
Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) - zeis
http://releases.ubuntu.com/saucy/
======
rlpb
No, it's not released.

The release is imminent. Ubuntu is developed in the open, so you get to see
candidate release images on the page linked.

Ubuntu is not released until the release is announced. If you're in doubt,
expect to see an announcement on the ubuntu-announce mailing list, or its
archive at [https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-
announce/](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/)

Also see #ubuntu-release-party on Freenode. At the moment, the topic says "...
No, it's not out yet | No, we don't have a set time for release"

(written as of Thu, 17 Oct 2013 10:55:59 +0000; obviously this post will
become incorrect as soon as it actually is released)

~~~
chatman
> Ubuntu is developed in the open

Though mostly "open", but not developed entirely in the right free software /
open source spirit of community involvement and upstream contributions.

~~~
mwfunk
There is no "right" free software/open source spirit of community involvement.
It begins and ends with the licenses used, full stop. Beyond that no one has
any right to say how other people should run their projects. If they don't
like it, they can fork it thanks to the licensing, but even when that happens
it doesn't mean that the original maintainers were somehow less free
software/open source.

~~~
whydo
"Beyond that no one has any right to say how other people should run their
projects."

You have a right to say whatever you want.

------
csense
The main feature I'm looking forward to is zswap in kernel 3.11 [1]. Basically
instead of swapping, the kernel will first compress infrequently used pages in
RAM, which is orders of magnitude faster than swapping to disk.

The practical effect of this is basically the same as a free RAM upgrade!

[1] [https://lwn.net/Articles/537422/](https://lwn.net/Articles/537422/)

~~~
giovannibajo1
Mavericks has the same feature, curious they're both shipping at the same time

~~~
yapcguy
I guess we'll never know if Apple engineers were "inspired" by Zram and Zswap
Linux development. I don't think anything like this is available in Freebsd
yet.

[http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
performance/2012-...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
performance/2012-November/004650.html)

~~~
neilc
There have been countless research papers on this topic, so I doubt it --
[http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=dynamic+memory+com...](http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=dynamic+memory+compression+swap&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=).
Not to mention the fact that RAM compression was quite common back in the
DOS/Win95 days:
[http://oreilly.com/centers/windows/feat/softram/dblscan.html](http://oreilly.com/centers/windows/feat/softram/dblscan.html)

~~~
giovannibajo1
Yes, and that's exactly what makes it curious. It's a technology who's always
been "known", but no modern operating system has bothered implementing it. Now
we got two major OS shipping it at the same time, and I can't even see a
correlation with a change of hardware (i.e. i can't see RAM being lately more
scarce on PCs or Macs to the point of making this feature more useful than,
say, 2 years ago, or 4 years ago, or 6 years ago).

~~~
vidarh
I think it's the opposite (that it is at least in part _more_ RAM that is
driving this)

If you're going to end up swapping to disk most of the time anyway, the
feature doesn't seem to be very useful. But with much faster CPUs, "many core"
CPUs where your apps often won't manage to take advantage of the CPUs, and
cheap RAM making lots of people buy huge amounts, the "cost" of using
compression to offset swapping to disk seems to have dropped substantially,
and the chance of avoiding swapping to disk entirely seems to have increased.

------
abbot2
To be honest "what's new" page looks, well, not very convincing:
[https://help.ubuntu.com/13.10/ubuntu-help/whats-
new.html](https://help.ubuntu.com/13.10/ubuntu-help/whats-new.html)

~~~
eterm
As someone who doesn't use the dash, I am wondering what's in it for me.

Personally I've tried a few distributions over the last year or so because
I've been unhappy with unity but Ubuntu's ease of use still makes me return to
it, although right now I'm typing this from a Debian box. I didn't like the
dreadful* gnome3 speed so switched to i3. Now if I could just work out how to
stop the lazy window focus...

The trouble is is that it looks like a bag of crap right now. The font
rendering is all over the place, I'd be embarrassed to use this at home
although it is more productive for work than anything else I've used lately.

This might all be "my fault" because I haven't properly installed the right
modules or drivers or whatever, or maybe I've not properly set up my Xorg.conf
or ~.i3/config but ubuntu always just worked which is why I kept returning to
it.

*Possibly because this is a VM running inside windows.

~~~
lcedp
What do you mean by 'lazy window focus'?

~~~
zehemer
I'm guessing that it has to do with the focus behaviour of the mouse. If
that's the case then it would be the 'focus_follows_mouse' variable. It is set
thusly:

[http://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_focus_follows_mouse](http://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_focus_follows_mouse)

Then again I may be sadly, sadly mistaken.

------
endijs
Web is finally refreshed. And release notes are here:
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SaucySalamander/ReleaseNotes](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SaucySalamander/ReleaseNotes)

~~~
qznc
Quite boring for desktop end users. No real changes. That is probably a good
thing, since changes in Ubuntu usually means breakage.

~~~
endijs
On Destkop there is reason to upgrade if you are using stock software and
kernel (as I'm). Unity in 13.10 feels more responsive than in 13.04 was.
Pretty much everything is bumped to newer versions. Even things in VirtualBox
work faster now (13.04 was installing 4.2.10, but 13.10 is installing 4.2.16).
Dont know what is the reason for speed gains - Kernel in Ubuntu or newer
VirtualBox. One thing to do after upgrade is to disable smart scopes. No
reason to share search queries with Canonical. I was hoping that 13.10 will
solve my sound problems, but no luck. Just like in 13.04 i hear crackling
noises. But those are specifics of my laptop.

~~~
spindritf
VirtulBox offers a repo for Ubuntu.

    
    
        deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian raring contrib non-free
    
        $ VirtualBox --help
        Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager 4.2.18
    

It also carries virtualbox-4.3 if you're feeling adventurous.

~~~
endijs
Good to know. I will stick with 4.2 branch for now. :) Need to wait for at
least 4.3.1. Too many things changed in 4.3.

------
gw
I upgraded my 13.04 system this morning and now it is unfortunately unusable.
Any time I try to switch users, it consistently brings me to a black screen
with a frozen mouse pointer that I cannot get out of, even when hitting
Ctrl+Alt+F#. I'm downloading the iso now to try a fresh install.

~~~
Daishiman
I have always found that continous upgrade eventually break the system. A
clean install should be the recommended choice.

~~~
Theriac25
That's just beyond retarded. I weep when people have been conditioned by
Canonical (and Microsoft) to accept this.

~~~
Daishiman
It's not all Canonical's faults. A highly customized install with a few extra
libs here and there and some proprietary softare can easily wreck havoc on a
system.

~~~
zanny
I had a continuous Arch install for 4 years without massive breakage through
half a dozen major switches, including the fs layout and the systemd
transition.

I just upgraded to an SSD and decided to clean slate rather than carry extra
fs creep baggage that isn't linked to a package to remove, but I still have
that partition around, and I'm pretty sure if I upgraded it it might still
boot.

It is why I like rolling releases - rather than have catastrophic breakage
every half year, you continuously migrate upwards. It means occasionally you
need to pull up a web browser to see why your desktop is missing, but its
better than doing a dist-upgrade and getting an unbootable system.

------
baldfat
Ubuntu is not going the direction I want for "my Linux. 1\. Mir is a huge
mistake (My opinion) 2\. Unity (Well I am tiled window manager (i3) guy now so
all DEs) I really don't like the flow of OS X and it is starting to really
look more like OS X. DEFAULT an easily be changed. 3\. Lack of community
between the Linux ecosystem. Millions is spent on Ubuntu but seems like little
makes it upstream. 4\. Software Center. They need to just take OpenSUSE's one-
click model and get rid of their current model of App Store and the horrible
app model. (My model) 5\. Their Developer SDK to "Write once, run everywhere."
If I had a nickel for every time that was promised (Java looking at you) Once
again OpenSUSE Build Service is the most underused Linux tool in the last
decade [https://build.opensuse.org/](https://build.opensuse.org/) Build it
there and also build packages for other Distros also.

Now after my list I have Ubuntu running my home server right now and well it
is solid. I use OpenSUSE at work and Arch Linux on my tiny laptop and like
those experiences more.

People need to look at OpenSUSE again!

~~~
frank_boyd
> People need to look at OpenSUSE again!

Isn't it really beautiful that we _actually can_ do this, now? We can switch
platforms within the same day - without real hassle or pain.

I mean tell a Windows or Apple user that they need to look at something else,
and guess what their answer will be...

~~~
Demiurge
My guess is "why? everything is working".

~~~
jon-wood
Having spent yesterday setting up a new laptop to dual boot Windows and
Ubuntu, Ubuntu works far, far better.

Windows needed drivers installing for _everything_ from the network interface
up. And I'm still having troubles with the network - I can use wifi fine, but
the wired connection refuses to pick up an IP with DHCP.

Ubuntu on the other hand needed a single change to the boot parameters to make
screen brightness adjustments work. (Windows also needed a driver for this).
Otherwise it works perfectly.

~~~
Demiurge
Are you saying Ubuntu has better driver support than Windows?

~~~
drakeandrews
Yes.

A million times yes.

About a month ago now, my laptop's windows install decided to take a dive so I
reinstalled windows and took it as an opportunity to dual boot ubuntu as well.
Ubuntu worked out of the box. I'm still finding things that need drivers a
month later in windows.

~~~
Demiurge
I don't think this opinion can be based on personal experience. One or two
computers, especially developers machines are a sample size too small. Also,
I've had an opposite experiences. Not to mention that what we most notice is
divergence from the past trend. Regardless, I don't think many hardware
manufacturers prioritize Linux for their deployment. I can see, however, that
since the latest Ubuntu image is at most 6 months old, it can have more built
in, while Windows 7 is many years old now, tends to require 'Windows Update'
to get all the latest drivers. Overall, however, I think Windows gets way more
driver support just because of the market. I don't know how you can argue
that.

------
diminish
I'll stick to 12.04 LTS for desktop and server and wait for 14.04 LTS for
desktop and server. 9 months support made *.10 releases less exciting, for me
somehow.

~~~
thejosh
For my workstation as a web developer, I use Ubuntu with LXDE running the
latest releases as it's always nice to have the latest software, if I had to
support users I would use 12.04 though.

Servers is quite nice with 12.04 though, and that's what they are designed
for.

~~~
rudiger
How does Ubuntu with LXDE compare with Xubuntu (another lightweight desktop
environment)?

~~~
thejosh
To preface - The PCs I work on at home and work are fairly decent - Intel i7
Haswell, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, so it's not like my using it because my PC is
old.

LXDE has some usability issues (such as random glitches, which seems to be
mostly resolved since 13.04) over XFCE or other desktop environments but I
find it quite a joy to use, especially as I work on a single monitor but have
multiple workspaces which I can tab through using alt+scroll, or using scroll
on the wallpaper - for example I have development (sublime/chrome) on
workspace 1, emails on workspace 2, testing on workspace 3 (which runs in the
background and is handy to run).

LXDE seems to be the only desktop environment that doesn't lag when I have
quite a few things open and going off at once, but I need to re-experiment
with XFCE now 13.10 has come out to give it a proper go.

~~~
tr4656
How about a tiling manager like i3 or awesome?

------
simonebrunozzi
So, a user (zeis, don't take it personally) publishes a link to the release of
Ubuntu 13.10, but he's actually wrong... Despite this, his post gets 188
points of karma (as of know). Now that's what I call a karma system that
doesn't work well.

I should just post "Ubuntu 14.04 (Taunting Tiger) released" and get my own
share of karma...

~~~
hamvocke
Same thing happened on /r/ubuntu as well. It's just plain annoying. This way
the real discussion about the new Ubuntu version goes down in the noise of
users stating that Saucy hasn't been released yet or doesn't even get started.

------
homosaur
Can someone explain to me what's different about the Mac and PC versions of 64
bit Ubuntu? I've seen these Mac versions show up lately but what's in them? I
can't find the data clearly on the website. Is it just different drivers and
defaults?

~~~
AlexanderDhoore
"Unfortunately, even though Macs use a variant of EFI (an earlier version of
what's now called UEFI), they apparently can't cope with multi-catalog CDs,
and simply refuse to boot them. This left us in rather a quandary: we needed
to support UEFI systems, but we didn't want to drop support for Macs either.

I therefore created the amd64+mac CD images, _which are exactly the same as
the amd64 images except that they only support BIOS booting_. Macs are happy
to boot these in their BIOS emulation mode." [1]

TL;DR There is no difference... Normal CDs just won't boot on Macs.

[1] [http://askubuntu.com/questions/37999/what-is-different-
about...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/37999/what-is-different-about-the-
mac-iso-image)

~~~
homosaur
OHHHHHHH bootable. I'd never actually tried that as I've always installed in a
VM. Now that makes sense as to why the Mac version wouldn't work when I tried
it in a VM.

------
kh_hk
[Related] Kubuntu Linux 13.10 Released
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6565146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6565146)

------
josteink
Same day as Windows 8.1 hits the market. [1]

Wonder which one will get most press coverage :)

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/17/windows-8-1-now-
available...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/17/windows-8-1-now-available-to-
download/?ncid=rss_truncated)

------
Symmetry
I was sad to see that the option to swap caps lock and escape was gone (I
think I'm blaming GNOME here). But on the other hand I ought to be doing that
programaticly in my setup script, so I finally just got around to adding that
there.

EDIT: I almost decided to switch to Xubuntu, but then I installed xfce, tried
it out, and found that they didn't provide that option either. Besides, using
xmonad with xfce is much more complicated than with GNOME.

~~~
cmiles74
I call out to setxkbmap to get this done. It should work with any window
manager and desktop environment.[0]

    
    
      setxkbmap -option ctrl:nocaps
    
    

[0]
[https://gist.github.com/Spoygg/3122226](https://gist.github.com/Spoygg/3122226)

~~~
djeikyb
Last time I was using Ubuntu+Unity as my main desktop (11.xx), I used
`xmodmap` to swap my keys, and found that every so often it'd be reverted.
Have you experienced similar problems with this technique?

~~~
SEMW
IIRC I didn't finding any easy way of making xmodmap settings persist over
reboot, so I just took had a script that runs "xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap" run at
startup.

(Of course then I switched to xfce on my laptop, which seems to run its own
xmodmap command after its run startup scripts or something which overrides
them, which is kinda annoying, haven't found a nice way to get around that).

~~~
oinksoft
Try putting your `xmodmap' command in `~/.xinitrc'. It gets read whenever the
X server starts (`startx').

~~~
SEMW
Thanks, but Xfce's startup applications list (which is just a frontend for
~/.config/autostart) is already executed after the X server starts, and after
.xinitrc.

(Apologies if me saying 'runs at startup' was misleading -- obviously if I had
tried to do it from a script that ran on boot, before X starts (rather than on
session start) it could never have worked in the first place!).

Edit: now I've started thinking about it again, I've changed the autostart
script to call another which sleeps for 10s before xmodmap, which seems to
have fixed the problem.

------
routelastresort
Releases link is live:

[http://releases.ubuntu.com/saucy/](http://releases.ubuntu.com/saucy/)

~~~
abrowne
Xubuntu:
[http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/13.10/release/](http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/releases/13.10/release/)

~~~
username42
ubuntu-gnome [http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-
gnome/releases/13.10/releas...](http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-
gnome/releases/13.10/release/)

------
puller
The beta of this has been smooth for me. I had no problems doing the upgrade
(but I have used Ubuntu for a while). I am enjoying the newer versions of the
kernel and some packages that are key for me. If you use Unity, the dash feels
faster. I'm more pleased with this release than several past ones.

------
talles
Is it shipped with Mir?

Their what's new page is kinda succinct:
[https://help.ubuntu.com/13.10/ubuntu-help/whats-
new.html](https://help.ubuntu.com/13.10/ubuntu-help/whats-new.html)

~~~
baldfat
Mir is not ready. The next release is suppose to be a LTS which is scary.

My prediction: LTS will be 14.10 and Mir will be default in 14.04.

~~~
jebblue
Usually the .04 release is LTS every two years, if they change that it will be
a bit confusing, hope they don' do that.

------
nobleach
Let me guess. Postgres 9.1, Ruby 1.9.1, PHP 5.3.11, a lot of extremely old
packages... Please tell me if I'm wrong!

I'm really tired of the software world moving forward and Ubuntu turning into
Debian Woody.

~~~
skyebook
The release notes actually say Apache 2.4 and PHP 5.5[1], no mention of Ruby
or Postgres though. Postgres runs its own Debian repo[2], by the way :)

[1]
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SaucySalamander/ReleaseNotes](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SaucySalamander/ReleaseNotes)

[2]
[http://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/debian/](http://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/debian/)

~~~
Tobu
That repo needs a bit of tweaking though:
[https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Apt/FAQ#I_am_using_a_non-
LT...](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Apt/FAQ#I_am_using_a_non-
LTS_release_of_Ubuntu)

------
MrMeker
I'm installing it as a chroot on my Chromebook, I hope this goes well.
Otherwise its sudo delete-chroot unity.

------
nimeshneema
Final Release Link:

[http://releases.ubuntu.com/13.10/](http://releases.ubuntu.com/13.10/)

MD5 CheckSums:

[http://releases.ubuntu.com/13.10/MD5SUMS](http://releases.ubuntu.com/13.10/MD5SUMS)

~~~
chmike
Where can the release notes be found ?

~~~
nimeshneema
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SaucySalamander/ReleaseNotes](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SaucySalamander/ReleaseNotes)

------
rohu1990
Any one managed to get Ubuntu 13.10 on mac book air with Haswell processor ?
Any better result for the graphics support on haswell ? I was hoping to buy
one of these if I could run ubuntu 13.10 without much problems.

------
rtpg
a warning for people using Anthy or other IME's : 13.10 replaces some stuff in
the keyboard mechanisms, and the dash eats up a lot more keyboard shortcuts (I
can't even get Alt+Shift to work! Alt+Shift!). It's frustrating, I somehow got
two random keybindings to work and somehow activated ibus (not in the
conventional fashion, which no longer works), but I don't know what I did so
can't document it.

Frustrating how they can break such an important thing (keyboards)

------
shurcooL
Does this support touch input well? What would the experience be like if you
were to install it on a Windows 8 tablet, like Acer Iconia W3, Surface Pro or
others?

------
arbutus
Here's some ideas for names for the next release:

Tenacious Turkey

Threadbare Thrush

Tailles Tenrec

Tailful Tenrec

Thorny Thorny Devil

Timely Tarantula

Titilating Titmouse

------
pacofvf
ubuntu-gnome 13.10 now comes with gnome 3.8, I will give it a try.

~~~
Tobu
Which changes shortcuts and removes some keyboard layout customisations, sigh.

~~~
arunc
and that sucks! KDE and Razor-Qt FTW.

------
JSno
"Ubuntu 13.10 will only be supported for 9 months. Non-LTS releases prior to
Ubuntu 13.04 were supported for 18 months. "

------
saltyknuckles
lol Saucy Salamander

