
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) Final Beta released - jgillich
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2014-March/000181.html
======
ghotli
Most of the articles and chatter I can find talks about the changes in 14.04
from a desktop perspective. I only run ubuntu on servers and vms. Does anyone
know where I can find a good changelog as to what's changed between 12.04 LTS
server and 14.04 LTS server?

~~~
hnriot
most of the reasons for running ubuntu are dekstop oriented. Centos is
probably a better bet for servers.

~~~
cies
I will not voluntarily use "yum" on a server in a million years.

Debian has always been my favorite, and currently we use Ubuntu on servers as
the OS-packages-as-shipped are more up-to-date; which turns out to be quite
important in web-dev-land.

Frankly I dont know what CentOS/Redhat does better then Ubuntu nowadays, apart
from selling enterprise stuff like JBoss :)

~~~
jgillich
What's wrong with yum? I never had any issues with it on Fedora and CentOS and
actually prefer it over apt* (mainly due to it's speed).

------
scanr
I'm using 12.04 LTS quite extensively. For folk in a similar situation, how
long are you thinking of waiting before switching to 14.04 LTS?

~~~
negativity
Ubuntu's user interface upgrades as of 11.10 (the "unity" interface) sucked so
bad that I refuse to use Ubuntu beyond verision 10.04 on desktops/laptops.

11.10 was when I switched over to Mint and never looked back, and it seems
that doing so was a wise move, given the Amazon adware/spamware/spyware that
Canonical saw fit to include in more recent versions.

[http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182](http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1182)

Even though Mint includes proprietary binaries (like Flash and Audio/Video
codecs), which may or may not contain opaque questionable material, at least
the third party non-open-source software is something that (arguably) improves
the distribution and actually serves a purpose for me, as the end user.

Mint has changed over time too, though, and now I'm thinking about moving to a
personally customized Debian image, and a hobbyist project. Hopefully it won't
prove to be too demanding to pull off.

~~~
JeremyMorgan
I too was pushed to mint after 11.10 but I'm sick of Mint now too. Not only do
upgrades break it frequently, but I find small 'glitches' that end up taking
up too much time tracking down. Stuff like Wifi dropping, and icons in my
taskbar dissapearing, random browser crashes etc.

What I did was decide to sit down and do an Arch install. Yes it takes time,
and yes you have to know what you're doing. But I invested the time up front,
and now it runs very reliably, and faster on the same machine.

I say if you want to GSD the best thing to do is set up something like Debian,
Arch or Gentoo and invest the time setting it up so you can use it without
problems later. I don't know about you but I have better things to do than
screw with an OS all time, I have real work to do. These "harder" distros are
great for that.

~~~
vivin
I am using Mint 16 now; first time using it. Previously I was using Ubuntu. I
had to switch to Mint because we got W540's at work which has a lot of new
hardware that is not currently supported (well). I wasn't able to get Ubuntu
working on it properly, but I have been impressed with Mint so far. The only
issue right now is that it doesn't see my nvidia card and so I have to use the
integrated chip instead of the discrete one. I'm hoping that Mint 17 fixes the
issue.

How hard is it to get a custom system up and running from Arch? I haven't done
anything like that in a few years although I've had a lot of experience with
setting up custom FreeBSD systems. Is it more or less like that?

What I'm reaching for is something that "just works" and that I can work on
reliably instead of having to fix obscure problems all the time. I figure once
I set something up that works, I can simply create an image of it to use
later.

~~~
JeremyMorgan
Arch isn't that hard to set up, it's still easier than Gentoo. You just have
to set it up from an explicit point of view. You must know every detail of
what you want, and each item up, rather than a "10 clicks and I have an OS
now" type of setup.

It helps to have a good knowledge of Linux to do it, because you know where
things should go and where to look if there is a problem, but it doesnt'
require you to become a kernel hacker just to get it to a prompt.

------
JanezStupar
I would use this magnificent milestone to raise my hand and ask...

Nvidia, where are my native Linux Optimus drivers?

~~~
vanderZwan
I dunno, but as someone on a laptop with an intel HD 4000... who can I thank
for this _ridiculous_ increase in performance? Default Ubuntu has gone from
laggy to rivalling Lubuntu in responsiveness.

~~~
JanezStupar
For me Unity stopped working somewhere between 13.04 and 13.10... (Asus
UX32VD).

I am going to upgrade to 14.04 in a couple of months and see what happens.

~~~
mdeslaur
FYI, I'm currently running 14.04 on an UX32VD. I was previously running 13.10,
and that worked great too.

------
listic
What improvements in touch device and HiDPI support have made it to 14.04?

I'm going to use Ubuntu on Microsoft Surface Pro 2, because even though full
convergence for Ubuntu is delayed, I think of all Linux distros it is in the
best position to run on such devices. Some enthusiasts have made 13.10 work on
Surface Pro 2, surely it can only get better from there?
[http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2183946](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2183946)

~~~
matb33
I'm also eagerly awaiting HiDPI support (I have one of those QHD screens on a
15" display, 3200x1800!). There is apparently some support for it in the GNOME
version (I've read it was not perfect though). Don't recall where I read this
but it was rumored HiDPI may come to 14.10. Probably no more than a rumor...
But at least a version number to look at helps me cope :)

~~~
owaislone
14.04 has very good HiDPI support per monitor unlike Gnome. I've been using
14.04 for months and am loving it on a retina display for the last few weeks.

The shell scales perfectly, GTK3 apps scale as well. Firefox has the
`layout.css.devPixelsPerPx` setting in about:config that you can change to 2
or 4 to make it scale properly.

Chrome doesn't yet support HiDPI screen but setting the default zoom level to
200% does the trick.

~~~
matb33
Upgrading now just to try this! (Now to get past "symbol
'grub_term_highlight_color' not found" on boot... I should have waited for the
weekend to update to a beta release!)

------
Yuioup
Is there a short summary of changes since 13.04? The blueprints list is quite
extensive.

~~~
jgillich
[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/03/ubuntu-14-04-beta-
release...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2014/03/ubuntu-14-04-beta-released)

------
ausjke
I already moved all my servers to Debian, have not decided when I should do
the same on the Desktop side yet, I don't really care about games/MIR/smart-
UI-decision-made-for-me/one-GUI-does-all-screens etc, all I need is vim and a
browser, with newer tested packages installed underneath for development.

~~~
thinkmassive
I was using Arch as my laptop OS for a couple years until just recently
switching to Ubuntu Server 14.04. Since I use i3 it still seems like the same
environment. The reason I switched is because I'm developing solely on Ubuntu
Server 12.04, and it's less work to get things working once instead of twice.

Is there any advantage to using Debian over Ubuntu for servers and/or
development?

~~~
ausjke
I feel Ubuntu is moving towards more to the mobile arena which _could_ impact
the desktop/server quality especially for the long run. It could also be
fighting a battle that is too big with its limited resource(i.e. stretched too
thin). I switched to Debian as a precaution.

------
butchlugrod
Just installed it into a VM. No issues, very slick. The UI scaling stuff is a
neat addition. Haven't tried the Server edition yet, but I imagine I'll start
deploying that in six months or so. Precise Pangolin has been my bread and
butter for servers.

But why does it still have a "Floppy Disk" icon in the launcher? This is 2014
right? I feel like that is even more absurd than using a floppy disk icon for
save buttons in documents. My desktops and laptops don't even have optical
drives anymore, much less floppies.

~~~
Shorel
> But why does it still have a "Floppy Disk" icon in the launcher?

Because the BIOS of the VM reports a Floppy Disk even if you add no Floppy
Disk to the list of hardware installed.

That's a bug for the VM BIOS, and a feature for Ubuntu.

You can disable it if you want:
[http://imgur.com/anGmzpj](http://imgur.com/anGmzpj)

------
sesm
Very excited to see Ubuntu Studio getting LTS support.

------
keithpeter
Desktop oriented end user here: Does anyone else use the mnemonic shortcuts,
e.g. ALT-F-A for Save As... and in LibreOffice Alt-I-O-F to pop a mathematical
formula into a document?

Broken completely in 13.04 and 13.10 and somewhat broken in 14.04 (Alt-F opens
File menu but any attempt at a second note in the chord opens a different top
level menu).

Otherwise sensible changes, menus on window bars makes sense on larger
monitors and shrinking sidebar very nice on a 1280 by 800 screen. Very snappy
from live image on a Core Duo 2 laptop with Intel graphics (Thinkpad X200s).
Good for demonstration of Linux!

~~~
kleiba
Not exactly, but ALT+F is M-f in Emacs which is by default bound to forward-
word, i.e., lets you jump over a word. When you run Emacs inside a terminal
window, I find it quite annoying that the Menu bar gets activated when you use
that shortcut.

------
username42
I am very happy that Ubuntu GNOME is present. This means no unity for the next
3 years ;-)

~~~
adwf
At the risk of starting a flamewar, is Gnome 3/Shell really any better? I've
never felt quite so unproductive as when I use Gnome nowadays.

~~~
daivd
I have never quite understood all these desktop emotions. I run Kubuntu, but
almost never interact with any desktop features. What is it in your workflow
that requires you to interact with Gnome/Unity? (just curious)

~~~
cturner
alt+tab. Used to work perfectly. Now broken. I've returned to debian stable,
which comes with a gnome-2 legacy option that works out of the box just as
well as it did a decade ago.

~~~
vertex-four
Go to [0], install, configure to either "all windows" or "all windows in
current workspace", and alt+tab probably works like you want again. It's not
terribly difficult.

[0]
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/)

~~~
rglullis
Or, you know... just keep using an old, stable, dependable version. But you
can't do that with GNOME since they are such rabid fans of the CADT model.

------
ciupicri
Is it to me or this release hasn't switched to systemd from upstart?

~~~
kijin
AFAIK, the systemd decision was finalized too late to make it into 14.04.
Last-minute changes are not a good idea for an LTS release that emphasizes
stability.

This also means that Canonical gets to keep supporting their darling (Upstart)
for another five years ;)

~~~
Already__Taken
It does mean at least that a systemd LTS ubuntu will be completely bulletproof
with so many years of work from all other distros in it....

------
dexcs
fyi: "final release expected on April 17th, 2014."

~~~
Kudos
Also, upgrading to the final release will happen automatically with your usual
`apt-get upgrade`.

Edit: to clarify, I mean upgrading from this release to the final.

~~~
richardwhiuk
Are you sure that's true? Normally it requires do release upgrade?

Normal upgrades also require apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade the kernel as
there's a new package.

~~~
gnur
Upgrading from beta to release is apt-get upgrade. Update from 13.10 (or
12.04) to 14.04 is do-release-upgrade.

------
ycombasks
Any idea if it will be possible to keep the menu in the title bar from being
hidden? It looks like you have to mouse-over to show it, which could be a pain
if I'm trying to access it often. I'd like to see where to take my mouse
without guessing.

~~~
smithzvk
I just watched a video overview of the changes. It seems like you must still
mouse over to reveal the menus, even with the new option to put menus in the
title bar of the window instead of at the top.

~~~
ycombasks
That's a bit annoying. Hopefully someone will release a patch or something
that keeps it from hiding.

~~~
smithzvk
I think this is a reminder that different interfaces work for different
people. I think that the Unity interface, with its hidden menu bars,
application menus, scroll bars, etc. is almost perfect and a clear step in the
right direction (with the huge exception that it crashes frequently, hopefully
this will be fixed for me in the 14.04 release). The idea that I would ever
access a drop down menu by mouse is in some way ridiculous and signifies a
failure of the application's user interface. Again, that is what I think and
it is obvious that other people think drastically different things.

~~~
ycombasks
How else would you access it? I often access the toolbar in Sublime Text, for
example, so I'd like to keep it visible.

~~~
smithzvk
Typically via holding alt and pressing short cut keys. That is the old way to
do it. Unity introduced a new way to do it where you use the alt key and a
text box comes up which allows you to search the options by keyword. It could
be done better in Unity, but I still like it better than searching though the
hierarchy that mostly never made sense to me.

The real answer is that things like Vim and Emacs long ago came up with
interfaces that don't require toolbars/menubars. They were added a long time
ago, but I am amongst the people that turn them off and don't use them even
though they are available. For many of us, mousing is less efficient than well
tuned muscle memory.

~~~
ycombasks
Perhaps so. I tried Ubuntu with Unity a little while ago and didn't like it
much--I'm used to minimizing to the taskbar and seeing the names of the
programs. I settled on Linux Mint as it offers a clean and "classical" way of
doing things.

I'll consider trying out Ubuntu again when 14.04 LTS comes out this month.
Maybe I'll get used to it, who knows.

~~~
smithzvk
To me Unity just made sense and if not for it crashing entirely too often and
incurring a performance hit due to all the eye candy, I wouldn't look further.

To me the nice thing about GNU/Linux on the desktop is that each person can
have the interface they want. This has secondary benefits where if you have
your interface which is significantly different from my preferred interface,
it forces application developers that really care about supporting their users
to develop high quality abstraction layers that support both. The same goes
for software packaging, driver support, general compatibility of proprietary
software, etc. So, by all means, keep using Mint, it is in my best interest if
you do (and yours, and everybody elses).

------
davidgerard
Toshiba Portege R830-13C, Intel HD Graphics 3000. Minecraft, running in
Xubuntu 14.04 on openjdk 7.51, is having graphics problems that it didn't in
13.10. (No, I haven't filed a bug yet, yes I should ...)

Anyone else running Minecraft on Intel HD Graphics 3000? In 14.04 or
otherwise.

------
hit8run
Is Python3 now the new default Python?

~~~
rlpb
Define "default". Both Python 2 and Python 3 are installed by default (it's a
goal to not have Python 2 installed by default, but Python 3 is already
there).

If you want /usr/bin/python to be replaced, this is unlikely to ever
happen[0], but what difference does that make?

[0]
[http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/](http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/)

------
herokusaki
Based on your experience is it stable enough to upgrade to already? Previously
some final betas were.

~~~
pizza234
I've found the Ubuntu [Desktop] stability to be in constant decline over the
time, even experiencing bugs in the installers in the latest versions.

A few notes: \- the "stability" I refer to is always minor errors \- I remove
lots of packages every time I install it, although I've experienced system
error notifications even when I didn't uninstall anything

All in all, I'd say that there is a lack of polishing, at the low-level, more
than lack of stability.

There is no excuse for having the installation fail, though, and it happened a
number of times.

To reply the question directly, I've used betas a few times, and they worked
as much as the final version for me. I wouldn't do it now though - in the
past, for my usage, some types of changes were very significant; today, I get
very little in upgrading.

~~~
chrismonsanto
> I've found the Ubuntu [Desktop] stability to be in constant decline over the
> time

I wish I never upgraded to 13.10. Sometimes drag-maximizing my window can
crash my entire system. And compiz leaks memory like a sieve, sometimes I will
wake up to find compiz using ~5.5gb of memory and the system will be unusable.
Gotta restart!

When I first upgraded, I thought "oh, it's always like this at the start,
they'll fix it." And here we are at the next version and it still hasn't been
fixed.

Probably jumping ship (to another Linux distro) once my next work deadline
passes.

~~~
kator
Or maybe dig in and contribute a fix?

~~~
chrismonsanto
Is this a serious suggestion? I can't even reliably reproduce it. It just
happens randomly. The problem could be unity. It could be in compiz. It could
be in the nvidia drivers, which I don't even have the source to. Who knows
what in that mess causes my system to lock up.

Regardless, I do not have enough loyalty to Ubuntu to do this kind of work.
There are a number of open source projects that I am involved with, and if I
spend time on this (likely to be fruitless) endeavor, I end up with less time
to spend on projects I care about.

My post is purely to vent, and to serve as a warning for those looking to try
Ubuntu Desktop. My personal opinion is to try something else. I am.

~~~
popey
For anyone who _does_ have the time and inclination to debug this there are
some comprehensive docs on the wiki
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Debugging](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Debugging) \-
I've used these steps to get backtraces before so devs can get stuff fixed.

------
csense
I hope they fix the part where Unity is crashy, slow, and has a really sucky
user interface.

I mean, seriously, Unity is a piece of garbage. You have to look up some
magical key combination to do something as simple as launching multiple
instances of an application. It's as bad as the Mac [1] -- designed to cater
to users who aren't smart enough to understand the concept of "multiple
instances of an application."

In order to launch something, you have to search for it -- WTF? I don't want
to search for my application, I know what application I want to run! Let me
run it dammit!

That whole "no menu you can browse and discover what's installed on your
system" is a huge barrier, especially to new users to the Linux ecosystem,
because how are you supposed to know the default email client is called
Evolution, or your spreadsheet is "LibreOffice Calc"? If there's a
comprehensive, categorized menu of all installed applications, you can look
through it to, you know, _browse_ what's on your system.

Unity is supposed to be good for noobs. I probably have way more understanding
of computer fundamentals than anyone who fits in the "noob" category so I
probably have a better chance of figuring out what the UI's _trying_ to do, I
probably have way more tolerance for crappy, clunky UI's than most noobs [2],
and every time I've tried Unity I've usually uninstalled it within a day. If
Unity sucks too much for _me_ to handle, the only noobs I can see sticking
with it are those who've never used a computer before and have no idea that
it's possible to do better.

[1] Sorry if this isn't up to date. I don't use Macs much; the last time I
used a Mac was sometime around 2004.

[2] I played a lot of DOS games in the 1990's. Enough said.

------
cies
Any other netrunner-os lovers here? Its an Ubuntu derivate with KDE by
default, but with much more sane defaults and loads of goodness preinstalled
(ad-blockers, YT-downloaders, Steam, codecs, etc.)

I love it! (but it's released several months after Ubuntu is released)

------
Shorel
I tested it in a VM. It is like a low latency version of what the previous
version is. Extremely responsive.

Now I need about 6 ppas to add support for Trusty before I can upgrade my main
system to it.

Including TrueCrypt.

------
anonbanker
been using 14.04 for about 2 months now. if you're reliant on open drivers
(Radeon, Nouveau), and use HDMI output, understand that Kernels 3.13.x and
3.14.x are going to be miserable for you, and you'll be limited to sub-720p
resolutions due to regressions in the drivers. 3D has much improved, but the
lack of 1080p makes this a dealbreaker for me right now.

------
nitishdhar
good to see Ubuntu GNOME has been kept

------
onmydesk
who?

------
horaceho
I love LTS!

------
retube
Things I would like:

1) drop the ridiculous Unity desktop. maybe I am old and out of touch, but
that was <i>horrific</i>.

2) Dual boot just works with UEFI/Windows 8.1

3) Supports audio and graphics hardware in common brands like Acer

I have 9 installed on a samsung since 2009 and it's been an absolute pleasure,
just worked. Trying to get 12 or 13 onto a modern Acer however... was a
nightmare. V disappointing. I still don't have a functioning soundcard and the
battery indicator only starts 1 in 10 boots.

~~~
jfoster
Why would you use Ubuntu if you think Unity is ridiculous? That's like getting
a Mac and saying that Apple should drop OS X.

It's very clear that Unity isn't for everyone, but I don't understand why
people who know it's not for them seem to still want to use Ubuntu.

~~~
unicornporn
True dat. If unity does not appeal, there are *buntu options. IMO, Xubuntu is
the way forward.

~~~
zanny
Xubuntu doesn't have the flashy mass market appeal. For power users its great
due to its low footprint, but if I was trying to sell Linux I'd show them
Cinnamon or Zorin or KDE, and _maybe_ Gnome, because they all have eye candy
and the first three work a lot like Windows (albeit KDE is a lot more powerful
than the rest in that regard and would probably scare newbies off).

