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Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

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Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

#21
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would avoid running LTS unless you really need the stability. Otherwise, having the latest applications (and utilities like git) is going to be difficult.

It is worth noting Ubuntu comes with snap and flatpack support since latest two releases, and it works flawlessly for most of GUI applications. Sadly there isn't many CLI tools available to download like aforementioned git or zsh.

On newer laptops, disk space is at something of a premium (SSDs are expensive, so the disk size got smaller again), so Snap / Flatpak / Appimage are a bit of an issue.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

#22
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait... Do Linux apps (Firefox etc) not self update like Windows and MacOS?

No. And there are multiple reasons for this. One example: when Firefox decides to integrade a keylogger it is very unlikely you will find that release on your Ubuntu installation. But in my experience Firefox is updated very soon after official releases.

On the other hand the only users that predictively fall to browser exploits when we run end user targeted red-team ops are the devs and IT peeps that run Linux instead of OSX/Windows.

In fact across the board Linux machines in many enterprises are more likely to run outdated and possibly vulnerable software.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

#23
post #5
post #2

I plan to run LTS on my laptop from now on, so that I get a stable desktop environment. I used to be a sucker for running the latest and greatest, but I guess I'm too old for that now. I wonder how my applications will fare. I would like to have the latest version of Firefox, emacs, git, and so on. It's the desktop environment and OS itself I want to be as stable as possible. I'd also like to get the most recent kern…

I would avoid running LTS unless you really need the stability. Otherwise, having the latest applications (and utilities like git) is going to be difficult.

When using core tools (like git) in a large company, there is zero chance of everyone having the latest version. Nobody builds anything assuming you have the latest version and so everyone can keep working. We can't even rely on everyone having access to worktrees!

The stability of LTS far, far outweighs every new feature I've found so far. It's a no-brainer when you are trying to get stuff actually done and don't appreciate having to regularly waste cycles on your toolbox.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

#24
post #2

I plan to run LTS on my laptop from now on, so that I get a stable desktop environment. I used to be a sucker for running the latest and greatest, but I guess I'm too old for that now. I wonder how my applications will fare. I would like to have the latest version of Firefox, emacs, git, and so on. It's the desktop environment and OS itself I want to be as stable as possible. I'd also like to get the most recent kern…

> I used to be a sucker for running the latest and greatest, but I guess I'm too old for that now.

This seems to be much easier these days. Around 10.x / 12.x releases being on recent versions of everything made a lot of sense. Especially with browsers not updating separately from the main repo. There were actual, big improvements with drivers, power management, hi-res support, and other things. These days, I don't see that many reasons to keep current. All the tools I use are stable and almost old - vscode may be the only new one in 5 years. That's my anecdata anyway.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

#25
post #2

I plan to run LTS on my laptop from now on, so that I get a stable desktop environment. I used to be a sucker for running the latest and greatest, but I guess I'm too old for that now. I wonder how my applications will fare. I would like to have the latest version of Firefox, emacs, git, and so on. It's the desktop environment and OS itself I want to be as stable as possible. I'd also like to get the most recent kern…

Yeah, life really is nicer if you only have to muck about with the software you actually care about. I've been using LTS for several releases now, and have remained in blessed ignorance of X.org settings for most of that time :)

Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

#26
post #8
post #2

I plan to run LTS on my laptop from now on, so that I get a stable desktop environment. I used to be a sucker for running the latest and greatest, but I guess I'm too old for that now. I wonder how my applications will fare. I would like to have the latest version of Firefox, emacs, git, and so on. It's the desktop environment and OS itself I want to be as stable as possible. I'd also like to get the most recent kern…

To get the latest version of an app you can use snap-packages. E.g. to always get automatically the newest version of LibreOffice: sudo snap install libreoffice Don't forget to remove the preinstalled – and soon outdated – .deb-package version of LibreOffice :)

the Snap packages are really nice when installing. However, i got a lot of issues with accessing network shares and other mounted drives from inside the applications. I also ran into issues where the cache from one of the applications (Spotify) would not migrate to another disk, so i ended up uninstalling all snap apps out of frustration and installed them locally.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

#27

No fractional scaling still. ‍️Why?

There is an experimental feature that enables it on Gnome with Wayland [1]. The result is off in various ways though (blurry things here and there, some weird positioning). At least on my Fedora install I just keep it at 100% on my 4k 30" screen and then use the tweak tool to adjust font sizes to 150%. That works reasonably well and as a benefit makes those huge title-bars not so huge any more.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/09/enable-fractional-scalin...

Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

#28
post #5
post #2

I plan to run LTS on my laptop from now on, so that I get a stable desktop environment. I used to be a sucker for running the latest and greatest, but I guess I'm too old for that now. I wonder how my applications will fare. I would like to have the latest version of Firefox, emacs, git, and so on. It's the desktop environment and OS itself I want to be as stable as possible. I'd also like to get the most recent kern…

I would avoid running LTS unless you really need the stability. Otherwise, having the latest applications (and utilities like git) is going to be difficult.

The only reason why i would NOT run the LTS, is if i need some very new and fancy kernel version. However, even then they normally get backported into LTS, but sometimes that wait can leave you without something critical (like wifi or hibernation / sleep support) for months. There is always the option of recompiling the kernel from LTS to support the driver you want, but at that point, i would just go with the latest release.

Re: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Bionic Beaver Released

#30
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get the latest version of an app you can use snap-packages. E.g. to always get automatically the newest version of LibreOffice: sudo snap install libreoffice Don't forget to remove the preinstalled – and soon outdated – .deb-package version of LibreOffice :)

Wait... Do Linux apps (Firefox etc) not self update like Windows and MacOS?

Nope, they use a much more sane paradigm of letting the package manager handle updates, much like in iOS or Android. That way you can have your entire system update when needed, rather than whenever you start each individual program.

Programs are not supposed to update themselves, but some like Telegram or Steam annoyingly do.

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