Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Continues Prepping With The Linux 4.15 Kernel

[caligula]

The huge problem with Ubuntu (Canonical in general) is that they always try to do their own proprietary version of everything that conflicts with what the community is doing, in an attempt to lock in the users so they have no choice but use their product. For example, Canonical pushed Mir instead of Wayland, Unity instead of Gnome, Snap instead of Flatpack, etc.

Indeed the list goes on and on.. bzr, ubuntu one, launchpad, upstart, ... all the crap protected by CLA..

All the things I learn by using Ubuntu on some machines is the proprietary Ubuntu tech that will soon become obsolete. It's sad to see that most other distros develop compatible, open standards and software while Ubuntu develops NIH proprietary software which doesn't work on other distros and nobody wants to adopt it due to the CLA.

[vito]

People need to stop preaching. Seriously, zealotry, fanboyism and the constant urge to "convert" someone to use something is one big plague in the FOSS community. Ubuntu has its flaws, it also has its advantages and those who use it usually have good reasons to do so.

In 99% of cases, the reason why someone might be using Ubuntu is because they are novice and could not figure out how to install the NVidia driver in another distro they tried and Canonical has a deal to include their binary blob drivers in the proprietary repo.

With the latest improvements in AMD GPU drivers that work out of the box, hopefully this reason goes away sooner than later.


The huge problem with Ubuntu (Canonical in general) is that they always try to do their own proprietary version of everything that conflicts with what the community is doing, in an attempt to lock in the users so they have no choice but use their product. For example, Canonical pushed Mir instead of Wayland, Unity instead of Gnome, Snap instead of Flatpack, etc.

And therein lies the problem: because of this, there are software packages coming out that are hardcoded for Ubuntu and their propriatery crap, which makes it impossible to run on anything but Ubuntu. Take a look at NVidia's embedded SDK or AMD's ROCm for example.

This can make it a real pain if you already have an infrastructure that does not use it (for example). The end result is that Ubuntu (really Canonical) is fragmenting the Linux community.

Bottom line: Ubuntu (Canonical) needs to become better citizen or die. Until then, I will keep telling people that they can use any distro they want, as long as it is not Ubuntu.



Using Ubuntu is like drinking cheap tequila - yes it might seem okay now, but you will have huge hangover in the morning and everyone will be pissed at you for having to clean up the mess you made while you were passed out.

[jacob]

People need to stop using Ubuntu and migrate to some proper distros like Archlinux for their desktops

People need to stop preaching. Seriously, zealotry, fanboyism and the constant urge to "convert" someone to use something is one big plague in the FOSS community. Ubuntu has its flaws, it also has its advantages and those who use it usually have good reasons to do so.

[GizmoChicken]

I meant the overall concept of an Ubuntu LTS release shipping with a brand new kernel being released so closely to the release date, and saw multiple people suggesting such, the article wasn't motivated by anyone in particular.

What? You mean not everything is about me?

I know. I was being a bit facetious. (Except for the part about you doing so much to promote promote Linux and the open source community. I meant that!)

Also, I wanted take the opportunity to send more traffic to my suggestion on community.ubuntu.com. I still haven't given up tilting at this windmill.

For what it's worth, I still say that anyone wanting stability will wait for 18.04.1 (or later) anyway, and so no harm would come (to most) if 18.04 were released with sub-optimal testing of the kernel.

[Michael]

Michael thinks that my suggestion is foolish.

Oh well, because he does so much to promote Linux and the open source community (yes, I'm serious), I'll forgive him.

I meant the overall concept of an Ubuntu LTS release shipping with a brand new kernel being released so closely to the release date, and saw multiple people suggesting such, the article wasn't motivated by anyone in particular.

[GizmoChicken]

I've seen various remarks made of how "Ubuntu 18.04 should ship with Linux 4.16" on the basis of either better Spectre/Meltdown support, Linux 4.16 will be out in time and neither 4.15 or 4.16 are even LTS releases, better hardware support, or users simply wanting all the goodies in Linux 4.16. But that's simply foolish given Ubuntu 18.04 is being a Long Term Support release and how close the timing ends up being as is.

Michael thinks that my suggestion is foolish.

Oh well, because he does so much to promote Linux and the open source community (yes, I'm serious), I'll forgive him.

[DanL]

Agreed. I migrated to Arch a long time ago but haven't been able to convince people at work that this is the way to go.

Arch has its good points, but it's not the end-all, be-all distro that everyone should be using (especially in a corporate environment). Don't be an Arch elitist/preacher.

[wizard69]

Agreed. I migrated to Arch a long time ago but haven't been able to convince people at work that this is the way to go.

i haven't tried Arch yet on Ryzen mobile, has anybody gone this route here? Im expecting to go with a permanent installation soon, frankly as soon as the show stopping Ryzen mobile issues are resolved ( probably kernel 16 ).

[wizard69]

People need to stop using Ubuntu and migrate to some proper distros like Archlinux for their desktops. Ubuntu is fine for your grandma but if you have bigger needs you need something better. Obviously server folks don't need this advice because they aren't using Ubuntu to begin with...

In general i never liked Ubuntu, however it is the first distro that ive experimented with that installs and runs on my HP Ryzen mobile machine. That is only the latest 18.04 too.

I always have prefreed Fedora myself but they apparently dont care about new hardware there. Im actually in the mood to go with something completeky different than Fedora so hopefully more distros will stabilize with respect to Ryzen mobile before 18.04 is released.

I guess this is the horror of being on the bleeding edge tech wise. Given that if just a couple of bugs get fixed in the next few weeks i will likely have a permanent Linux install. At this point we have two bugs. One is the keyboard / track pad going dead randomly (which might be fixed in the latest update). The other is suspend not happening properly when the lid is closed. The keyboard issues is a show stopper though.

[F.Ultra]

People need to stop using Ubuntu and migrate to some proper distros like Archlinux for their desktops. Ubuntu is fine for your grandma but if you have bigger needs you need something better. Obviously server folks don't need this advice because they aren't using Ubuntu to begin with...

Sorry to break it to you but we use Ubuntu on all our servers and so do a lot of our customers. I would also guess that the number of servers running Ubuntu on say the Amazon EC2 cloud is quite large.