back to article 18.04 beta is as good a time as any to see which Ubuntu flavour tickles your Budgie, MATE

The first beta of Ubuntu 18.04 is here. The finished article, due next month, will be a long-term support release and, for those who stick with LTS, the first time many see the new GNOME-based Ubuntu. This beta, however, does not include the main GNOME-based release. Instead this is more a community release with most of the …

  1. Tom 7

    Do 3 button mice work on it?

    NT fit to print.

    1. cmaurand

      Re: Do 3 button mice work on it?

      I haven't had any trouble with mice on Ubuntu. It just works.

  2. pyite42

    Watch out for Netplan!

    I have been using Ubuntu 18.04 (Mate & Server) for a couple of months now. I moved all of my desktops and my test Ceph cluster (4 physical machines and 30 or so VMs) and overall it has been good. There is one notable change to watch out for: network configuration. The configuration system we have come to know and love for decades, /etc/network/interfaces, is now officially dead :C

    The default network configurator is now Netplan, which is a YAML based network config system that generates ephemeral configs for either NetworkManager or systemd-networkd.

    I like it overall, but there were a couple of glitches to watch out for. DHCP no longer uses the MAC address to identify your computer. Also, the MTU setting is dropped unless you disable the new unpredictable NIC naming and go back to good old eth0.

    Apart from that, things have been good. We don't have to worry about a repeat of 10.04 (the worst LTS release by far).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Watch out for Netplan!

      eth0 *is* the unpredictable name

      1. AdamWill

        Re: Watch out for Netplan!

        "eth0 *is* the unpredictable name"

        having watched this play out for several years, my conclusion is this: there's two different sets of people meaning different things by 'predictable'.

        what things like udev 'predictable' names, biosdevname etc. mean by 'predictable' - what they're trying to achieve - is something like "each specific network adapter in this machine will always have the same name". The problem they were trying to fix is something like "I have six ethernet adapters in this machine, and I can't guarantee which one will be eth2 and which will be eth5 on any given boot".

        The problem is that more or less anything you can do to make interface names *more* predictable in that sense, makes them *less* predictable in a different sense. This is the sense that "on any given machine with one network adapter - I don't care what model it is, or what slot it's in, or what bus it's attached to - that adapter will be eth0". Which turns out to be a sense of "predictable" that a *different* group of people were relying on.

        In conclusion, software sucks and we should all go buy yak farms.

      2. Christian Berger

        Re: Watch out for Netplan!

        "eth0 *is* the unpredictable name"

        Supporters of the new scheme claim that. They think that something like "enp5s0" is much better than just eth0 for the one and only wired network interface that's found in 99.999% of all computers.

        Ohh and in the FreeDesktop anouncement they even give some examples for what your eth0 could be now:

        Firmware/BIOS provided index numbers for on-board devices (example: eno1)

        Firmware/BIOS provided PCI Express hotplug slot index numbers (example: ens1)

        physical/geographical location of the connector of the hardware (example: enp2s0)

        MAC address (example: enx78e7d1ea46da)

        Classic, unpredictable kernel-native ethX naming (example: eth0)

        All of those weird people who previously would have written bad software for Windows are now invading the Linux userspace.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Watch out for Netplan!

          You can turn off predictable naming

    2. Allonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: Watch out for Netplan!

      I like the idea of Netplan. But I have to admit to tearing my hair out on a 17.10 (where it was introduced, IIRC) machine when I couldn't work out why my network config wasn't being applied.

    3. Nate Amsden

      Re: Watch out for Netplan!

      Curious what was wrong with 10.04 LTS ? That was the last Ubuntu I used on my desktops, stayed on it till maybe 18 months past end of life and reinstalled with Mint MATE 17 which I still use today (didn't think I could bear GNOME 3 nor Unity).

      Also ran 10.04 LTS on a few hundred VMs no issues, 12.04 was fine for servers, 16.04 is being a bitch with systemd. I have had maybe 6 weeks of experience fighting systemd so far and I just keep asking myself why are you(systemd) breaking stuff that worked fine for so many years? The eth0 stuff sucks too but at least there is a kernel parameter workaround for that.

      I tried HiDPI support on Mint 17 MATE 1.12 (still using it now) two years ago and most things were fine, the deal breakers for me were when I was running windows 7 in a VM, remote desktop was unreadable and the Vmware vSphere .NET client was also unreadable. I tried several things to resolve but nothing worked. Switched back to 1080p. Maybe windows 10 would of helped there in the VM I don't know, but 1080p is just fine(lesser of two evils for me vs changing to win10), I saw no difference with 4k (Lenovo P50) other than it just made everything smaller making me have to increase font sizes and increase everything to compensate.

      I have 4k available in case I change my mind, though my previous laptop was 1600x900 which I ran with for many years, no issues with that either. I do use 16 virtual desktops(I suppose I am a tiny minority who does NOT like multiple monitors, and always uses the internal screen of the laptop regardless of having other monitors available) and use brightside for edge flipping. The setup is perfect for me (same setup since at least 2010).

      Linux on desktop has been good enough for me for as long as I can remember now (maybe 10+ years), the only things that really need updating are hardware support.

      (Linux user on desktop/laptop since ~1997, Debian since 2.0 in 1998 - I still remember spending ~4 hrs on my first debian install with dselect choosing packages, apt was maybe 1 or 2 years later though I still rely on dselect today via 'apt-get dselect-upgrade' on a regular basis)

    4. teknopaul

      Re: Watch out for Netplan!

      Oh shit, that alone sounds like a reason for holding off for a month or two until the internet catches up.

      Wtf yaml, honestly how can anyone like signficant whitespace in "human readable" formats.

      I makes no sense to me. As if the tab vs space debate was not religious enough already. Someone actually thought lets see if we can come up with a format that is specifically difficult to deal with in both emacs and vi.

      Did anyone complain about the simplicity of /etc/network/interfaces. I missed that bit of the Internet.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's a pity

    It's a pity that all this great innovation is not being focused into just one or two Linux competitors, to accelerate producing a great Linux distro that can finally and quickly put the nail in the coffin of the diabolical Windows NSA 10.

    Ubuntu MATE vs Mint MATE? WTF's the REAL difference to a newbie out there? It's just confusing for them. Then there's Ububtu, Kubuntu..........1000 distros later.

    Sure, freedom and choice is a great thing, but like the open source community got its act together to produce a decent competitor to Office, it needs to do that plus a lot more to replace Windows. It needs to happen quickly too, otherwise Linux on the desktop will stay marginal, in fact it will get taken over by Chromebooks and Android on the desktop at this rate, sadly.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Bronek Kozicki

      Re: It's a pity

      Actually, having multiple distros use the same desktop (MATE, in your example) means that those who maintain desktop code receive more help and input from distributions maintainers.

      Do not forget these are different people with different interests. Someone with expertise writing good UX code might not feel at home maintaining a distribution but will welcome input (and vice-versa - good maintainer might not necessarily write good UX code).

      Similarly, having too many people working on any single piece of code directly (rather than via trickle of contributions from distributions) brings to mind saying "too many cooks spoil the broth". You do not achieve more progress by cramming more developers on a project, so having all of these distributions work on desktop code directly (rather than making it better for their distribution) would not help make it better. More likely it would be the opposite.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @AC - Re: It's a pity

      Yeah! I feel the same about cars, they should put all efforts in a Ford Escape and stop this waste of great innovation.

      Erm, for my own curiosity, who told you the FOSS community wants to replace Windows ?

      1. Ian Johnston Silver badge

        Re: @AC - It's a pity

        Erm, for my own curiosity, who told you the FOSS community wants to replace Windows ?

        I suggest you check Ubuntu Bug #1.

    4. TVU Silver badge

      Re: It's a pity

      "Sure, freedom and choice is a great thing, but like the open source community got its act together to produce a decent competitor to Office, it needs to do that plus a lot more to replace Windows"

      Those alternatives already exist in the form of Softmaker Office (I have this), FreeOffice, WPS Office and OnlyOffice plus anyone can use Microsoft's own free Office Online as well.

    5. teknopaul

      Re: It's a pity

      Nobody needs to replace office or windows.

      The competitor to word is email, the competitor to powerpoint is video, the competitor to excel is write some code, the competitor to access is relational dbs are old news use nosql.

      The competitor to windows is bash it is and always will be superior.

      1. NB

        Re: It's a pity

        There is literally only one use case for nosql and that's on that rare project where you will never need to relate two bits of data together.

        And I can pretty much guarantee that that will be a requirement at some time in a project's lifecycle which is why you should always use a RDMS.

        nosql is bollocks.

  4. Allonymous Coward
    Linux

    "But we're still in bug country, so run in a VM"

    That's overstating the risk a bit, IMO. I've been running the daily build for a few weeks as my main workstation (it has one or two very important package improvements over 16.04) and it hasn't caused my PC to melt or the magic smoke to escape or anything yet. In fact it's been impressively reliable for a not-yet-released product.

    Bugs there will be, but aren't there always? I've been pretty happy with it so far. It won't touch our servers until at least the first point release though.

  5. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

    I'm a little confused about the whole thing... too many editions... but why?? Is there really a business case for one ubuntu over another ubuntu? Why don't they just have one version with maybe different modes for different use-cases?

    I understand that there are three different types of control menu (KDE and Gnome and Unity), but I don't understand why you need a different windowing system as well. I've probably understood it wrong, but the end result is that it's confusing.

    And the software - they boast of thousands of software packages but many of them don't work with a graphical interface or are long dead. The quality of software isn't amazing. We have Libreoffice and Thunderbird which are fundamentally very good, but are beginning to look a little dated.

    Don't get me wrong, I've used Linux before, and it has served me well in the past, but I think for the general home or small business user, it's not there yet.

    1. fandom

      "business case"?

      1. Teiwaz

        "business case"?

        head case!!

      2. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

        Yes, you're running a business, say a small one with 10 PCs. You could go for ten custom-built PCs with Linux. You'll be paying a linux support person to set these up and migrate your data, and set up your email. You've saved £1000 on Windows Pro licences, and you'll be saving money because of the lack of viruses, annoying updates and general reliability.

        But you'll be spending money on (possibly) training, increased maintenance costs due to lack of knowledge of linux generally, and possible future problems if some new program becomes necessary and it's not available on linux .

        Then you could argue that you wouldn't use apps that aren't web-based ("cloud" apps) anyway.

        All these are part of making a "business decision" about whether to implement linux.

        Personally speaking, I have tried to use Mac, Linux and Windows for my day-to-day work. All I require is the ability to browser the web, get email, run our support system and rapidly switch between these tasks on any computer I pick up. We use google docs so most of this is on the web.

        All these things are possible with all three OSes, but I find that the last linux I tried (last year, Ubuntu with Unity) was too clunky for day-to-day use, and there was no google files sync, which was a slight problem only. Maybe the file manager could have been replaced with a modern one but I found it slow and clunky. I tried Windows and it's just too crashy and rebooty (does updates when you least expect). Personally I just preferred MacOS.

        We have dozens of small business customers and support about 600 computers and even though I hate windows, I prefer MacOS, and Linux is reliable, I have not been able to recommend one single Linux PC to any of our customers. We do have a handful of Linux servers, that's all.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Too bad you didn't try Insync for GDrive for a one-time investment of $29 per Google account. Been running it for over 2 years without a single hiccup (more than I can say for the official client on Windows).

    2. Teiwaz

      We have Libreoffice and Thunderbird which are fundamentally very good, but are beginning to look a little dated.

      Not used Libreoffice in quite a few releases then? Or is it just 'cause it doesn't have a ribbon? (at least yet).

      I've always been a little doubtful of all the different UI centric spins myself, but I think it gives more freedom to the different spins to include what they feel is appropriate rather than each spin being merely a package selection on install, but yes I think it presents a confusing mass of choices to newbies.

      As to the why of windowing systems...? I can't imagine using a system that expects me to stick to one barely configurable interface, it'd be like going to a restaurant and getting a uniform bowl of casserole with minimal condiments or a shoe store with only regulation office brogues for sale.

      1. Omarosa

        "We have Libreoffice and Thunderbird which are fundamentally very good, but are beginning to look a little dated."

        Sadly, I found that Libreoffice is not really "very good." Libreoffice IS NOT 100% compatible with Microsoft Office - for one, It will not properly print Microsoft Excel documents, I have to use MS Office for that.

        As far as Thunderbird, I still prefer to use it instead of the bloated Outlook because, as dated as Thunderbird is, in my opinion, it still has more finesse and simplicity than the Microsoft mailer. What else do I need?

    3. Allonymous Coward
      Childcatcher

      beginning to look a little dated

      I guess appearance over functionality matters to some people. I remember someone once telling me they didn't want to purchase a corporate web app because the blue used in its UI was "dull".

      Personally, I think that if your office suite looks a bit dated, who cares as long as it works and works well? Where does fashion come into it?

      One reason I like Linux is that prettifying-for-the-sake-of-it doesn't happen too often. Some of Canonical's "design" missteps aside. If you want software that doesn't "look dated" and is targeted at the "general home or small business user" perhaps Linux shouldn't be your first choice.

    4. cdegroot

      I'm using less and less of all this anyway...

      Typing this on a MacBook Pro that I rage-upgraded to Ubuntu 17.10 after giving up on Mac OS X (specifically High Sierra). It turns out that as a developer, the list of apps I need is quite limited: a browser, a really good terminal program, Emacs and IntelliJ/IDEA. So switching for me has become simpler over the years, not harder. For mail and office stuff, Linux is bad indeed, and I can't even blame the City of Munich for dropping it. Again, as a developer, a bit of Google Docs is all I need; YMMV.

      Funnily enough, for me the whole windows management stuff is actually the critical bit. I'm switching all the time, need all the screen real estate there is for my IDEs, and as such I need something that lets me run full-screen, multiple virtual desktops, and keyboard-based switching of it all. With _my_ keyboard shortcuts, thank you ;-). Ubuntu (the base edition) does a pretty nice job there, so I'm happy.

    5. Ilsa Loving

      "We have Libreoffice and Thunderbird which are fundamentally very good, but are beginning to look a little dated."

      I have to respectfully disagree. Thunderbird is a god-awful mess. Hideous messy UI, convoluted configuration, and irritating behaviours make it a user unfriendly mess. It failed the Mom test miserably. As a matter of fact, I have not used one single OSS PIM stack that didn't have some kind of problem or was missing critical functionality. For example, CardDav/CalDAV support is shockingly hard to come by without having to futz with cumbersome transport tools.

      LibreOffice is ok for word processing and spreadsheets, but they really should just throw in the towel with Impress. I have yet to run it on a single system (I haven't tried Windows) where it wasn't fundamentally broken. Half the transition options flat out don't work, and those that do work have shockingly jerky animation on even high end hardware. And this has been an ongoing problem for at least half a decade, and nobody seems to care enough to fix it. You'd be better off flipping through a PDF file.

    6. Palpy

      RE: ...not there yet for the home user...

      ...Mmmm.

      Well, imagine not having to run antivirus software in the background all the time, nor update it, nor wait while an antivirus scan slows your PC to a crawl. Imagine not having to sit and watch the animation while "Windows is configuring your updates" before you can log in. Imagine not having to worry about attachments in a Word or Excel file pwning your system. Imagine reading the latest security scare, coming across the phrase, "installs a malicious Windows dll" and thinking, "Oh, that's all right then, no worries for me." Imagine seeing another story about Win 10 sending user data to Microsoft, and thinking "well, I don't have to figure out how to disable that because it doesn't apply to me."

      You're imagining my home Linux box.

      For the "general home user" Linux is a very good choice. IMHO, the main reason it's not more widely used is that home users get Windows (or Mac) pre-installed when they buy a machine, and it's what they're used to. Modern Linux distros are neither hard to install nor to use (except for some specialty distros), but plain-vanilla home users almost never change whatever OS is on their machine when they take ownership.

      Certainly Windows is needed by most serious gamers, Photoshop and Autocad pros, and a number of other use cases I'm too lazy to list. And, frankly, use cases aside, if you want Windows, just use Windows. No worries.

      But really... It's unnecessary to claim that Linux isn't ready for general users. It's just fine.

      The Ubuntu team has vitalized a whole branch of the Debian tree. Thanks for that, Mark S. I'll probably go to 18.04 when the finished LTS hits the servers.

      1. Nate Amsden

        Re: RE: ...not there yet for the home user...

        I remember how shocked i was back maybe 2005, my sister lived with me and I gave her a suse system for her desktop. One day i look at it and she was running yahoo IM I think it was. But she was running the windows version (probably had no linux version ). Wine was so well integrated she downloaded it and installed it and ran it all without talking to me. She was and remains a very non computer person.

        I had her on ubuntu on a laptop for several years till the hardware died. (Long after she moved out) She got a new one later running windows. Though I bet she'd be fine with linux as well. I don't care enough to try to change it.

        Gave my mother a new (refurb dell) computer a couple of years ago. Windows 7 there too. In both cases I probably spend less than 2 hrs per year on support.

        Got my wife a refurb lenovo. Runs win7 too(doesn't connect to my internal network). She only uses it a few hrs a week. Not computer savvy and most of her time is phone and tablet(wifi is on isolated network segment at home).

  6. Zippy's Sausage Factory

    I'm liking the sound of MATE. My next upgrade will probably be either ubuntu MATE or Ubuntu Budgie, but I'm tending towards MATE.

    I have to say I'm an LTS fan these days... must have gone soft since I used to be a bleeding edge Slackware headcase (although I do still fondly remember Linux-FT, Mandrake-before-it-became-Mandriva and old school Red Hat)... :)

  7. John Sanders
    Linux

    Mate

    MATE all the way, XFCE progress is too slow sadly.

    If I was Canonical I would make MATE the primary option and Gnome 3 a spin.

    Seriously, MATE is that good.

  8. Allonymous Coward
    Trollface

    Maybe...

    2018 will be The Year Of The Linux Desktop!

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: Maybe...

      Sorry.

      I bought a Nokia just before Nokia collapsed.

      I bought a Windows 6 phone...

      I bought a Blackberry...

      I bought a Lumia 1020...

      I bought a Lumia 950XL...

      I've just started using Linux for a development environment.

      Now it's doomed. I'm really sorry.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Maybe...

        Fortunately, all of those poorly conceived or misled proprietary hardware and software bundles have any resemblance to Linux. Even if Shuttleworth crashes Canonical tomorrow, desktop Linux will continue. Running a niche desktop platform like Linux or Mac is a very personal choice. If it serves your specific needs, there's nothing to apologize for. What the vast majority of computer users do with their systems is irrelevant: I need my damned terminal and all the native unixy stuff to manage that 1,000 machine server farm and all the enterprise apps they support. If the bottom falls out and I have to go back to running twm, so be it. All the eye candy and decoration won't make a bit of difference to my next production turnover. What I don't need is a Blue Screen (I know, its now black) or a cutesy Guru Meditation in the middle of a critical remote session.

        1. Teiwaz

          Re: Maybe...

          TWM?

          It was great in it's time, but I don't think you'd ever need to go back that far.

  9. fluffybunnyuk

    I think the main problem is a lack of general IT education in the general population, and unfamiliarity with choice in IT as opposed to proprietary one size fits all.

    If you dont like something change it, get involved and alter packages. I've lost count long ago of all the diffs ive pushed, and all the changes ive made that trickle through to people. Thats just as a hobby not a day job.

    Personally speaking I wouldnt touch Ubuntu with a barge pole, but thats not to say that within linux for other people its a perfectly valid choice.

    One advantage of choice in an open platform are amongst others competition. Without competition competing ideas stagnate, ie there is no reason to develop...which is probably why Microsoft is where it is, without any need or reason to innovate beyond animated emojis.

    Linux isnt the be all and end all. Its written in C *yuck*, its got a tyrant for a kernel developer. It lacks the gloss and polish that a big company could bring to it, and for that I DO admire Ubuntu in its attempts to make it more marketable.

    However it IS on a path to a future we want, where we the people control the code, where we can subject the code to analysis, where we have debate over the path and direction of computing, and that it isnt spoonfed or decided for us.

    In all I'm for it until something better comes along like a truely parallel compiler,secure and verifiable common programming language that becomes popular to underwrite the os. And the other 50 gazillion things and the easter bunny too.

    But crikey linux doesnt half try my patience, and I wonder still how many decades before we get where we want to go.

    1. Nate Amsden

      How many more decades..

      Not sure but it seems Microsoft's embrace of the agile operating system has them running in reverse as far as stability goes.

      As a Linux on the desktop user for more than 20 years now I believe at least Linux environments biggest faults is the systems are not stable (not as in don't crash not stable). In a perfect world perhaps all hardware vendors would release their specs and code to everyone and it would all just work. But of course it doesn't work that way. So drivers are always an issue, libraries are often issues (I mean hell I can still reliably run apps written in mid 90s on windows 7 which is still under support w/o issue - yeah pretty much not possible in 99% of the cases on Linux, even if you have the source code doesn't do you any good if it doesn't build.

      But Windows 10 has changed a lot of that..stability seems to be mostly gone (exception may be for one of the corporate builds available to enterprise volume customers). The breakage seems to have skyrocketed as MS treats their customers as their agile testing ground. Hasn't impacted me running Windows 7 much (and for whatever reason I never got prompted for the free upgrade to windows 10 not that I would of accepted it).

      I think Fedora these days(probably for a while) you can do upgrades version to version, I remember in the early days(I recall FC4 and FC5) they advised full reinstall for each version, with a release cycle of 6 months, what a pain .

      Upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04 I think also was officially not supported though I came up with a way to do it for hundreds of servers that worked flawlessly. One of the historic strengths of Debian-based systems.

      Maybe windows 10 will get to a point of stability again for regular folks, but not really holding my breath. I have no issues running windows 7 past the 2020 or whatever deadline. My usage of windows in general is pretty small, and the last "security" incident I recall on any of my personal computers was back in mid 90s using pirated games that had a couple viruses in them (though as far as I could tell nothing destructive). So historically evidence suggest the risk factors for me at least are quite low.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ubuntu vs Mint Dependencies:

    Needed VirtualBox to keep a Win7 VM alive. Tried a few versions - nothing worked. Then I came across this: Mint 18 is based on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial). Had the same problem with Adobe-Flash etc. How do you infer dependencies, is there a way of checking from within Mint or a webpage? Anyone else regularly run into 'Software Manager' 404-not-found etc? Tks!

    1. Updraft102

      Re: Ubuntu vs Mint Dependencies:

      If you're trying to use the version of VirtualBox in the Ubuntu repo (which is also what Mint uses), it's too old to work with kernel 4.13. If you get the newest VirtualBox from Oracle directly, it will work quite well.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Linux is worse now than 10 years ago

    They still haven't fixed the Del key to delete characters after the cursor, in Terminal (and all that escape code shit).

    UFW Fucks the firewall and does NOT provide all Zones simultaneously as Iptables rules used to do, this will cause you to miss changing to from a Home Zone to public when you go out or failing to set proper rules.

    Grub - GRand Utter Buttfucker, is still buttfucking hard drives.

    SystemD is still Unity and kills the modular concept of Linux - see Unity with Microsoft.

    Ubuntu among others, but primarily Ubuntu has sold their soul to the devil in order to receive UEFI certification from Microsoft - Anti-competitive if Companies cannot originate their own certificates, but have to cow-tow down to Microsoft(yet again).

    They keep changing the software not better just to change it's appearance, but it is made worse, not better.

    Sadly and regrettably, recently changed back to Linux (been using Linux since Red Hat 5.2) some others flavors linger on but are in their dying stages. (don't be fooled the pop-up flavors).

    RIP Linux, am looking for a new O/S

    Will miss all the great effort by the Ancient Linux Masters, who performed miracles out of nothing but water and air ;-)

    1. Christian Berger

      OpenBSD seems to have a decent management

      Their innovations include changing the time type to 64 Bits on 32 Bit machines, or having a memory allocator which deliberately tries to put unmapped pages of memory in between your allocations so out of bounds accesses will likely trigger a protection fault.

    2. Updraft102

      Re: Linux is worse now than 10 years ago

      Ubuntu among others, but primarily Ubuntu has sold their soul to the devil in order to receive UEFI certification from Microsoft

      UEFI is an open standard. No one needs to bow to Microsoft or anyone else to use it.

      (UEFI is not secure boot. Just turn it off.)

  12. casawyer

    Which flavor

    Which flavor still has the Software Center in it? I stayed with 16.04 because you could bring it back. I hate the apps aspect of the newer Ubuntu, it is to much like Windows 10. If I wanted Windows, I would have Windows. I like that Ubuntu was much different and I liked the way it was set up. Now I'm thinking of looking for something else. Any suggestions?

  13. Paratrooping Parrot
    WTF?

    Long Term Support

    How come they are releasing a new LTS version??? They already have one: Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS

    LTS stands for long-term support — which means five years, until April 2021, of free security and maintenance updates, guaranteed.

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