
Hands on with Ubuntu 14.04 - tanglesome
http://www.zdnet.com/hands-on-with-ubuntu-14-04-the-best-ubuntu-desktop-ever-7000028578/
======
notatoad
I'm very impressed with ubuntu lately. Despite all the drama in the blog space
about their technical decisions, from a user's perspective it's a very stable
and mature OS. Every upgrade fixes a few little things, makes things a little
bit better, and most importantly doesn't break anything. There's very little
to get excited about and very little to get annoyed about. It really does just
work. On windows or even mac I would wait until a day when I don't have a lot
of work that needs to get done to install a new version of the OS, on ubuntu i
feel confident clicking okay on the upgrade notification, even if i'm in the
middle of something important.

~~~
gcb0
excluding the printing fiasco, you described Debian.

ubuntu is just fast in moving debian unstable packages to their own stable
branch, and screwing usability just so they make the experience more apple-
like.

~~~
muriithi
Choices are better, no?

No one is preventing anyone from giving Debian a spin.

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noir_lord
I've been using Xubuntu 14.04 for a couple of days.

With the exception of a different theme (out the box, which lasted about 10
seconds anyway) it feels exactly like Mint XFCE 16 (which is great).

Install was a breeze (I'd have been surprised if it wasn't these days),
everything worked out the box, the ati open source driver with arandr works
really well (on the 7750 at work and the 6950 at home) though there was some
tearing when dragging windows on the 6950 (tried the usual suspects) so I
installed the binary driver which took care of that.

All the software I use day to day installed with zero issues (vagrant,
phpstorm, pycharm, oracle-java7, chromium, firefox etc).

I also upgraded by vagrant configs to Ubuntu server LTS 14.04 (it's nice not
to have to monkey patch in newer versions of PHP and Postgres with a
bootstrap.sh) also with no drama.

For me at least the days of "oh now, new release it's going to take 2 days to
put everything back" are long gone, I'm back up and running in < 2 hours.

~~~
zanny
You can enable vsync at the foss driver level by doing the inverse of this:

[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Turn_vsync_off](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI#Turn_vsync_off)

if your dri default had it off.

~~~
noir_lord
Sorry when I said "(tried the usual suspects)" I should have pointed out that
meant exactly what you posted.

Thanks anyway though :).

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mladenkovacevic
Is it just me or have the open source graphics drivers improved by miles. A
couple of games running through Wine are getting similar frame rates with
Gallium3D and Catalyst.

~~~
Spittie
It isn't you. The AMD opensource team has been doing a terrific work lately,
especially considering the small size (IIRC 4 people). DPM is the big thing,
as it means that the gpu can raise the clock under load as it does on Windows,
but they've done lots of work everywhere else as well.

Say thanks to Intel as well for driving the work on Mesa (It's thanks to Intel
that Mesa got OpenGL 3.3 compatibility so fast).

Also Wine got some speedups as well (and an huge one should be coming soon
with the stream patches).

Overall, I'd say that the Linux graphic stack has never been in a better
state. We got official opensource drivers for Intel, official opensource
drivers from AMD that are 50-80% as good as the closed one depending on your
card, and unofficial opensource drivers for Nvidia that are usually good
enough for non-gaming.

~~~
1_player
For some older Radeon cards (such as my 6630HD Mobile) I would recommend the
open-source driver instead of Catalyst, as the performance is noticeably
greater.

------
massysett
"I've been testing it in a VirtualBox virtual machine (VM)"

Then how much was he really using it? Surely one of the first things Ubuntu
did was make sure the OS runs in a VM. But how well does it run on real
hardware? Does it detect the hardware properly? Does the video work? Does the
suspend and resume work? Anything wonky about the ACPI? How about bootup--does
it work on your Windows 8-certified hardware that has Secure Boot and UEFI?
Did it install a bootloader properly? Does said bootloader properly handle
other OSes on the system or does it hide them away, which is just as good as
nuking them as far as inexperienced users are concerned?

Since it's in a VM, I doubt you have many files in there. How does it handle
desktop search and indexing? What about connecting to your printer? Do the
control panel-like gizmos work properly?

These "I installed it in a VM" style drive-by "reviews" are worthless.
Everything he says is pure pablum. Wake me up when someone posts a real review
that actually puts this system through its paces.

~~~
reirob
Fully agree. It should not be named "hands-on" if it's in the VM.

Fortunately, for me, it runs really great in real install. I even managed to
make a dual-boot Win7 + Ubuntu 1404 and then inside Ubuntu tweaked a Win7
machine, that allows me to run my "physical" Win7 by booting and in a
VirtualBox VM from Linux. Now I will boot Win7 very rarely.

------
pyromine
Even though I haven't worked with this update much yet, I'm so inordinately
happy about them bringing back local menus, I honestly hated the global menus
and the update is worth it for local menus alone.

~~~
reirob
I fully agree, this is for me the "best" feature of 14.04 LTS (coming from a
12.04 LTS).

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millstone
> At the same time, it's kept one controversial feature: Built-in search
> scopes for such commercial sites as Amazon and eBay

Wow, they really did it.

I searched for "web browser" and am presented with two web browsers "Firefox
Web Browser" and "Browser" (?), followed by nine pictures of mens' shoes. A
search for "Terminal" suggested Arnold Schwarzenegger holding a gun, and a
goth metal singer dressed in a Nazi uniform sticking his tongue out at me.

What a ghastly misfeature. Is a cryptic terminal command really the only way
to disable this noise? The linked article couldn't even get it right (it's
gsettings, not settings).

~~~
fulafel
They used to have a disable option for the search stuff in the privacy
settings, did they take it out?

~~~
reirob
You can disable the "search stuff" in System Settings -> Security & Privacy ->
Search (tab).

This is what I immediately did. So, this is a shame that the article only
mentions a command line method to switch it off.

------
Theodores
I did the upgrade but I noticed no difference whatsoever to the 13.x that I
had been using before.

I actually wasn't hoping for any changes other than being able to run 'skype'
again (I broke the 32 bit libraries that skype 'needs').

Had it not been for skype working again and a small change in how the folders
are rendered in the 'save file' dialog box, I don't think I would have guessed
that my OS had been upgraded.

Maybe that is the future of upgrades - no perceptible difference whatsoever.

~~~
notatoad
there's a few user-visible changes, but for the most part they are hidden
behind a setting so you won't see them unless you enable them. personally,
this one is my favourite: [http://imgur.com/lTncRkz](http://imgur.com/lTncRkz)

~~~
fingerprinter
From 13.10 to 14.04 there are also an incredible amount of polish and small
touches around Unity. If you aren't a consistent non-LTS user, you might miss
them, but there are a lot of them and they _really_ add to the experience.

------
plg
anyone tried it native on a macbook pro retina yet?

and/or : best laptop for running it? I'm guessing a thinkpad or maybe one of
the dell xps13 developer edition?

~~~
gcb0
avoid dell. even if that ONE model was any good, which it is not, their entire
line sucks for linux support.

get an asus. it was the first company to try shipping linux for real (not dev
beta scams) and still pick the most linux friendly components (last time i
checked)

~~~
brokenparser
Asus is also the company that ran an advertisement campaign titled "It's
better with Windows".

No, thanks.

~~~
gcb0
after they offered eeepc with linux snce 2006 and nobody bought :)

------
a3n
Yes, xubuntu 14.04 is the best xubuntu I've ever used. :)

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ilovecookies
Been using linux distros and ubuntu 12.04 for about 2 years now. Linux is the
shit but ubuntu sucks IMO. Very poor customization possibilites. Heavily
reliant on python 2.7. Very bad support for other window managers than unity,
dont ever try to mess with multiple window managers on ubuntu, it will ruin
your week. With WAY FASTER alternative systems such as arch, funtoo, gentoo,
knoppix and even debian. I have a hard time understanding how ubuntu could
have gained the traction it has among developers.

~~~
stefanix
Developer here. I simply prefer satisfying defaults over crazy customization
possibilities. Also dash and being able to call any file menu item through it
is super fast and mostly mouse-less.

------
tinco
It's such a shame they insisted on their timing schedule for this release. It
means the biggest Linux distro is committed to running X applications natively
for the 6 years to come.

Imagine how good it would have been for the Linux community as a whole if they
would have been able to exclude X from this release. We came so close to
finally shaking up the Linux user interface stack.

I wonder if they've had a discussion about moving the LTS down half a year or
perhaps a year, just for Mir.

edit: To help a bit with the imagination part, if we'd have Mir in this
release, then a whole bunch of big UI products could say in ~3 years that
about 80% of their users are running Mir enabled desktops. That could aid them
to consider moving to a native Mir stack, the increase of work on this layer
would not only benefit Mir but also Wayland as a side effect. An even more
beneficial side effect would the assistance of big companies like NVidia and
AMD and perhaps Valve be to this process, if things go according to plan their
drivers on Linux could benefit a lot from more well defined/thought out
interfaces, something which again could benefit Wayland also.

~~~
notatoad
LTS is supported for 6 years, but they release a new LTS every two years.
pushing LTS back a year to wait for Mir doesn't really make sense when the
next LTS is due only a year after that. And from what i've seen of
Mir/Wayland, i suspect that one year is a pretty optimistic timeframe for
actually moving away from X in a stable, production quality OS.

~~~
desas
LTS is supported for 5 years

------
apapli
I really want to use Ubuntu for personal use, but still really miss it not
having MS Office natively available.

I know this comment may seem lame here on HN but I just don't have the time to
master OpenOffice or figure out the best way to manage compatibility when
sending documents around the place.

~~~
jcastro
Have you tried Office 365 online? I was surprised at how well it worked.

------
mirsimiki
They should make the dock act exactly like Windows 7, put it in the bottom,
remove the top panel.

~~~
solnyshok
I always customize my Win installs by moving dock to the left, same as Ubuntu.
It makes sense on laptop with limited vertical space

~~~
reirob
I do the same on Windows 7 ;) I am wondering if it would be possible to get
rid of the top panel altogether and put the information in the vertically
aligned left panel, just like I have it on Win7. For maximized windows it
would not gain anything, but for 2 side-by-side terminals it makes a (small)
change.

------
edent
Wonder how easy it is to install on a MacBook Air? My current one runs 12.04
perfectly - but I'm not sure I want to risk an update.

More importantly - does it still have wobbly-windows? :-)

~~~
StavrosK
13.10 is fine here, but I haven't tried 14.04 yet.

------
goombastic
Used to be on Ubuntu, but ever since I've started using Elementary OS I have
had no use for anything else.

------
htk
Even a review on Linux can't help but mention some cryptic terminal command.

~~~
jbeja
I hope you can sleep this night not worrying about the "Terminal" monster
below your bed.

~~~
htk
When I started programming, the computer didn't have a GUI, so I'm fairly
comfortable with Terminal.

I also hear, year after year, how Linux is going to finally reach out of
nerddom, and it always fails to do that, and it always will if the community
keeps this mindset "you don't need to be scared of a little terminal, you will
LEARN more about your computer".

Well, only us geeks want to learn more about our computers, others just want
to do stuff, and they are right, that's why iPads are everywhere.

The old saying is still going strong: "Linux is only free is your time is
worth nothing"

~~~
noisy_boy
I disagree. I recently installed Linux Mint 16 (with Cinnamon as the DE) on my
laptop and the experience was basically hiccup free:

\- Install was smooth (since I was installing on a separate drive, no fiddling
with manual partitioning etc.)

\- Everything that a typical user wants worked post install without any extra
steps - Music/Videos/Wifi connectivity/Internet/Hibernate/Suspend etc. all
worked

I didn't have to launch the terminal for any of the above.

------
Dewie
What is the best course of action for people that have been using 12.04?
Upgrade straight way? Or wait (how long?) for this LTS to smooth out any
potential edges? Other than the outdated packages (which seems to be a Debian
thing, but that I've been able to work around by finding ppa's and building
from source), I am decently happy with 12.04.

~~~
coherentpony
Is 12.04 the previous LTS release? I think I'm using the same one. To be
honest, I'm sticking with it. I still have a few more years of support so I
might as well just wait until kinks (if any) are ironed out.

~~~
justincormack
Yes it is.

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Artemis2
"the best ever".

This kind of expression is getting on my nerves, as it is used as a
catchphrase for an obvious expectation about the product: "great news, no
regression about it". Apple uses it too ("the best iPhone we've ever built")
and it is losing all the little meaning it had thanks to the usual marketing
hammering ; people probably still use it because it features the product name
+ best.

~~~
RivieraKid
These titles annoy me too, it's kind of expected that the new release is
better than than the previous one.

