Ubuntu 21.10 Beta Released

[calc]

Damn it. I'm waiting for kernel 5.14 so I can run my external AMD GPU without needing to reboot.

Once you install Ubuntu you can switch to mainline builds using the following:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds

[szymon_g]

Yes, Mozilla approached Canonical regarding it. So they are testing it out in this release and staging to be the default for next LTS 22.04. I have been using the snap version of Firefox for a while and I really love it. I loads up just as fast, everything works for me in it so I really don't see any difference.

i'm glad you like it. tbh my only beef with snaps is that the apps (installed as snaps) load... slowly. i don't have benchmarks at hand, but after a rebooted software on nvme drive and quad core apu (few years old, but still quadcore ffs) the openoffice snap launched in 15 seconds, while the same version installed as deb took a couple (or three) of seconds to do so. annoying AF

is the other software launching as fast as debs nowadays too?

[szymon_g]

Once you install Ubuntu you can switch to mainline builds using the following:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds

do they start on secure boot enabled systems too?

[motang]

i'm glad you like it. tbh my only beef with snaps is that the apps (installed as snaps) load... slowly. i don't have benchmarks at hand, but after a rebooted software on nvme drive and quad core apu (few years old, but still quadcore ffs) the openoffice snap launched in 15 seconds, while the same version installed as deb took a couple (or three) of seconds to do so. annoying AF

is the other software launching as fast as debs nowadays too?

Yes I do notice that LO takes a few seconds to load when comparing snap to deb, but with my system which is as of this writing over 8 years old it never takes longer than 7 seconds. Which is not bad at all in my humble opinion.

[krzyzowiec]

i'm glad you like it. tbh my only beef with snaps is that the apps (installed as snaps) load... slowly. i don't have benchmarks at hand, but after a rebooted software on nvme drive and quad core apu (few years old, but still quadcore ffs) the openoffice snap launched in 15 seconds, while the same version installed as deb took a couple (or three) of seconds to do so. annoying AF

is the other software launching as fast as debs nowadays too?

That's surprising. I'm using a, I dunno, 6 year old laptop with a basic SSD and Broadwell-era Intel CPU, and applications like Chromium just take a few seconds to launch the first time. After that they launch instantly. This is on a 2-core slow mobile chip.

[arQon]

i'm glad you like it. tbh my only beef with snaps is that the apps (installed as snaps) load... slowly. i don't have benchmarks at hand, but after a rebooted software on nvme drive and quad core apu (few years old, but still quadcore ffs) the openoffice snap launched in 15 seconds, while the same version installed as deb took a couple (or three) of seconds to do so. annoying AF

is the other software launching as fast as debs nowadays too?

No, and that's apparently *a* part of this to some extent, though obviously not the main reason. The idea seems to be that by forcing people to use snaps in 21.10 they'll get enough ?feedback? ?motivation? "something" to invest in making snaps suck less by the time 22.04 is released. The list of bugs with the snapd FF build is fairly ridiculous in its own right, even without counting the speed problems, so a substantial "beta" period is clearly needed, and an LTS is very much not the place to do that.

Personally, if/when I update to 22.04, I'll be downloading FF from mozilla. After the clownshows of Proton, mozilla invalidating every extension by failing to renew their own cert, and too many other screwups to count over the years, the last thing I need is forced updates of my browser - *especially* via something as broken as snapd.

[calc]

do they start on secure boot enabled systems too?

Don't know and don't care, I haven't dual booted in well over 20 years.

And as Lennart recently noted, using secure boot under Linux currently really doesn't do much except annoy users.

See the recent Phoronix article for details: Lennart: Linux Comes Up Short Around Disk Encryption, Authenticated Boot Security