
Xubuntu 20.04 - mmphosis
https://xubuntu.org/news/xubuntu-20-04-released/
======
ikurei
> Users with AMD graphics may experience significant graphical issues

Then, in the bug ([https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-
video...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-
amdgpu/+bug/1873895)):

> This only happens when the secondary external display is operating at a
> different pixel width to the internal.

Isn't this a fairly common usecase? My whole company works on high-density
laptop displays connected to cheaper 1080p displays. It surprised me to see
this kind of bug in a final Xubuntu release, although the bug report says the
issue is in the AMD driver.

 __*

I love Xubuntu, I´ve always appreciated its stability, simplicity and
flexibility. It has gotten a bit behind in features, when I use it now I miss
a good Exposé-like feature, but it´s not that big of a deal.

The thing that keeps me on Mac or Windows most of the time is solid support
for high density displays. I can´t get Linux to look quite as good as Windows,
and nowhere as good as MacOS, on a 4k display or retina display, without
having to go very deep into experimental features and patches... and I don´t
want to do that.

Have you noticed that experience improving lately?

~~~
gindely
On a single display, I think I prefer HiDPI X to Windows. But the moment
there's two displays with significantly different dpi, Windows runs rings
around anything on Linux. Windows is surely buggy - I have serious problems
with its multi-monitor support - but it seems that its multi hi dpi only
occasionally crashes Firefox and it's otherwise reasonable.

With Xorg, there's no effective support for different dpi. So if you can
tolerate the variation in pixel size then it's tolerable, but if they're too
much it all breaks. Moreover, many apps completely ignore the dpi. For
instance, Spotify which is is almost unreadably low contrast doubles down and
it's unreadably small too.

With Wayland, it's unusable since any seriously productive app will be shown
at at least quadruple size the moment you require pixel doubling, X apps will
be pixel doubled twice and Wayland native apps all seem to be toys. This seems
to have been a bug that was first report years ago so I suppose they're
waiting until someone rights a Wayland version of Firefox and Jetbrains and so
forth.

Fortunately, this motivated me to by a 4k screen which I'm happy with. It's
only tolerably different than my hidpi laptop screen so I don't need to worry
about X's mono-dpi-ism. But it's still incredibly frustrating.

------
pachico
Definitely the best flavour. You guys help me resuscitate tons of old laptops
for frustrated ex Windows users, which are very happy with now with their new
OS. Great work!

~~~
Eldandan
Here, here! I love Xubuntu. Of all the lighter flavors like Kubuntu, Lubuntu,
Mint/xfce, Xubuntu has been the one I had the best experience setting up for
others on old thinkpads. And lately my go-to distro.

------
greendave
I've found xfce 4.14 to be a very nice update from 4.12 (which was in 18.04).
Glad to see it will be getting a lot more exposure now via xubuntu.

~~~
xubuntu-fan-123
Does the Xubuntu 20.04 installer has ZFS install option as well?

~~~
tribaal
I just checked, and yes, the installer offers a "erase all disk and install
ZFS" option (although it's flagged as experimental).

I'm not sure whether that means encrypted ZFS or not though.

~~~
xubuntu-fan-123
Thank you very much. You saved me some bandwidth!

~~~
tribaal
I also checked the encryption status and the graphical installer option does
_not_ enable encryption on the created ZFS pools.

All created pools have lz4 compression enabled, however.

------
cies
What is Xubu's position on snap? It seems to be at odds with other design
goals of this lovely distro.

(I've used it for a while, but recently switch back to KDE as resource
consumption of KDE dropped a lot and is now ballpark on par with Xubu's[1] yet
gives me a lot more features an configurability)

[1]: [https://youtu.be/fo45bo1jvZI?t=78](https://youtu.be/fo45bo1jvZI?t=78)

~~~
stingraycharles
Isn’t snap entirely optional? I don’t understand why all of a sudden this is
being brought up with each of these releases, as far as I know it was in
Ubuntu for years already?

~~~
cies
Its installed by default and removing it leaves you with some apps (notably
Chrome) missing. I found a way to remove snap[1] and get Chromium from
Debian[2]. But I'm close to leaving the buntus over this drama (see [1] for my
reasons to hate it).

[1] [https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-
snap](https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-setup#remove-snap)

[2] [https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-
setup/tree/master/chromium](https://github.com/cies/kubuntu-
setup/tree/master/chromium)

~~~
sq_
Even without the specific downsides of snap that you've noted, having two
parallel package managers that each have zero visibility into each other feels
like such an antipattern and UX failure to me. Needing to use two different
tools to figure out what's actually installed on my system annoys me to no
end, and, like you, it's pretty much caused me to abandon the *buntus at this
point.

~~~
cies
To have pretty much all my 3rd party software installed through one system was
really great! I remember installing a Linux in 30mins and a Windows in 5hours.

What distro did you run to?

~~~
sq_
I ended up heading off to Arch. I've always enjoyed messing around with
nonstandard desktop setups, and it was really appealing for that because of
the lean default system that Arch provides, along with the availability of so
much software through the AUR.

One perk of the AUR (although it does come with some security concerns, etc.)
is that you can use one of several package managers to handle both it and the
standard repositories under one framework, dealing with exactly the issue I
had with snap without needing PPAs and the like.

------
lexa1979
So, what about the 32 bit libraries needed to run my Steam-Proton games ? I
heard it was going to be removed from 20.04, is it real ? If I upgrade my
18.04 installation, will it keep it ?

~~~
dindresto
No, the compatability libraries are still there and Steam and Proton will run
fine.

------
w-m
"Focal Fossa is a long-term support (LTS) release and will be supported for 3
years, until April 2024"

Is this LTS release supported for 3 years, or until April 2024 (4 years)?

~~~
flatiron
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases)

my guess is the xubuntu team will stop supporting it in 3-4 but the base
ubuntu will be the standard 5/10 from upstream

------
gardaani
They don't have a 32-bit version anymore. That's sad. I know that Ubuntu has
dropped 32-bit support but I was hoping that Xubuntu would still provide it.

Will the same happen for Lubuntu? Currently, there's a 32-bit version for
19.10, but they haven't released 20.04, yet.

I have several 32-bit computers, so I need a 32-bit OS for them. Are there any
good lightweight 32-bit distros left with long term support?

~~~
qplex
I run Debian on my 32-bit netbook.

Currently Debian offers installers for amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips,
mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el and s390x.

------
znpy
Long live XFCE!

~~~
koolba
This made me smile.

------
qwerty456127
I just wonder how much time has to pass before XFCE stops picks up with the
modern (Win7/8/10/Unity/KDE) task panel behaviour. There is DockBarX but this
really is a thing which should be bundled by default nowadays. Windows 95 is
not where any of the new users come from anymore.

------
MdAyq0l
Is there anythng that prevents
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases) from
being updated concerning focal?

------
SethTro
Looks like Ubuntu 20.04 came out 24 hours ago

[https://releases.ubuntu.com/20.04/](https://releases.ubuntu.com/20.04/)

------
albertzeyer
ikurei reports here
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22966663](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22966663))
that it still uses Xorg? I thought that Wayland is standard since a while now?
I haven't really followed up on that. Is that not the case?

------
sccxy
Screenshots page still uses 16.04...

[https://xubuntu.org/screenshots/](https://xubuntu.org/screenshots/)

Why bother trying this distro, when developers even don't bother to update
screenshots.

~~~
noir_lord
Instead of been so dismissively negative perhaps let them know?

Open source people tend to appreciate things like that?

Fwiw xubuntu was my default Dev OS for years it's great and what I'd go back
to if I didn't have cinnamon/fedora.

------
tga
Oh great, a brand new LTS release, two years after the previous one. Let's see
what wonderful new things it contains:

Straight from the release note:

# Highlights

> A brand new dark theme was added

> Six community wallpapers are bundled

> We no longer ship Python 2 by default

Amazing! So there is nothing else more interesting, worth _highlighting_ in
the current release?

~~~
igetspam
You forgot "all the changes from the new Ubuntu 20.04 release," which is a
lot. What Xubuntu does is provides an improved user experience on top of
Ubuntu so their specific change log will always be rather slim.

That's probably why you're being down voted.

~~~
tga
If Xubuntu is a separate distribution, it's safe to assume I'm not
independently following Ubuntu and XFCE development -- sell me on the latest
features I'll get to see when I upgrade from Xubuntu 18.04, no matter where
they're coming from.

The current approach makes it sound like Xubuntu is not worth the separate
identity. It's just Ubuntu + upstream XFCE + six new wallpapers.

