install process and if we wish to enable third-party software such as non-free hardware support and media codecs. When it comes to disk partitioning we can use a friendly, manual disk partitioning tool. Alternatively we can use guided partitioning which can make use of LVM and ZFS volumes. Earlier I mentioned the installer can connect to Active Directory domains and this option is presented on the screen where we create a username and password for ourselves.
Ubiquity accepted my choices, copied its files to my hard drive, and then offered to restart the computer when it was finished. So far things were going well.
Early impressions
My new copy of Ubuntu booted to a graphical login screen where I could sign into the GNOME desktop. There are two session options, though it took me a minute to find them as they are only presented when we click a button that looks like part of the background. The session option button appears in the bottom-right corner of the screen after we select which user account to use. By default Ubuntu runs the GNOME desktop on the X.Org display server, though there is a GNOME on Wayland option.
The first time I signed into my account a configuration wizard popped-up and offered to connect my local account to on-line accounts. Ubuntu, Google, Nextcloud, and Microsoft cloud services are supported. We are then asked if we would like to send our computer's hardware profile to Canonical. The following screens offer to enable location services and launch the Software utility to install additional applications. Then the wizard vanishes.
A few seconds later another window appeared and reported there were package updates available and asked if I would like to install them. As it turned out there was just one new package, Firefox, which was a 55MB download. I accepted the update manager's invitation and downloaded the new copy of Firefox which was applied successfully.
It was then I got my first serious look at the GNOME desktop. GNOME places a panel across the top of the screen which is home to the Activities menu on the left side, a date & notifications widget in the middle, the system tray to the right, and the far right corner holds the user & settings menu. Down the left side of the screen we find a dock which holds quick launch icons and acts as the desktop's task switcher. The bottom-left corner of the screen holds the application menu.
Hardware
When I started playing with Ubuntu it was in a VirtualBox environment. The distribution performed well in some ways. The GNOME desktop dynamically resized with the VirtualBox window and was generally stable. However, GNOME ran very slowly and was painfully unresponsive in the virtual machine.
Ubuntu ran better on physical hardware. GNOME was much more responsive, though applications were still a bit slow to load, whether I ran the distribution on an ext4 or ZFS filesystem. Something I kept noticing was GNOME displayed a lot of animations. These make the desktop seem more dynamic, more busy, but ultimately makes the system feel slower. Each time a window is minimized, restored, or closed there is an effect to accompany it which starts out looking neat, but quickly becomes an irritation when we end up waiting for it to finish hundreds of times a day. There does not appear to be an easy way to disable these animations; at least I didn't find a toggle for it in the settings panel.
Ubuntu 20.10 -- Adjusting desktop settings
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While using Ubuntu on my workstation a notification kept appearing at the top of the desktop letting me know a network connection could not be established. This notification appeared semi-regularly (once every few minutes), even after a network connection was set up and running. Sometimes it even appeared while I was transferring files over the network. I'm not sure what causes this inaccurate warning, but it quickly became an unwelcome distraction.
The distribution used a surprisingly large amount of RAM, 1.5GB when I was running the GNOME desktop with Ubuntu installed on a ZFS volume. Memory usage dropped down to 780MB when I ran the distribution on an ext4 filesystem. This is still higher than on most distributions I have tried this year. On the other hand, the system only required about 4GB of disk space, which is about average.
I mostly ran my GNOME session on the X.Org display server, though briefly tried Wayland too. I did not find there to be a significant difference between the too. This strikes me as good news as I typically run into problems of one sort or another when using Wayland, but this time the two were functionally almost identical.
Applications
Ubuntu ships with a fairly small collection of popular open source applications. Firefox is included along with LibreOffice, the Thunderbird e-mail client, and a calendar. The Rhythmbox and Videos applications are available along with media codecs. There is a backup application, the Cheese webcam utility, the Files file manager, a text editor, and the Transmission bittorrent client. I also found a document viewer and the GNOME Help application which explains how to navigate the desktop environment. The distribution ships with systemd which provides init and service manager functionality. Version 5.8 of the Linux kernel runs things in the background.
Ubuntu 20.10 -- Browsing the application menu
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Software management
Managing software applications on Ubuntu is handled by a desktop utility simply called Software (or sometimes Ubuntu Software). This program has three tabs. The first tab shows us a collection of popular software ("editor's picks") along with recent releases. At the bottom of the first tab we find categories of items, though these categories do not correspond with normal application menu categories. There are categories such as "News and Weather" and "Books and Reference" but nothing familiar like "Internet" or "Web". This left me to mostly use the search function to find programs I wanted.
Ubuntu 20.10 -- The Software utility
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Search was a mixed bag too as the search feature was slow, taking a lot longer than using the APT command line search function. I also discovered that if Software was unable to find any matches to my search queries it would never stop the search. The spinning "busy" animation would play and Software would consume 100% of my CPU endlessly, even after 20 minutes of waiting for a result. Software was unable to find command line programs, meaning installing them required switching over to the APT command line tools.
The Software utility mixes together portable Snap and traditional Deb packages. At first glance there is nothing to distinguish them, though clicking on a program's entry brings up a full page description of the package. The repository of the package is listed in the program's Source field, which lets us know if the software is packaged as a Snap. The Software utility prompts us for a password every time we install or remove an application, which can be tedious after a while.
The two other tabs of the Software utility show installed programs, which we can remove with a click, and updates, if any are available. Given that Software was a bit sluggish, I preferred to use the smaller update manager I mentioned earlier to grab the latest versions of packages.
As I stated above, Software includes support for Snap packages and makes working with them seamless. One interesting feature Software offers is, after a Snap package has been installed, we can click a button to set system access permissions on an application. We can set, for example, if a program is allowed to access our home directory, communicate over the network, or print. There are other options and some programs have more options than others.
This is a great idea and it works; I tested it on the Chromium web browser with good results. Sometimes setting permissions was a problem though. If I toggled a permission off, usually the interface would immediately turn the switch back on. I would also be prompted for my password when changing options. This resulted in some situations where I would click a button, it would toggle back, then prompt me for my password. Then I'd click the button again, it would turn off, then back on, then prompt for my password again. I had to turn off printing access to Chromium six times before the switch remained in the "off" position. On the other hand the "record audio" and "play audio" permissions toggled off and stayed off the first time, so the bug appears to be random.
Ubuntu 20.10 -- Settings permissions on Snap applications
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I tried installing a few Snap packages. VLC and Chromium worked fine, though the Falkon Snap failed to launch, reporting a missing file. In short, there are some interesting and useful ideas happening in the Snap ecosystem, but there are some practical problems too.
Other observations
One interesting feature the GNOME desktop offers is the rearranging of icons. We can drag launchers around the application menu, drop them into categories, pull them out, and change their order. I like the flexibility this offers and how smooth it is.
Speaking of items in the application menu, there is a tool listed called Livepatch. I believe this is connects with the Canonical service for live patching (updating a kernel without restarting the computer). However, clicking the Livepatch icon brings up a message saying Livepatch is not available for this release. Which I suppose raises the question of why it was included in the menu for 20.10.
Ubuntu 20.10 -- Trying to run the Livepatch tool
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One bump in the road I ran into was that on the second day of my trial Ubuntu failed to boot. After the boot menu I just got a blank screen and had to hard restart the machine. This only happened once and it was not immediately after an update or any other problems so I do not have an explanation for it.
Another weird glitch showed up when I was using LibreOffice. If I opened the About screen and attempted to move it, the entire LibreOffice window would shrink down to a thin column. The width varied, sometimes it was about an inch wide, other times it was barely big enough to display the window's "Close" button. Either way, closing the About window allowed me to resize the LibreOffice application back to its usual dimensions.
Ubuntu 20.10 -- The LibreOffice window goes into hiding
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Conclusions
Canonical did not do anything really surprising or new with Ubuntu 20.10. There are some new features and some improvements. I like the ability to set up ZFS volumes with a click and the support for Raspberry Pi 4 computers will be welcome to many. The permissions on Snap packages will be useful for people who want to sandbox applications and I think having a relatively friendly interface for that is a good move.
I like that we can run GNOME in either a X.Org session or with Wayland. At this point the two technologies appear to be about even. Ubuntu is sticking with X.Org for the default which probably still makes sense given the few corner cases where Wayland can still struggle.
There were a lot of little problems with this release. Putting aside performance in VirtualBox, which was poor, I ran into a number of issues. Things like the Software utility consuming all of my CPU endlessly when it could not find a package match, the same utility not returning any results sometimes even when I was typing names of programs I knew were available and found later using the same search. The constant warnings on my workstation about the network connection not being established while I was downloading files was alternatively comical and annoying. Having the system not boot once during my trial was unpleasant and not confidence inspiring.
The odd thing I found was the unevenness of the experience. The installation is polished and smooth. The GNOME desktop, while very heavy on resources, is well put together and fairly consistent. On the other hand getting spammed with network errors while the network was functioning and regularly seeing sluggish animations that were more distracting than helpful was unpleasant. I started using the command line and APT just to avoid using the desktop and the Software utilities more than absolutely necessary and that is not a good sign when the user is trying to work around your interface.
There are some good ideas happening in Ubuntu 20.10, but the distribution does not feel polished or smooth once it is installed. There are some good tools and good concepts on display, but a lot of little problems, distractions, and glitches too. I'd recommend passing on this release and hoping things get ironed out in time for Ubuntu 21.04.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card, Ralink RT5390R PCIe Wireless card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
Ubuntu has a visitor supplied average rating of: 7.7/10 from 301 review(s).
Have you used Ubuntu? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
ReactOS hires a kernel developer, Ubuntu speeding up Snap package load times, upgrading Fedora Silverblue, Linux Mint builds its own Chromium package
The ReactOS team develops an open source operating system which strives to be binary compatible with Microsoft Windows. The ReactOS project has hired a developer to work full-time on the operating system's kernel memory management software. "I proudly announce that ReactOS Deutschland e.V. has hired Jérôme Gardou to work full-time on the ReactOS kernel's memory manager for the next 3 months. Jérôme is a ReactOS veteran who has been contributing to the project since 2009. He has deep expertise into nearly all parts of ReactOS, ranging from various user-mode components (mostly related to low-level graphics) over their kernel-mode counterparts and down to bare-metal components like the kernel memory manager. During the upcoming months, Jérôme is going to overhaul the Mm (Memory Manager) and Cc (Cache Controller) components of the kernel. Both of them are core parts of the operating system, which are involved in every memory request and file operation. Improving them is expected to have a substantial effect on the overall stability and performance of ReactOS." Details on the work planned can be found in the project's news post.
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The Ubuntu project is attempting to address performance issues surrounding launching portable Snap packages. In particular the initial load times tend to be slow and the default compression used to compress Snap packages is being changed to reduce the time it takes to load a Snap. "By default, snaps are packaged as a compressed, read-only squashfs filesystem using the XZ algorithm. This results in a high level of compression but consequently requires more processing power to uncompress and expand the filesystem for use. On the desktops, users may perceive this as a 'slowness' - the time it takes for the application to launch. This is also far more noticeable on first launch only, before the application data is cached in memory. Subsequent launches are fast and typically, there's little to no difference compared to traditionally packaged applications. To improve startup times, we decided to test a different algorithm - LZO - which offers lesser compression, but needs less processing power to complete the action." Further details are available on the Ubuntu blog.
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Fedora Silverblue is a desktop distribution which uses OSTree to manage the base operating system system in an atomic fashion. Upgrading Fedora's Silverblue edition works a little differently than other editions of Fedora, but also offers some benefits such as rolling back problematic system changes. "Silverblue is an operating system for your desktop built on Fedora. It's excellent for daily use, development, and container-based workflows. It offers numerous advantages such as being able to roll back in case of any problems. If you want to update to Fedora 33 on your Silverblue system, this article tells you how. It not only shows you what to do, but also how to revert things if something unforeseen happens." The detailed upgrade guide can be found on the Fedora Magazine website.
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The Linux Mint team has published their monthly newsletter for October. In it the team talks about new features, such as the ability to mark specific files as "favourites" to make them easier to find. The newsletter also reports that both Linux Mint and Linux Mint Debian Edition will now have up to date Chromium packages. "The Chromium browser is now available in the official repositories for both Linux Mint and LMDE. If you've been waiting for this I'd like to thank you for your patience. To guarantee reactivity and timely updates we had to automate the process of detecting, packaging and compiling new versions of Chromium. This is an application which can require more than 6 hours per build on a fast computer. We allocated a new build server with high specifications (Ryzen 9 3900, 128GB RAM, NMVe) and reduced the time it took to build Chromium to a little more than an hour. Although Chromium was present in Debian we noticed it was rarely up to date so the decision was taken to also build for LMDE." More information on what the Mint developers have been up to this past month can be found in their October newsletter.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Considering a Microsoft Linux distro
Penguin-in-pane asks: I've heard that it's possible Microsoft might make their own Linux distro. What would that look like and how would it affect existing distros? Would this be a good thing bringing in more money and developers or a disaster for all the existing Linux distros?
DistroWatch answers: I'm old enough to remember when it used to be a common joke to tell new people in the Linux community Microsoft was building their own Linux distribution and then send them to the MS Linux satirical website. Twenty years ago the idea of Microsoft creating a Linux distribution seemed like such an outlandish idea that referencing it was a popular way to get a laugh.
Times change though and these days, when people like early open source pioneer Eric S. Raymond suggest Microsoft might want to stop developing Windows to work on their own Linux-based platform, many people actually take the idea seriously. Raymond's idea makes some sense, at least at first glance.
Twenty years ago, when my friends and I were laughing at the MS Linux website, Microsoft made most of its money from sales of Windows and Microsoft Office. They had a very strong market position which resulted in anti-trust proceedings. The idea of the company changing gears to work on a Linux distribution when they were so profitable through sales of Windows was entirely outlandish. However, these days the landscape looks a lot different.
Microsoft still holds a dominant desktop position, but the bulk of their revenue comes in through different streams. Much of their profits come from the Azure cloud service and about 60% of the installations on Azure are Linux distributions. Microsoft also may have made more money in recent years from the sale of Android phones than Windows phones. When we factor in that Microsoft Office is now frequently used as a cloud service rather than a set of desktop applications and that Microsoft has ported their Edge web browser to GNU/Linux, well, it begins to look like the company is happy to make money from Linux and contribute back to Linux development. Especially when we consider that Microsoft is trying to make it easy for people to run Linux software on the Windows desktop through Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
Does this indicate that Windows is likely to become a Linux-based distribution? Something that runs Linux at its core with a Windows (or Windows-like) desktop on top and a WINE-like compatibility layer for running legacy Windows software? My crystal ball is out of order, but I suspect we are not going to see a Microsoft Linux distribution in the near future. Some people, like Eric S. Raymond, see a Linux-based Windows experience as a way for Microsoft to offload a lot of their kernel development costs onto the Linux community and reap the benefits of just maintaining a compatibility layer. Since Windows makes the company proportionally less money these days, it would seem to make sense to offload as much development effort (and cost) as possible in order to increase profits and reduce work the company needs to do.
At least that seems to be the line of reasoning. There are three problems, as I see the situation, which prevent this approach (a Linux-based Windows) from making sense for Microsoft. The first is that Windows is a massive software project. Even 20 years ago when talking about the size of the Windows source code people tended to round off to the nearest ten million lines of code. It's huge. Even just the kernel and drivers probably amount to tens of millions of lines of code. Were Microsoft to want to go the Linux-based route, they would need to make sure all of the functionality, quirks, and features of that code was translated over into Linux or into the compatibility layer which would sit on top of Linux. It is a huge undertaking, one which the WINE project has been chipping away at for decades.
In other words, Microsoft might save some effort in kernel development eventually, but the upfront cost of migrating to a new kernel while maintaining compatibility with the old Windows kernel base would be a massive project that would take years to iron out.
The second issue is that Microsoft would, at least for a while, find themselves supporting two quite different code bases. Two massive, technologically quite different code bases. The switch wouldn't happen over night, there would be "legacy Windows" installs lingering on, under support contracts, for around a decade. Microsoft will not want to essentially maintain two hugely complex operating systems and all their software that runs on these platforms, at the same time for a decade. It would be a big drain on resources and support personnel.
Finally, a big barrier to Microsoft switching lanes at this point is just the massive ecosystem the company has built. A lot of Microsoft server and desktops tools (apart from their Edge browser) are Windows-only. A lot of their ecosystem is tightly integrated to keep customers (especially businesses) tied to Windows. The Windows desktop market is worth billions of dollars still. Migrating to another kernel would be risky, expensive in the short-term, and risk undoing a lot of the work the company has done to tie all of its products together. All for the questionable long-term benefit of saving some developer effort a decade down the road? It seems like a big gamble.
After all, Linux is a money maker for Microsoft in the cloud and sometimes on phones, but on the desktop? Not so much. Microsoft may be more Linux-friendly when it comes to desktop software these days, but that doesn't mean they see a benefit to jumping to a new kernel in a market where they already dominate. Raymond put forward the idea that the only reason Microsoft would port their Edge browser to Linux was as a test to get experience in porting the rest of their software stack. I see this as unlikely. The core of Edge (Chromium) already runs on Linux, so the "porting" process in this case would be mostly packaging and adjusting the small amount of Windows-specific code. In other words, a relatively simple process. In exchange, now web developers running Linux can test their websites with Edge and Microsoft can benefit from web search revenue through Edge. Put simply, this was a minimal investment with relatively good payoff. Porting many other Microsoft tools would be a much larger investment with arguably no benefit.
For all the above reasons I believe a Linux-based Windows platform is unlikely, at least in the coming decade. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Hayden Barnes works on running Ubuntu via WSL for Canonical and recently pointed out several reasons it is unlikely Microsoft would transition to a Linux-based Windows.
But what if I'm wrong? What if Microsoft sees it as worth while to use Linux as its core and run userland Windows on top? In that case, from a ecosystem point of view, I don't think we would see much change. At least not in the short-term.
Hardware companies would probably put more effort into developing drivers for Linux, but otherwise I don't imagine a lot would change in the short-term. Microsoft tools would still be designed to run on their compatibility layer, not on GNU/Linux. Third-party applications and games would be packaged for the Microsoft platform, probably not generic GNU/Linux distributions. New computers would still mostly be sold with the new Windows-ish operating system and bundled with the usual add-ons. It might become easier to port "Windows" software to Linux, but it would probably still require some help from compatibility projects like WINE to make it work.
My reasoning largely comes from watching the FreeBSD community. After all, macOS includes parts of FreeBSD under the hood, but FreeBSD cannot run macOS software because it is typically made with entirely different libraries. FreeBSD doesn't benefit from macOS games, drivers, or its application store. While the two platforms share a lot of code and tools, the differences between macOS and FreeBSD are vast and software rarely spans the divide. I believe the same would happen were Microsoft to port its userland to the Linux kernel. The two platforms would suddenly have a lot more in common, but in a practical sense little would change for consumers or for existing distributions.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Fedora 33
The Fedora project has announced the release of Fedora 33. The project's latest version ships with Btrfs as the default filesystem (on the Workstation edition) and runs GNOME 3.38. Each edition now enables the EarlyOOM service to free up memory when heavy processes consume too much RAM and swap space. The project has also made nano the default command line text editor, replacing vi. "No matter what variant of Fedora you use, you're getting the latest the open source world has to offer. Following our 'First' foundation, we've updated key programming language and system library packages, including Python 3.9, Ruby on Rails 6.0, and Perl 5.32. In Fedora KDE, we've followed the work in Fedora 32 Workstation and enabled the EarlyOOM service by default to improve the user experience in low-memory situations. To make the default Fedora experience better, we've set nano as the default editor. nano is a friendly editor for new users. Those of you who want the power of editors like vi can, of course, set your own default." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement.
Fedora 33 -- Running the GNOME desktop
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NixOS 20.09
NixOS is an independent Linux distribution which showcases the Nix advanced package manager. The project's latest release is NixOS 20.09 which is supported through to April 2021 and places a focus on stabilizing the core system. "Stabilization of the NixOS happens a month before planned release. The goal is to have as little as possible continuous integration (Hydra) jobs failing before the release is cut. While we would like to release on time, a high quality release is more important. I think that the 20.09 release highlighted a few weak points with our current release schedule. Discussions have already began on how to improve the process from the beginning, to help minimize risk, and set ourselves up for more successes in the future. I want to thank WORLDofPEACE (my co-release-manager) for helping me with release management items, Thomas Tuegel for helping with Qt and Plasma stabilization, as well as Robert Scott for his work with release stabilization." Further information is available on the project's news page and in the release notes.
FreeBSD 12.2
The FreeBSD team has announced the availability of FreeBSD 12.2. This update to the 12.x series updates Intel networing support, makes it possible to run Linux inside Jail environments, and the Clang compiler has been updated to version 10. "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE. This is the third release of the stable/12 branch. Some of the highlights: Updates to the wireless networking stack and various drivers have been introduced to provide better 802.11n and 802.11ac support. The ice(4) driver has been added, supporting Intel 100Gb ethernet cards. The jail(8) utility has been updated to allow running Linux in a jailed environment. OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1h. OpenSSH has been updated to version 7.9p1. The clang, llvm, lld, lldb, compiler-rt utilities and libc++ have been updated to version 10.0.1." Further details can be found in the project's release announcement and in the release notes.
GParted Live 1.1.0-6
Curtis Gedak has announced the release of GParted Live 1.1.0-6, the latest update of the project's Debian-based, specialist Linux distribution designed for performing disk management and data rescue tasks: "The GParted team is pleased to announce a new stable release of GParted Live. This release includes GParted 1.1.0, updated packages and other improvements. Items of note include: based on the Debian 'Sid' repository as of 2020-10-27; Linux kernel updated to 5.9.1. Known issue: GParted Live safe graphic setting Failsafe mode fails to enter graphic mode when booting from UEFI mechanism, while it's OK when booting from legacy BIOS one. This release of GParted Live has been successfully tested on VirtualBox, VMware, BIOS, UEFI and physical computers with AMD/ATI, NVIDIA and Intel graphics. Note that the default boot options did not display an X Desktop on old Acer Aspire laptops. The workaround is to select Other modes of GParted Live and choose GParted Live (Safe graphics setting, vga-normal)." Here is the short release announcement.
Linux Lite 5.2
Jerry Bezencon has announced the release of Linux Lite 5.2. The project's latest release is based on Ubuntu 20.04.1 and introduces a number of small changes and improvements. The firewall can now be managed through a module in the settings panel, old GTK2 software and themes have been removed, Adobe Flash is no longer included in the distribution, and new packages have been added to the Lite Software package manager. The distribution also includes some package updates: "Details: kernel: 5.4.0-52 ( custom kernels also available via our Repository for versions 3.13 - 5.9); Firefox: 82.0; Thunderbird: 68.10.0; LibreOffice: 6.4.6.2; VLC: 3.0.9.2; GIMP: 2.10.18; Base: 20.04.1. Known Issues: No prompt to eject Media at the end of the Legacy install, prompt is available at the end of the UEFI install. Release Notes - not working on first installer slide. Desktop icons - English support only. GRUB - holding shift down whilst booting in UEFI mode does not bring up the GRUB menu (works in Legacy mode), waiting for Ubuntu fix. GRUB menu shows Linux Lite as 'Ubuntu'. After you install Linux Lite, you can change GRUB to show 'Linux Lite'." Further information and screenshots can be found in the project's release announcement.
Linux Lite 5.2 -- Running the Xfce desktop
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OpenIndiana 2020.10
Andreas Wacknitz has announced the release of OpenIndiana 2020.10, the latest version of the project's community effort to keep alive the OpenSolaris distribution and its many popular technologies, such as ZFS, DTrace or Zones. This version updates the MATE desktop environment to version 1.24: "After almost 6 months of development, we have released the new OpenIndiana 'Hipster' snapshot 2020.10 right on time on October 31st, 2020. Some of the noticeable changes are: after BHyVe has been upstreamed into illumos-gate, we automatically got it and we were able to supply this with a bhyve branded zone for OpenIndiana; FreeRDP and Remmina have been added; the Squeak Virtual Machine (v4, v5 and v5 Cog) have been added and so it's possible to run older and newer versions of Squeak Smalltalk and also Cuis Smalltalk on OpenIndiana; MATE, our main desktop environment, has been updated to 1.24; GCC 10 has been added; a buch of other packages have also been updated." See the release announcement and the release notes for further information.
Voyager Live 20.10
The Voyager Live project has published a new version of their desktop distribution. The new release, Voyager 20.10, is based on Ubuntu 20.10 and offers nine months of package updates and security fixes. "I introduce you Voyager GE 20.10 which continues the adventure with the GNOME Shell desktop version 3.38 by introducing new features. With the promise finally made to have a light, fast, modern, fluid and efficient GNOME system. This version is based on the Linux 5.8 kernel and the Ubuntu Groovy Gorilla distribution . 20.10 is an intermediate version with 9-months of updates that prepares for the future 5-year LTS - long-term support - version. With integrated options like Tablet PC, Wine-staging and Steam Gaming in the Box Voyager. Voyager comes in 2 desktop versions, with Xfce by default and GNOME Shell for this version called GE, Xfce is only offered in LTS version. Also you can choose according to your wishes and machine capacities. The general idea of Voyager, is to introduce into GNOME Shell pre-installed GNOME extensions and scripts grouped in a box which optimize the system with a choice of necessary software. All in a redesigned ergonomics with many wallpapers." Further information can be found in the project's release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 2,203
- Total data uploaded: 34.4TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll (by Jesse Smith) |
Does Wayland or X.Org provide a better experience?
In this week's review of Ubuntu the observation was made that the Wayland GNOME session worked almost identically to the GNOME on X.Org session, indicating these two technologies are close in terms of features and functionality. Have you compared X.Org sessions to Wayland? If you have, which one provided the better experience? Let us know about your adventures in testing these two session types in the comments.
You can see the results of our previous poll on available free disk space in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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Does Wayland or X.Org provide a better experience?
| I found Wayland to be better: | 137 (10%) |
| I found X.Org to be better: | 464 (33%) |
| I found the two to be about the same: | 174 (13%) |
| I have not tested both: | 617 (44%) |
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| Website News |
New distributions added to database
Snal Linux
Snal Linux is a small Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. It features the i3 window manager and it includes the Firefox web browser, as well as a handful of network and filesystem utilities. It is intended to be used as a live image to troubleshoot hard disk, system and network problems.
Snal Linux 1.0 -- Running the i3 window manger
(full image size: 193kB, resolution: 1920x1080 pixels)
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 9 November 2020. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Ubuntu 20.10 (by vern on 2020-11-02 01:20:01 GMT from United States)
One disappointing experience with 20.10 is It no longer recognizes my USB Cannon scanner. Manjaro is still able to use it, just any Ubuntu product under 20.10, my scanner doesn't work. I've check all connected variables. I can't seem to find the culprit.
2 • Microsoft Linux Distro (by Tux Raider on 2020-11-02 02:26:12 GMT from United States)
it will be interesting to see where Microsoft goes with their distro if they do make a Linux distro
3 • Gnome 3.38 and Wayland (by Sam Crawford on 2020-11-02 02:43:49 GMT from United States)
I installed Ubuntu 20.10 with Gnome on my Dell XPS 13 9300 laptop. It's high spec'd with an 8 core I-7 processer and 32GB of ram. Ubuntu ran great with either display manager and I couldn't really tell the difference.
That said, I installed Debian Bullseye with the same version of Gnome and everything seems to run smoother. On Debian I only ran on Wayland with no issues.
I like the newest version of Gnome and found on Debian I had to install Gnome-Tweaks, that is included in Ubuntu's version. Otherwise both versions are pretty similar.
Gnome 3.38 seems ready for prime-time.
4 • Microsoft Windows on Linux Kernel (by Wedge009 on 2020-11-02 02:57:07 GMT from Australia)
I read through ESR's post, the zdnet article, as well as Jesse's Q&A analysis. I agree it sounds like a nice idea for long-term planning for Micorosft but also that it's a huge risk and investment to undertake such a project. Perhaps there is a small division of MS experimenting on this idea already, we don't know.
But the sheer volume of things tied to the Windows ecosystem leads me to agree with Jesse that - at least for the moment - MS is unlikely to be considering such a step. I was among those who made the jump from Windows 7 to Linux with the end of public support for that particular OS at the beginning of the year, and I brought my father and best friend - both reasonably tech-savvy users albeit perhaps not as keen on the details as I am - along for the ride. My brother chose to pay for Windows 10 instead.
One of the major things I see keeping Windows around is the games industry, at least relating to the majority of large developers in the market. The (over-)reliance on DirectX by many/most major PC games (and the Xbox too, I suppose), even with the emergence cross-platform Vulkan, I think it's just too big a hurdle for most studios to consider moving away from right now. Wine (and Proton) have made remarkable strides in allowing Windows-based games to run on Linux in recent years, but there are still a lot of problems such as the DRM-heavy nature of game releases today. I haven't been able to get anything besides Valve's Steam running on Linux (since only Valve was willing to make Steam cross-platform). (And even this was threatened with the push to remove 32-bit library support from mainstream distributions.)
There is still too much money to be made in keeping the games industry tied to Windows and DirectX, I think. I would love to be proven wrong, to see more Windows and/or Windows-based games move to Linux, but I just don't see it happening any time soon.
5 • 20.10 (by Tim on 2020-11-02 04:10:11 GMT from United States)
I’ve been running Ubuntu MATE 20.10 since the end of July, I can’t speak for Ubuntu proper but for me this has been a very stable and non problematic release. Were it LTS I might leave a system on it.
6 • Mandatory Subject (by Baskin Robin Williams on 2020-11-02 04:15:11 GMT from Romania)
@4:
Just as Google challenged Microsoft, just as Shuttleworth launched Ubuntu into the public eye (even a quote on The Big Bang Theory program about Ubuntu) so people could actually know about Linux, so too should a wealthy individual or company come and do three things:
1) Get behind Linux gaming for real (and not settle with WINE)
2) Promote Linux via marketing (like Firefox in the NYT, for example) efforts in mainstream mediums
3) Break the OEM market up so One Microsoft Way does not have the advantage
7 • Wayland vs. Xorg (by Linuxista on 2020-11-02 04:41:47 GMT from United States)
I would use wayland, but still no way to assign custom buttons to my mouse with libinput, so Xorg it is. Also no relief on the horizon as far as I can see.
8 • Microsoft and Lilnux (by Bobbie Sellers on 2020-11-02 05:09:03 GMT from United States)
As soon as Microsoft figures out a way to make a great deal of money out of Linux
you can expect them to try and do so.
Pushing Linux as though it were a consumer product would be futile at this point.
But MS could perfect WINE and would do as soon as it figures out a route from
your wallet to their bank account.
The MS OEM market is breaking up as we speak with Lenovo as well as
Dell among the well-known producers. Several other smaller companies
are selling at prices above the generic product their own systems with
one or another variety of Linux installed One has even setup their own
distro, PopOS.
I think that slow and steady with Linux efforts will eventually win the day
with more people becoming computer savvy enough to switch to Linux
without problems and learning to run Windows in a VirtualBox or a
similar product.
bliss - who runs PCLinuxOS 64 2020.11 with kernel 5.9.3 on used
Dell Latitude laptops but wants to remind you all that, “Any fool
can use a computer. Many do.” and I am proof,
9 • Wayland: Still not there (by SuperOscar on 2020-11-02 07:23:22 GMT from Finland)
I test Wayland sessions every now and then, but all too often I’m forced back because of quirks or just plain system freezes. It’s worse if you have an Nvidia graphics card but happens in any case if you use a DE such as KDE Plasma. Sway mostly works.
10 • Linux from MS (by Any on 2020-11-02 07:46:18 GMT from Spain)
The change does not need to be of a sudden. It could be a lengthy process. One bit of a time, step by step. They first need to learn to walk and then to run in the Linux world.
WSL, Hypervisor, Edge...
There are plenty of FOSS text editors, office suits, image editors, file explorers and so many other tools.
They just need to invent and adapt a form to have everything under their control in this new situation.
11 • Ubuntu 20.10 (by Sam on 2020-11-02 08:19:12 GMT from Switzerland)
"I'd recommend passing on this release..." yes, like any other Ubuntu non-LTS release.
12 • The disappearing connection illusion... (by Sondar on 2020-11-02 08:42:35 GMT from United Kingdom)
... may be occasional, difficult to reproduce, but infrequent? It can seem to be both hardware, esp. Intel, and distro/kernel dependent, notably in MX. Sometimes it can be induced by installing with only a wi-fi connection and later running on a wired connection, in which case, I wonder whether the 'disconnection' refers to the removed wi-fi dongle/disconnected wi-fi driver whilst the wired connection continues? For me, this has only started happening within the last year, so guessing, could it be a recent kernel feature?
13 • *** (by whoKnows on 2020-11-02 09:14:17 GMT from Switzerland)
@1 • Ubuntu 20.10 (by vern)
"One disappointing experience with 20.10 is It no longer recognizes my USB Cannon scanner."
Are you absolutely sure that it is Ubuntu and not your network issue?
Works fine here. https://ibb.co/fM0rMsS
@4 • Microsoft Windows on Linux Kernel (by Wedge009)
"I haven't been able to get anything besides Valve's Steam running on Linux ..."
https://www.feralinteractive.com/en/
I got more than few games running through WINE, but it's ultimate fiddling for the nerds.
@5 • 20.10 (by Tim)
"Were it [Ubuntu 20.10] LTS I might leave a system on it."
Who wants LTS, takes LTS, but LTS has always old software.
Where's the problem in automatic upgrades every 6 Months?
@6 • Mandatory Subject (by Baskin Robin Williams)
"1) Get behind Linux gaming for real (and not settle with WINE)
2) Promote Linux via marketing (like Firefox in the NYT, for example) efforts in mainstream mediums
3) Break the OEM market up so One Microsoft Way does not have the advantage "
1. There are ways for game developers to make "universal" games, but there's no need (market).
2% (Gamers) of 2% (Linux users) interests nobody.
2. For promotion, you need a product first. Linux is (non or partially working) "project".
3. See 2.
@8 • Microsoft and Lilnux (by Bobbie Sellers)
"I think that slow and steady with Linux efforts will eventually win the day
with more people becoming computer savvy enough to switch to Linux ..."
Not very likely to happen any time soon.
Linux is about diversity (anarchy and chaos) and it's a project.
It would take a (fully functional) product to have something to market on OEM's.
It would have to have more software for it, if it's to challenge Microsoft.
Why change to something worse, that can do less?
10 • Linux from MS (by Any)
"The change does not need to be of a sudden. It could be a lengthy process."
Very lengthy indeed.
12 • The disappearing connection illusion... (by Sondar)
"... may be occasional, difficult to reproduce, but infrequent?"
Getting any connection at all seems to be the bigger problem in my case.
I'm wondering if it has something to do with updates that we got for our gateways.
14 • MS Linux (by Commissioning Engineer on 2020-11-02 10:13:28 GMT from United Kingdom)
The problem with the idea that Microsoft will move to a Linux base will be corporate customer resistance to it. Think of the cost involved if say 1 in 10 of users in a company of 100k people generate even a single support call when they changed over. Even worse, imagine you and your colleagues find your systems do not interchange data freely and work together seamlessly during the changeover period which could easily be a couple of years in a big company.
If I was a CIO I would be telling MS that if you fundamentally change Windows you had better make sure everything we are using continues to run on it and our users had better not notice any differences that generates support work. If not there are other SW and cloud providers we can look at.
If you produce SW company yourself you would be thinking of all the work to rework your SW, especially if it uses low level functions and also how you can support legacy users.
For the above reasons I agree with Jesse that the amount of time and effort MS would have to put it to support all the old SW would make it unviable for them and customer resistance would anyway probably be too high.
Probably there would also be some public resistance. Recently I changed my partner's computer over to using Libre Office as her MSO stopped working and required a change to O365 with an annual subscription which I was not going to pay (admittedly this is because I got the MSO from the HUP program and our company has moved to O365). There was quite a lot of resistance until I pointed out that all the features she uses in MSO exist in LO and that MSO can read LO files and vice versa.
@13. The problem with 6 monthly upgrades is that your setup does not always work after them. In the last 12 months I have had to roll back updates on both Manjaro and Mint and whilst this has never happened to me before it certainly made me think about using only LTS versions of Mint.
15 • Wayland screen sharing (by Codalunga on 2020-11-02 10:30:31 GMT from United Kingdom)
My only issue with Wayland - and is a big one, as I'm a teacher who works remotely due to COVID - is that I can't seem to share single windows on Google Meet. Works just fine on X.org.
16 • Wayland vs Xorg (by Bob Blogger on 2020-11-02 10:40:59 GMT from Australia)
I don't see a huge difference between wayland and Xorg in everyday use.
Although I do know that wayland has a lot of features missing that Xorg provides. Especially from a BSD or customization standpoint.
Though in terms of code and portability I prefer wayland. It provides everything including Xorg support
17 • Game DRM (by Wedge009 on 2020-11-02 11:01:57 GMT from Australia)
@13 Sorry I didn't make myself clear. I have used Wine plenty of times - in many (not all, but many) cases it works quite well for my older games before the age of Internet-based DRM. I know of Feral's quality porting work too. The remark you quoted from me was in reference to game store fronts - Steam, Origin, Uplay, etc. I have only got Steam working on Linux and with Proton/SteamPlay I found myself buying something there instead of the DRM-free GOG.com release - it was slightly cheaper too. I'd prefer to avoid the DRM too, but with Steam making many game-related things seamless the lower cost and the benefit of Proton swayed me to go with their distribution instead. Sad as it may be to some.
18 • What about Office? (by Hail the Raspberry Pi! on 2020-11-02 11:24:46 GMT from United Kingdom)
More so than a full-fat windows on Linux, I am far more interested in having the ability to run full-fat Office on Linux.It's already ported to MacOS and there are mobile versions for Android and iOS so I don't think it would be that challenging for them to do. On the one hand it would seriously undermine Windows (almost any person I know that has a slight interest in Linux usually needs full-fat MS Office for work or college), but on the other hand their Office 365 subscription service is rather lucrative. I'm not saying it will happen, but I sure wish it did!
19 • Ubuntu 10.0: Why an EOL kernel? (by Didier Spaier on 2020-11-02 12:28:47 GMT from France)
I can understand that the Ubuntu team doesn't want to ship an LTS kernel as the next one will be 5.10, but then why ship an EOL one? I'd have expected a 5.9 instead. This being said I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu anyway, even less of Gnome, so that doesn't matter much for me. Just curious.
20 • MS and Linux (by MikeOh Shark on 2020-11-02 12:32:08 GMT from France)
It's always surprised me that people keep saying it's difficult to move to Linux after Windows. Hasn't anyone heard the screams from users of Windows Millenium, Vista, Windows 8...? People eventually find their solutions or get used to it.
I had planned to help my parents move to Linux. Step one was to get them away from IE and on to Firefox. Then away from multiple web sites for mail to Thunderbird. With LibreOffice set to save as MS formats and VLC they have a group of programs that they are familiar with and love that happen to be available on Linux. ;)
Perhaps the easier way would be for MS and HP or Dell to make a bootable flash drive for rescue to include with new computers instead of rescue partitions. By including popular programs and a way to backup settings from your Windows programs so they can be used by a rescue drive people could at least try Linux without difficulty.
21 • Ubuntu 20.10 vs LTS (by fox on 2020-11-02 12:47:20 GMT from Canada)
I recently purchased a 2019 27" iMac, and tried running both versions of Ubuntu on it. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Things that don't run on either are the internal speakers and mic and the Broadcom internal wifi card (BCM4364). All are easily fixed with usb accessories. The display brightness keyboard key doesn't work in 20.10, but this is fixable with a small app called Brightness Controller. Neither version is able to "see" external drives plugged into one of the Thunderbolt ports, but those ports work with other peripherals attached with a usb3.1 to 3.0 adapter. But the big problem with the LTS version is that use of any more than the four usb ports causes the boot-up to freeze and if you plug in additional things to a 5th port after boot-up, then shutdown doesn't finish and you end up with roaring fans. For this reason, I use Ubuntu 20.10. Ironically, everything except the brightness keyboard key works in the much older 2011 27" iMac. I hope that Ubuntu or Debian developers eventually provide drivers for the wifi card, internal sound and mic and thunderbolt 3 ports of the newer iMacs because they are great computers for running Linux.
22 • MS Linux (by OstroL on 2020-11-02 12:52:03 GMT from Poland)
In a way, I'd welcome MS Linux. I don't really care about all those "privacy" matters most of the Linux users here cry about, which practically none of the Windows users appear to be interested. Since it arrived in the dev section, I am using MS Edge daily for work, even leaving aside Opera for a while. I don't seem to miss Opera much., by the way. MS Edge is quite fast, much faster than any other Chromium based web browser. So, if MS would create an MS Linux, it would be one of the best out there. It would be done with the community, but with a corporate plan.
Before you shout, I am a Linux user for more than 15 years. I use Windows without bias. Everything is a learning process. If anyone wants "hate," one should join a party or a "religious" corporation. :)
23 • Xubuntu 20.10 (by jan on 2020-11-02 13:33:45 GMT from Poland)
Having installed all Xubuntu versions since 15.04 up to 20.04 without any problem (Lenovo Z70 80, no HW changes since 2015, always dual boot with windows 7) I was very surprised that my Xubuntu 20.10 installer complained that it could not find the efi partition (it really was there since 2015) and that this situation was a fundamental error. Knowing that to expect different results when using the same ingredients under the same conditions is a sure sign of desperate madness, I nevertheless tried to prove that black can be white, but after two days I gave up. No amount of grub repair, partition deletion and reformat, MBR erasure, Google search, nothing worked - Xubuntu refused to install. Indeed it was a fundamental error: after 5 years of flawless use, my favorite distro tells me I and my laptop are not welcome any more. At this moment I realized that for my pc to work, I need to stop behaving like an idiot (regardless of whether I am nuts or not).
I downloaded and installed MXlinux - everything took me less than 20 minutes. Works perfectly, no mistaken conclusions or questions asked.
What I learned is that Canonical does not care too much about user experience - no amount of words can convince them that releasing half-baked products every six months, with less than enough skilled resources is a real waste and it does not contribute to the user satisfaction. It took me two days to stop ramming the wall with my head, but it seems that Canonical will never stop.
My case should also shut the mouths of all those false friendly advisers calling for less fragmentation and consolidation of the linux world. Just image where I (or You) would be left, if all things linux you could get were Canonical and Red Hat, all under the benign and all encompassing watchful monitoring by the MS Linux Foundation (a horrible perspective)?
24 • Redmond Linux (by Jerry Perkins on 2020-11-02 14:13:14 GMT from United States)
I have a disc of "redmondliuxs personal" dated October 15,2001. At that time I was a bit interested in Linux and tried MS version of Linux. You could place an order for a copy thru their web site at "www.redmondlinux.org" and support with version RC2 by email to "support@redmondlinux.org"
The last I heard about their interest I Linux was a statement saying that Linux would not last very long. JP
25 • Ubuntu 20.10 Software Manager (by dragonmouth on 2020-11-02 14:23:35 GMT from United States)
All the various Software Managers included in Ubuntu-based distros are more form than function. When and If I use an Ubuntu-based distro, one of the first things I do is to install Synaptic. It may not be glitzy and it may not show me user ratings of various packages but it is eminently more useful and functional than any Software Manager.
26 • @23:P (by dragonmouth on 2020-11-02 14:31:47 GMT from United States)
" Just image where I (or You) would be left, if all things linux you could get were Canonical and Red Hat, all under the benign and all encompassing watchful monitoring by the MS Linux Foundation (a horrible perspective)?"
FUD, You can imagine that if you are a sado-masochist. I'd rather imagine if all things Linux came from Slackware, PCLinuxOS and Arch with no corporate entanglements.
27 • the MS philosophy isn't Linux compatible (by Matt on 2020-11-02 16:21:46 GMT from United States)
I just set up a new laptop last night that dual boots Windows 10 and Debian Testing. The differences in the installation of the two operating systems are stark.
The Windows install enforces or encourages handing over an email address, phone number, syncing your files to a cloud that they own, syncing contents of your cellular telephone with their servers, opting into all sorts of privacy intrusive things like tracking your use of software, your location, browsing history and creating an advertising ID to make it easier for advertisers to track you. They also opt you in for a trial of Office 365 that comes with recurring fees if you decide to keep using it. These are the things that they make public, who knows what other things are being done by Microsoft in the background because everything is closed source.
On the other hand, the only thing the Debian installer wanted to know is if I want to participate in a package popularity contest, and the default answer selection was set as "no".
I do not see how Microsoft would do anything with Linux other than ruin it by trying to eliminate the freedom, choice, and privacy that has driven Linux development from the beginning.
28 • ubuntu 20.10 review (by random on 2020-11-02 19:18:32 GMT from Austria)
The animations can be turned off via the tweaks utility (General section).
The attaching of modal dialogs (responsible for the observed LibreOffice issue, but happens with other applications too) can be turned off via the tweaks utility too (Windows section).
29 • 227 Matt: (by dragonmouth on 2020-11-02 21:57:56 GMT from United States)
"I do not see how Microsoft would do anything with Linux other than ruin it by trying to eliminate the freedom, choice, and privacy that has driven Linux development from the beginning. "
If MS got into Linux seriously, I would expect them to try to pull the same stunt that SCO pulled, i.e. declare that they own Linux and everybody has to pay them to use it.
30 • Ubuntu dependencies (by mikef90000 on 2020-11-03 01:48:55 GMT from United States)
I've used Ubuntu for a long time and have had pretty seamless expeiences until recently.
- Around 20.04 Ubuntu started pushing gdm3 in preference to lightdm. On my servers I disable the display (login) manager to allow optional startup of a DE. When I disabled lightdm or gdm3 on Xubuntu the DE would no longer launch with startx.
- On 20.10 removing grub2 in preference to rEFInd gives me a Critical error message that I've never seen before.
Looking a lot more seriously at Debian and the like .....
31 • Switch to Linux (by whoKnows on 2020-11-03 14:51:08 GMT from Switzerland)
@20 • MS and Linux (by MikeOh Shark)
"It's always surprised me that people keep saying it's difficult to move to Linux after Windows ... I had planned to help my parents move to Linux ..."
People are saying it because it is hard. The issue is very multifaceted and it's impossible to explain it properly in a couple of sentences, but basically it comes down to two things - no Linux software and low Linux quality.
Private people mostly don't care about the OS, but about the applications they are using. Almost anybody will miss MS Office and a dozen of other applications not available for Linux. Yes, in many cases, one can replace product A with a project B, but ...
Basically all people (are lazy, you and me included, and ...) don't want to learn and get used on again some new or different stuff and prefer to stick with what they know and its (e.g.) MS Office they use in the company.
Since almost none of them are actually able to use PC at all, they have more or less often some small issues and it's much easier/cheaper for them to ask a friend, a neighbor or a colleague in the company - the probability is high that another user is using what everybody else uses and that's not Linux.
For the middle and big companies, the issue is costs, as @14 explained and then there's again, "no software issue", which would be solvable, but it produces again more costs. Developing the software for the own needs and supporting it costs a fortune - Microsoft and Oracle support prices are the real bargain in comparison.
What we have left is, very small "companies" like your doctor, lawyer or private detective - 1 person, evtl. 2 or 3 at the max. Here the problem is often that they are bound to some SW by somebody. For example: Insurance requests from the doctor to transfer the data over the "Wonder" client, which is available only for the one, most used OS. It is irrelevant if there is SW "Magic" for all platforms that could replace it, because the big company dictates the rules (== SW) to our good doctor.
Move to Linux might be easy in some cases, for nerds like we are, for the people open to experimenting, for people with low needs etc., but generally speaking, I would be surprised if somebody would claim that it's not difficult to move to Linux after Windows.
32 • Xubuntu != Canonical (by whoKnows on 2020-11-03 15:10:31 GMT from Switzerland)
@23 • Xubuntu 20.10 (by jan)
"Xubuntu refused to install ...
What I learned is that Canonical does not care too much about user experience - no amount of words can convince them that releasing half-baked products every six months, with less than enough skilled resources is a real waste and it does not contribute to the user satisfaction. It took me two days to stop ramming the wall with my head, but it seems that Canonical will never stop."
You'd better continue ramming the wall with your head for the next 2 days - because you didn't realize, that you got, what you deserve.
Xubuntu is not Canonical. It's officially supported (some funding) Community project.
If you use Ubuntu, you can make support contract and you'll get support - even if they have to fly on the other side of the world for it.
If you are not prepared to make such support contract, then it's your own fault and not Canonical's.
If you have any issue with "[Canonical] releasing half-baked products every six months", then you should add 4 more days of ramming your head against the wall.
1. You didn't have to use "half-baked" product at all - you could've stuck to LTS
2. You didn't realize that any user of "half-baked" product is a free beta tester
Canonical is generous enough to allow you to use their product and you are bitching about them letting you use it for free, and then you even choose the beta product and complain even more!!
33 • The MS philosophy is User compatible (by whoKnows on 2020-11-03 15:27:48 GMT from Switzerland)
@27 • the MS philosophy isn't Linux compatible (by Matt)
"The Windows install enforces or encourages handing over an email address, phone number, syncing your files to a cloud that they own, syncing contents of your cellular telephone with their servers, opting into all sorts of privacy intrusive things like tracking your use of software, your location, browsing history and creating an advertising ID to make it easier for advertisers to track you."
You might be right from your own perspective, or the perspective of "the 2 %", but you're completely missing the point - what you write is exactly what most users want and why do they have a PC for.
Take them Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Amazon, Zalando, OneDrive, Gmail, Gdrive, Box, DropBox, Cloud Bookmark-Sync, Cloud Backups and such away, and the most users have no more need for the "Personal Computer" at all.
34 • WOW (by Friar Tux on 2020-11-03 16:53:06 GMT from Canada)
@33 (whoKnows) Wow! Man, you could not be farther from the truth. From your list I only have Facebook and gmail (a great way to stay in touch with kinfolk). However, I use my laptop for just about everything. It is my library (books, newspapers, magazines, technical journals), recipe box, encyclopedia, writer's tool (stories, poems, articles, etc.), graphic artist's tool (painting, drawing, 'needle-work' - yup, you read that right), communications device, and much, much more. I usually spend about 15 hours a day on it. This has helped to declutter/downsize the amount of stuff I would have had to cram into my, now, small apartment (780 sq. ft.). (The Wife and I are retired, by the way. And enjoying it.)
35 • The philosophy of success (by whoKnows on 2020-11-03 17:38:20 GMT from Switzerland)
@23 • Xubuntu 20.10 (by jan)
"My case should also shut the mouths of all those false friendly advisers calling for less fragmentation and consolidation of the linux world. Just image where I (or You) would be left, if all things linux you could get were Canonical and Red Hat, all under the benign and all encompassing watchful monitoring by the MS Linux Foundation (a horrible perspective)?"
What you write is a complete nonsense.
@32 • Xubuntu != Canonical (by whoKnows) was the first reason.
Now let us take a look at the second one.
If Linux should ever become a product instead of staying the project forever, then it needs somebody who will "declare that they own Linux" (@29 • by dragonmouth).
Let me explain it only in very basic lines.
Every single thing has some advantage and also some disadvantage. The community is a Linux advantage in the way that we get hundreds of thousands 1-man shows - that bring fresh ideas and could make a successful product if it wouldn't be for its disadvantage - diversity and "fragmentation", which is actually anarchy and chaos and as long as it stays that way, Linux will never become a product, but will forever stay only a project.
Linux works like Solus: 1 guy organizes project named Solus. It gets bored and let it sink. Then it gets another "vision" and transforms it into Evolve OS, until he doesn't get bored by it and leaves the ship again. This shows us that you can't count on anything for sure under "Linux chaos & anarchy" - most of "the Linux" consists exactly of such (now you see me, now you don't) projects.
Now let's have a look where the Linux is successful and why.
It makes a great server. All top ten multibillion companies and millions of others are running on Linux.
Those biggest don't need support, they have their own support and are the biggest Linux supporters/contributors - directly or indirectly.
Android is also Linux and its successful, some will say. Yes it is and it is successful exactly and only because there is a multibillion company pushing it and taking care that fragmentation doesn't get a chance.
Chromebooks also run on some sort of Gentoo and are also successful - because the Google is behind and pushes it.
Any other really successful Linux? A bit of Red Hat and Canonical, but those are also servers for small and mid-size companies and that's why - Nope. Because none of the rest is a really fully usable product.
Each time somebody comes and tries to make a product out of a project, somebody complains about it, about the partnership with Amazon, about collecting the telemetry data, about ... you name it.
A high-class product without collecting telemetry data is not possible - one can't develop something and just hope to get a bug report of a dozen nerds - one needs a telemetry data of millions of users to be able to decide in which direction the future product should go. Everything else is gambling instead of certainty.
Software development costs money and somebody must pay for it. Why develop some function further that nobody uses? How do we know what somebody is using? Not because of a handful of bug reports.
Successful product takes a lot of preparations, planing, development time and all other kinds of resources. That can be done only by a strong company behind it.
If such strong company would make a high quality, successful product, with an aim to earn the money, but at the same time still keeping it open source, than we would get the best of both worlds. The people who want a high quality product would be able to buy it, or buy support for it, and the rest that can live with some half-baked project stuff, could still keep their diversity (and fragmentation).
With a multibillion company behind it, Linux could take the world over.
36 • Extensive vs non-extensive user of a computer (by Ted H in Minnesota on 2020-11-03 17:39:15 GMT from United States)
@34 (Friar Tux) re nr 33 WhoKnows -
[Yes, but as @33 pointed out of being a minimal computer user, you are NOT a typical Windows-only MINIMAL computer user. You are an extensive user AND a linux-nerd!
Ted MN
37 • WOW - 15 hours World of Warcraft? (by whoKnows on 2020-11-03 17:46:55 GMT from Switzerland)
@34 • WOW (by Friar Tux)
"... you could not be farther from the truth. From your list I only have ..."
"I" is your mistake. You and I are maybe sitting 15 hours behind a keyboard, maybe some other 2 % also, but that still doesn't make the "most users" and that's what we should consider.
You, me and those 2 % aren't even relevant for the statistics.
By the way, I wasn't talking about the people who make their leaving by working on PC.
38 • Xorg vs Wayland (by Nathan on 2020-11-03 18:42:19 GMT from United States)
@15 • Wayland screen sharing (by Codalunga)
"My only issue with Wayland - and is a big one, as I'm a teacher who works remotely due to COVID - is that I can't seem to share single windows on Google Meet. Works just fine on X.org."
I couldn't agree more! Same story on zoom. I'm running i3 (xorg) on one machine and sway (wayland) on another, and screenshare works out of the box on i3 but not on wayland. It seems to mostly have to do with the scope of the respective projects, though. Still, it's possible on wayland to make a virtual video device using v4l2loopback and wf-recorder, and it would be easy enough to restrict it to a single window. The result can then be shared over Zoom (and probably Google Meet) as a "webcam". Not sure of any existing projects that'll do it all for you, but the building blocks are there!
39 • Wayland & Security (by whoKnows on 2020-11-03 19:29:22 GMT from Switzerland)
@15 & @38 Xorg vs Wayland
Check this links - it'll help to find others if you're more interested on why.
Screenshot and screen sharing tools as well as XAMPP and some others would have to be rewritten to be able to work under Wayland.
It's not a bug - it's a security feature - for good or for bad.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/961967/why-dont-gksu-gksudo-or-launching-a-graphical-application-with-sudo-work-with-w
https://www.secjuice.com/wayland-vs-xorg/#:~:text=Even%20though%20Wayland%20eliminates%20most,developed%20and%20has%20better%20extensibility.
40 • Microsoft and Xenix (by Xe NiX on 2020-11-03 22:01:03 GMT from Canada)
Xenix is a discontinued version of the Unix operating system for various microcomputer platforms, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T Corporation in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually replaced it with SCO UNIX (now known as SCO OpenServer).
In the mid-to-late 1980s, Xenix was the most common Unix variant, measured according to the number of machines on which it was installed. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said at Unix Expo in 1996 that, for a long time, Microsoft had the highest-volume AT&T Unix license.
@ #29
"I do not see how Microsoft would do anything with Linux other than ruin it by trying to eliminate the freedom, choice, and privacy that has driven Linux development from the beginning."
And, rest is ruined by linux developers themselves.
If any one ever has created a beautiful piece of work,
the beauty lies in preserving it,
not to ruin it any more.
Corporations like Microsoft have only one and the one interest with Open Source.
Second is patent troll on Open Source Codes, owning individual contributors work.
41 • @23 (jan of Poland) (by Stefan on 2020-11-03 22:59:22 GMT from Brazil)
Your frustration with Xubuntu 20.10 seems to be even bigger than my deception with the bug-ridden Windows '98 SE. But I say it's WONDERFUL because led you to conclude that your hardware didn't deserve such a high level of humiliation. Trying a first class distro (MX Linux), instead of another half baked 'buntu, is a proof that you are now acting with more respect for yourself. So I rejoice and CONGRATULATE you.
By the way, I had the same bad feeling the last time a virus made my Windows XP unbootable and then I decided to install Linux many years ago... (What a glorious day!) And the rest is history.
If you accept a suggestion to make you happier this week, take a look at the latest edition of GhostBSD, with MATE desktop environment. This is a very special kind of BSD, since it's the only one I can call "a true rival for Linux". Beautiful, stable, and user-friendly. Xubuntu has no chance against such a valuable system with the DNA of FreeBSD.
42 • @31: (by dragonmouth on 2020-11-03 23:51:15 GMT from United States)
You are wrong. For someone who is completely computer illiterate Linux is no harder to learn than Windows. What IS hard for the "let me try Linux" dilettantes is to UNlearn all the habits they picked up using Windows. They want Linux to work, look and feel just like Windows. Those who really want to switch to Linux, have no problems learning it.
"Developing the software for the own needs and supporting it costs a fortune - Microsoft and Oracle support prices are the real bargain in comparison."
There is only one problem with your declaration. MS and Oracle provide the same standardized software to all their customers. They WILL NOT provide software that is
customized to a customer's specific needs and circumstances. Nor will they allow the customer to in any way change MS and Oracle software. So the companies either must settle for one-size-fits-all software or must spend a "fortune" on developing and maintaining their own frontends and backends for the standard software provided by MS and Oracle. In addition to spending money on developing their own software, these companies must pay licensing and maintenance fees to MS and Oracle. The bottom line is that dealing with MS and Oracle (and most other software houses) is NO bargain.
43 • Linux, have no problems learning it (by Xe Nix on 2020-11-04 00:26:12 GMT from Canada)
Those who really want to switch to Linux, have no problems learning it.
But most of the *nix users have developed the habbit of lurking instead of learning.
In past I have tried all most all *nix flavors, and really picked-out some thing good.
Real crap-garbage just thrown in to trash.
But, if any one who has bad syndrom of "lurking" might get badly hurt,
if any package just downloaded to get know how, and thrown into trash.
For those who are complaining about *buntu should always keep in mind that *buntus are based on Debian, and Debian can be re-mastered better than *buntus.
All the missing information from published manual are already out-there.
Only thing is one is not looking at. If it is followed will definitely lead you extactly where you wanna be.
There is a reason for no-firewalls, and running distro with avahi, bbc-config,
cups-ftpd, dropbear, samba and YASSM. All doors for lurking is already kept already open, as far as I know. If you get the message at-least you got all.
44 • Literate illiterates ... will and costs (by whoKnows on 2020-11-04 06:07:06 GMT from Switzerland)
@42 • @31: (by dragonmouth)
Unfortunately, you are wrong.
Your statement is absolutely correct, but your conclusion is wrong because of wrong premises. We know that from "the law of logics".
The point here is that "Those who really want to switch to Linux, have no problems learning it" nobody really wants to switch in the first place. Why to switch to something inferior?
Most people don't work with a Kernel, nor with an OS, they don't even know what OS they exactly have installed - they work with their Applications. If the desired application works, they don't have to learn at all since Telegram, Skype ... client (e.g.) will behave the same way in Linux, Mac and Windows.
When they have to use LO instead MSO, the problem becomes more obvious. Instead of practical and modern ribbons, they end up in some "2000's menu", "save" doesn't work anymore - they have to explicitly choose save and then as .docx, functions of LO itself are different ... and people still don't want to change the OS, nor they want to learn another replacement application.
You are right on - it doesn't matter what OS or application one uses, as long as it looks and behaves exactly like MS, Adobe ...
It seems like you misunderstood "developing the software" issue.
One purely fictional example:
I'm opening the "Greatest Design" Company. I can take Windows 10 or I can take Ubuntu LTS. No other Linux is good enough for professional use.
Now, if I take Windows, all I have to do is get MS and Adobe support contract. For me and my 10 ~ 12 people I need to count with some $300 per workstation for MS and $50 per workstation and month for Adobe. All in all - bargain. Peanuts.
If I take Ubuntu, beside making a Canonical Support contract, I must also find somebody who is able to produce me a software which is matching Adobe Design suite and it has to be continuously developed further and maintained for many years to come too. Cheaper with Ubuntu?
Also don't forget that my development has to be 100 % compatible in every single function and format - I have to work with the rest of the world and one file must be 100 % interchangeable, in 100 % of cases!
This is the problem that the whole planet is facing and while it can/could work in some rare cases, it doesn't work for the most.
That's the main problem why the whole world is using Windows. Reasoning that "They WILL NOT provide software that is customized to a customer's specific needs and circumstances" is false because they don't need to - they already have the highest quality software that evolved over many years and sometimes even decades and I'll adjust my workflow if some small issue appears.
As seen in my example above, those costs are a joke in comparison to what would it cost me to develop it for myself, just because I choose to use OS without a software.
We know of few examples like https://itsfoss.com/vicenza-windows-zorin/, but what we don't know is what exact software needs they had, what they had to develop on their own, how many percent of that infrastructure is actually purely Linux only and how many virtualized Windows installation they had to keep because of lack of proper applications ... we don't even know if they are actually using it at all - pilot project could've stay pilot forever and for the serious work, they maybe still use the serious products. That's why München is abandoning Linux.
I was personally involved in such big IT Windows-free project. Windows-free is what you later got to read in the newspapers, but they somehow forgot to mention that if I turn off all the Windows VMs, the system would collapse.
So, yeah ... I get it that many here don't get it. It's complicated.
But ... thankfully the things are slowly getting better. More and more things are moving to the cloud and more and more applications are becoming nothing more than a web client. Operating systems are getting less and less important.
45 • MS Linux (by OstroL on 2020-11-04 15:24:43 GMT from Poland)
Still using MS Edge dev for Linux, and liking it. It'll be nice to have an MS Linux distro. Why not? it is all about diversity.
Oh, I can hear the rumblings... :)
46 • @45: (by dragonmouth on 2020-11-04 20:02:54 GMT from United States)
There's diversity and then there is balkanization.
47 • Ubuntu 20.10 (by PC4Life on 2020-11-04 22:53:29 GMT from United States)
I would not expect any modern OS to run well with those 2011 AMD hardware specs used for the review. Is that common for these reviews?
48 • Hardware (by Jesse on 2020-11-04 23:13:51 GMT from Canada)
@47: "I would not expect any modern OS to run well with those 2011 AMD hardware specs used for the review."
Why not? Virtually every other distribution runs fine on this same hardware. Linux Mint, which shares a common base with Ubuntu runs well. Even Pop!_OS 20.10, which uses the same packages, kernel, and desktop environment, runs beautifully on this same equipment. Ubuntu is rare in that it gives poor performance on this hardware while other distros in its same family (Ubuntu MATE, Pop!_OS, Mint, etc) run smoothly.
I'd like to also point out that my resource requirements (CPU, memory, disk) are all lower now than they were five or six years ago. Software is not taking up more resources over time like it did back in the 90s. Most distributions are trying to get lighter to work on platforms like the PinePhone, not heavier.
49 • Wayland (by Cheker on 2020-11-05 01:44:32 GMT from Portugal)
I've been playing around with Fedora 33 on a VM as I read a book on it and Wayland has been smooth thus far. That said, it being a VM, I don't know how much this anecdotal experience is worth in the grand scheme of things.
50 • "Diversity" ... (by whoKnows on 2020-11-05 17:23:54 GMT from Switzerland)
@45 • MS Linux (by OstroL) & @46 • @45: (by dragonmouth)
Let me show you something.
https://ibb.co/PQVKWS5
https://ibb.co/4VLst5r
https://ibb.co/tDrWZTs
https://ibb.co/9VrG8Gs
https://ibb.co/jzZK1GY
https://ibb.co/8PS9xwW
What you see here is one (1) and the (EXACT) same file open in 2 (3) text editors.
You see Geany and Gedit (and Notepadqq) in Ubuntu 20.04.1/Zorin 15.3, Fedora 33.
Please watch the path /usr/share/backgrounds/lis_dynamic/ closely - the images are big enough.
If somebody can't see or doesn't understand the importance of the problem:
PLEASE DO NOT COMMENT!
What we can see here is the following:
There is one path .../lis_dynamic/... which is obviously NOT the same as .../lis dynamic/...
Underline shows up in Gedit (and Notepadqq), but not in Geany!
If we copy that "no underline" path from Geany to Gedit (and Notepadqq), we will again have one "underline"!
Will say, the underline is actually all the time there, but invisible/"hiding".
And the Geany itself is not broken.
https://ibb.co/CJz9ySR
One in a million similar examples.
Some people say: "It's always surprised me that people keep saying it's difficult to move to Linux ..." or they say "Linux is good for developers", or simply ask "Why not Linux?" and I can only repeat: "Linux is a project and not a product" ("project" to avoid calling it by the name) or "Linux is unsuitable for serious work".
Linux as is right now, is gambling - one never knows if it'll still work tomorrow.
Linux has "diversity" created by some hobbyists, a broken essential concept (repositories with their "dependency hell") and no multibillion company behind it to quit that "democratizing" and put the things in (the right) their place.
All of it would be easily solvable, but the will (and somebody with a fat wallet) is missing.
Most of us here now how installing one small KDE program under Gnome (or vice versa) can pull half a GB or more of dependencies; how uninstalling a couple of KB xawtv would uninstall X-server a couple of years ago, how uninstalling python, uninstalls Ubuntu ...
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1383588
We all know that Linux upgrade seldom works without problems, but Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 / and every six months a new Windows 10 version, works without any bigger issues, and we also know that using a 5, 10, 15 or 20 years old program in Windows 10 is in 98+ % cases possible without any problems, but in Linux we can't even expect a current version to work properly.
Changing the update/upgrade to the one that is similar to the one of Windows would solve the problem and one could finally start working and stop fixing.
I am for the diversity, but that does not imply the blindness and the stupidity, and does not exclude the sanity. One has to look for the good and for the bad side of each thing.
I love Linux and I'm using it for some two decades already and I'm sad to see it declining from year to year.
In my opinion, the best thing that could ever happen to Linux would be if some multibillion company "Imagination" would take it over and clean up the existing chaos. They could make a 1st class product out of the (free) community ideas and sell it (with support) to the companies, but let it open source and open for fiddlers to fiddle (and bring in fresh and (again free) new ideas).
Example on Gnome (but it could also be a KDE ... or Vision ... or ...):
We decided to use Gnome3 as our main GUI. In our repository is only the Gnome3 and independent "known working" SW. In our "diversity" repository, you (which you can and MUST add yourself) can enjoy your full "freedom and diversity", but without a warranty that it'll work (== or with breakage warranty; as it is right now).
That way, we could have the best of both worlds - finally a useful product and a never ending project at the same time. Win-win for all.
Diversity is great - if it works!
51 • Whoops... (by Friar Tux on 2020-11-05 20:48:18 GMT from Canada)
@50 (whoknows) You almost had me convinced you knew what you were talking about, until you said "We all know that Linux upgrade seldom works without problems, but Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 / and every six months a new Windows 10 version, works without any bigger issues,". Whoops. Nope, my friend, it is the other way around. I was an avid MSWindows fan until Windows 10. I even enjoyed Windows 8/8.1 as I remember 3.1 and found 8.1 to be a modernized version of it. HOWEVER, Windows 10 is a broken mess that has turned many to Linux and/or Apple. It is Linux that, in my EXPERIENCE, has issue-free updates/upgrades. With Windows, you gamble with what will work and what will not after a lengthy update, and at times, multiple reboots. I have not had an issue with Linux (Mint, specifically) in four whole years on two laptops. And you know from a previous comment how much time I spend on my laptop. The other laptop is The Wife's.)
Also, while a one multibillion dollar company may steer OS development on, maybe, a smoother course, it has disadvantages that most of us Linux users are against. The development will be steered according to the wishes of said company/owner not the wishes of the user - Microsoft being the best example, here. Yes, Linux development is fragmented and we occasionally re-invent the wheel, but it is far better this way with multiple distros, init systems, etc., etc.. I see it as going into an ice cream shop. I like a certain mix of flavours. The Wife likes another certain mix. We pick and choose want we want and come out happy. In the MS ice cream shop you get what they give you. If you don't like the taste - tough luck. We, both, have found Linux to be a great product - not project - as it has helped us get our work down in a timely, efficient manner - unlike Windows - which proved to be a big pain where the sun don't shine.
52 • @50 whoknows? (by dragonmouth on 2020-11-05 23:28:23 GMT from United States)
"We all know that Linux upgrade seldom works without problems, but Windows XP / Vista / Windows 7 / Windows 8 / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 / and every six months a new Windows 10 version, works without any bigger issue"
As soon as someone says "We all know" I know that it definitely ain't so. The speaker is trying to claim that his opinion is THE ONE AND ONLY opinion and that EVERYBODY shares it. The apocryphal ALL and EVERYBODY cannot agree on whether the water is wet or that sky is blue and you claim that they agree on Windows vs Linux???!!! Of all the infernal chutzpah!
I have been using Linux just about as long as you and have used about 30 or 40 distros. Some I liked better than others. Some were easier to use than others. All distros had their individual quirks. But, like FriarTux, I never had problems with updates/upgrades with any distro.
Windows, OTOH, is another story. Every time MS forces an update on the users, within hours there are posts on various Windows forums complaining that the update broke this or that or even bricked the PC. Within days there are articles on various sites decrying the latest problems and suggesting possible solutions. Unfortunately, considering the MS corporate policies and culture, there is no permanent solution other than to switch to another O/S.
Did you ever consider that it is you, not Linux, that is the cause of all your update/upgrade problems?
53 • @#50 Diversity is great - if it works! (by Xe Nix on 2020-11-06 00:17:15 GMT from Canada)
Diversity is great - if it works!
Only, and, only "The Linux" is the Best.
10 out of 10.
The main reason I moved on to FreeBSD is, I still have -i386 machine which is fully functional.
ATM, I am using light-weight linux distro on same -i386 machine, which also works like a charm and lightening-fast. Further more I do not have much requirements from the machines neither I am gonna upgrade. And, FreeBSD adopted the hardware like charm, while on linux choices are slimmed to a straw.
54 • @51 & @52 (by whoKnows on 2020-11-06 07:48:01 GMT from Switzerland)
Every OS can break during the upgrade, but it comes down to understanding of what got broken and why, and the forums of all OS are always full of "heeelp" calls with or without update & upgrade issues, sometimes because something really got screwed up, but usually because "users" are and were not able to use their PCs.
I'll never forget the panicked face of my friend after his try to remove xawtv, that removed him the basic system components. The issue got fixed in the meanwhile, but nevertheless...
Maybe "We all know" was not precise enough, maybe I should have said: "All who use the OS long enough AND really understand what their OS is doing, AND who tried enough different OS's, AND during the decades, AND..." - Yes, "We all know". ;)
Those who don't, shouldn't discuss - as always.
One has to understand and differentiate what caused upgrades to fail. Most failed Windows upgrades failed on: A) private peoples computers (not knowledgeable users) and B) because of some AV-Programs and some OEM components with some strange drivers.
In almost all cases Windows upgrades always work.
Compare that to @14 • @13 (by Commissioning Engineer), or Mint 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 Upgrade. You've got little chance that it'll work at all, let alone without a problem. And I'm not even taking into account, what if you have some 20 PPA's installed.
Or make a Manjaro test installation. Install OS, make an image and let it stay for a couple of years. Then take it out, put the image back and try to upgrade it to the last stand. Wish you luck. Don't even want to know what about AUR - even a "simple" updates break more often than not - and you also spend half a day waiting while it compiles.
I can take any old Vista image and bring it to 10 with 99+ % certainty that "it'll just work".
In Linux, upgrades are complicated, time-consuming and brake much more stuff than in Windows - in rare cases when Windows upgrade fails, the system will usually stay in the state it was before the upgrade and almost everything will still work as it worked before - in Linux, one will end up in front of a black screen - on a Terminal prompt.
The reason why the Linux updates and upgrades are worse is simple - because of its bad basic concept - repositories and collection of single shared packages, which different programs share among each other. This can screw up not only one or two applications, but the whole bunch of stuff, the whole system. That's the same reason why one can't install anything freely under Linux, but it can install only what is allowed. That's also why we get that desperate try to save the day with some Snaps, Flatpaks and AppImages, but again - multiple formats and again with "1001" issue on their own - if and when they work at all.
ksnip AppImage works in Ubuntu, Fedora ... and it won't start in my Slackware. Universal format or not universal? What now?
"Did you ever consider that it is you, not Linux, that is the cause of all your update/upgrade problems?"
Yes - I did. It was always Linux concept.
"I am for the diversity, but that does not imply the blindness and the stupidity, and does not exclude the sanity. One has to look for the good and for the bad side of each thing."
55 • MS vs. Must (by whoKnows on 2020-11-06 08:01:24 GMT from Switzerland)
52 • @50 whoKnows? (by dragonmouth)
"Every time MS forces an update on the users, within hours there are posts on various Windows forums complaining that the update broke this or that or even bricked the PC. Within days there are articles on various sites decrying the latest problems and suggesting possible solutions. Unfortunately, considering the MS corporate policies and culture, there is no permanent solution other than to switch to another O/S."
Does that surprise you?
Windows runs on billions of devices from all possible HW manufacturers and with almost all sorts of SW existing.
And once more for all and everybody:
MS DOES NOT force you to update or upgrade - they are "pushy", but:
1. You don't "MUST" update or upgrade ever - you'll just have unsecured PC
2. One can turn off all of those "pushy" stuff off in Windows settings.
My Windows 10 is exactly as "pushy" as my Ubuntu, Mint and Fedora.
The only difference - it's more reliable.
56 • MS Linux (by OstroL on 2020-11-06 09:09:55 GMT from Poland)
@ 50,
"We all know that Linux upgrade seldom works without problems..."
Maybe, because you are using Gnome 3 and most probably with Ubuntu. :)
It doesn't happen with Kubuntu.
After more than 15 years using Linux, I can't say I love Linux. I like Linux, and that's about it. I also time to time use Windows 10, sometimes for few months, just to see how it works. On that note, I can honestly say that I'd welcome MS Linux. And, it'll be a good thing, distancing the megalomaniac MacOS.
57 • "It doesn't happen with Kubuntu." (by whoKnows on 2020-11-06 09:56:18 GMT from Switzerland)
56 • MS Linux (by OstroL)
Just because you didn't experience it, it doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. Are you IT-Professional dealing with users problems, the whole day, every day?
Actually, I had more Manjaro and OpenSuSe and anything KDE/Plasma in my mind.
"My mind simply cannot reconcile with breakages and compatibility issues."
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/plasma-5-19.html
"Upgrade process - Not the smoothest."
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/asus-vivobook-upgrade-kubuntu-bionic-focal.html
"Thus we end up here, and I'm ... torn."
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/plasma-desktop-adventures.html
. . .
It's EVERY Linux ... Check again the images in @50 and tell me how can I start, let's say a new, big website project and count that I'll be able to finish it on time if I rely on Linux QA?
A couple of years ago, when I was giving courses, I even recommended students using Fedora / Ubuntu and Geany IDE as alternative.
Thankfully they didn't join "The 2 % Club", because otherwise, I wouldn't only feel stupid, but guilty too.
EVERY OS has some issues, but the fact is, that some have many more issues than the others and it makes me sad, when my favorite has the most.
58 • Anything MS (by Dave Postles on 2020-11-06 13:07:13 GMT from United Kingdom)
I come here for information about BSD, Linux and OpenSource. I don't want to tackle the stuff about anything Apple or Microsoft. I'd prefer not to have to assess whether a post is about BSD/Linux or Apple/MS.
59 • Re: Anything MS (by Friar Tux on 2020-11-06 17:00:49 GMT from Canada)
@58 (Dave) If you want info, go to the main DW page. Info galore. Here, we bicker and complain and express our passions. Here we don't always agree so you will get opinions as opposed to info (though there may be smatterings of info interjected). Also, there are a lot of Linux magazine type sites you can read on the web - a few of my favourites are 'Dedoimedo', 'Linux Links', 'Ars Technica'... there are many more. Also go to the individual OS blogs and forums. Not here. This place is like an old Norse Viking banquet table where we expound the virtues of our favourite weapons and club each other over the head with said weapon to prove our point, but no serious killing, though.
By the way, speaking of reading, @55 (whoKnows) have you got a blog or website up? I'd be interested to read more.
60 • x.org vs wayland (by Jeff on 2020-11-06 17:08:56 GMT from United States)
As far as I can tell the X.Org devs see Wayland as the replacement and have given up on X.Org years ago.
As proof you only need to look at the fixed 96 DPI in x.org which has been reported as a over 10 years ago and answered as notabug and wontfix.
The X.Org devs seem to believe that if you are not using an old 96 DPI CRT monitor you should be using Wayland.
61 • @ 57 (by OstroL on 2020-11-06 21:10:48 GMT from Poland)
It is just dedoimedo's opinon, so?
62 • Opinion or the fact? (by whoKnows on 2020-11-06 21:14:56 GMT from Switzerland)
@59 • Re: Anything MS (by Friar Tux)
"By the way, speaking of reading, ... (whoKnows) have you got a blog or website up? I'd be interested to read more."
Not enough time for everything - it just happened that I had a few days free and tried to "think different" here - for good or for bad.
I tried to give you one more reading, but the filters didn't let me write - that must be that "free speech" filter. ;)
Please check it here:
https://gofile.io/d/edOORw
@61 • @ 57 (by OstroL)
Nope. All others abandoned KDE. ;)
Number of Comments: 62
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