
Ten years of Ubuntu - hpaavola
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/ten-years-of-ubuntu-how-linuxs-beloved-newcomer-became-its-criticized-king/
======
pjmlp
Ubuntu LTS is the only GNU/Linux distribution that keeps me on Linux on one of
my laptops (an Asus netbook).

All the other distributions fail short of 100% laptop support out of the box.

As I am no longer on my 20's with lots of time to spare, either it works out
of the box, or it doesn't. I don't care about starting weekend projects that
become week long projects just to get something working.

Or just trying out distributions to see how they look like. My first
distribution, Slackware 2.0, was a long time ago.

Ubuntu is great and I do like Unity as desktop environment on my netbook.

~~~
hiou
Why is this at the top? It's obvious flame bait.

Yeah, we get it. You are really worried about yourself and your time. Yeah, we
get it that you want to make a generalization that "All the other
distributions" don't have 100% support. Which is obviously not true by any
respect. I'm typing on one right now that both Debian and Arch work without
issue.

"I don't care about starting weekend projects that become week long projects
just to get something working." It's been almost 10 years since I've had that
experience with Linux. This is over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please
bury this meme?

What is it with Linux that someone really needs to hop in an talk about what's
wrong with it, no matter what the topic beyond the mere mention of Linux?

Edit: To clarify a bit about this silly meme. Many people find some hunk of
junk that the don't use anymore and that they never thought about working with
Linux when they bought it. Then they are surprised it doesn't just work. To
me, that isn't much different then buying a PC and trying to install OSX on it
and complaining about how it didn't just magically work. Many laptops and
desktops are certified and targeted to work with Linux. From many of the large
manufacturers. You obviously might have trouble if you are trying to cram
something onto something that it is not designed for. Are you even an
engineer? How do you not realize that?

~~~
testing3212
> It's been almost 10 years since I've had that experience with Linux. This is
> over 4 desktops and 3 laptops. Can we please bury this meme?

Maybe with desktops, but even just last year, trying to get wi-fi setup on my
beagle bone or raspberry pi were hell. Multiple programs to do the same thing,
and none of them work quite the same. So running scripts from the command line
with the usual commands wouldn't work, so then the only thing that did work
was the gui. But what if you don't want to use the gui, because you want the
thing to reconnect automatically after power down (an option the gui didn't
provide)?

Maybe running ubuntu, this wouldn't have been an issue, but beagle bone had
archlinux, and then I tried multiple versions for the raspberry pi, most of
them debian based.

So, no. This meme won't die just because most versions work out of box for
desktops. It would have to work out of box for anything linux runs on.

~~~
thearn4
Yeah, I have to agree with this. I used GNU/Linux on my laptop exclusively
when I was in grad school, and every "sudo apt-get update && upgrade" felt
like taking a turn in Russian roulette. The generic device drivers were almost
always a nightmare. Power management was abysmal. And this was on a Lenovo
machine that is generally considered to be pretty Linux friendly.

While I never did have a problem that wasn't eventually solvable, I finally
came to accept that I really don't like playing sysadmin, and would much
rather know that I can pick up my machine, perform library updates, and
actually go work on something at a moments notice.

At least on a laptop. On a desktop machine, I'm willing to be much more
patient.

~~~
hiou
Just for my own curiosity, did you intentionally chose a Laptop that you knew
was 100% compatible to begin with?

Edit to the downvoter who can't use their words: The above comment said
"Lenovo machine that is generally considered to be pretty Linux friendly".
Seems like a relevant question as to whether that meant 100% compatible via
Lenovo's declaration or online research and an educated guess. It was a
sincere question as Lenovo does provide specific information about Linux
compatibility.

[http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd031426](http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/pd031426)

Mind explaining to me what I did wrong there?

------
eloisant
What I really loved in Ubuntu is that they were the first distribution that
really considered itself an OS, not "a way to install Linux" and make choices
about what it should include.

All the other distributions started by asking whether you wanted KDE or Gnome,
Abiword or OpenOffice, and ended up installing a bunch of software you may or
may not want "just in case". Ubuntu made choices, if you didn't like it you
could always change it later on or use a different distribution but you had a
consistent OS to start with.

~~~
agumonkey
It's strange. I have a hard time remembering why I liked Ubuntu right away.
Maybe a blend of good enough looking, works out of the box mindset, which made
a community grow rapidly and kicking a nice network effect where you would
quickly find solution on their board/wikis.

I was impressed later when they managed to bring new Window Management ideas
without too much time or pain.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It was summed up for me at the time by the joke "Ubuntu is an ancient African
word meaning 'can't install Debian'".

Their focus on getting stuff installed and working was a big deal then.

~~~
pessimizer
Wasn't this mostly Knoppix's accomplishment?

~~~
duaneb
I believe Knoppix was the first to formalize the debian live cd concept—I
don't think they did the major work for supporting hardware and supporting
installation from the live cd.

------
cyphax
I was an Ubuntu user for a few years. I remember when they'd ship the CD's out
for free. One of those things that made Ubuntu great. It was also really good
at presenting a very usable Gnome 2.x desktop that was ready to use from the
first boot, and I was a very happy user for a while, until they started
shipping software a little bit too soon (PulseAudio for example; suddenly
Ubuntu didn't have sound out-of-the-box anymore on my machine) and I've once
been bitten in the behind by an update that made my video card unsupported all
of a sudden, so that prevented X from starting... and then they replaced Gnome
with Unity and I kind of stopped caring around that time so I went back to my
previous distro. Hopefully for good. :)

Congratulations to Mark for starting this otherwise great project! May it have
many years ahead of it!

~~~
ooz
Similar story. It started as a tidied up Debian fork. Then since about 12.04
LTS it turned into a tidied up Debian unstable fork with all the bugs in it.
As a server only and LTS only user, I had no end of problems from there on
with unstable kernels, duff and buggy packages, update roulette and terrible
support.

We're on Debian 7 now and it's rock solid, relatively bug free in comparison
and the support is good. Just where I want it to be.

The best outcome for me was that it caused Debian to rethink their release
cycles a bit.

~~~
icelancer
Totally agree. After 11.x, Ubuntu's "desktop" uses crashed for me and many I
know.

------
davidw
I was a Debian developer for a while, but gradually ran out of time for it,
and eventually went with Ubuntu as my desktop and server OS.

By and large, I'm very happy with it, although I wish they'd sink a bit more
time into avoiding regressions than trying to create new things.

I like the predictable release schedule, and the fact that it's a bit more
focused than Debian.

Yet, underneath it's still all (almost at least) free software that I can hack
on if needs be.

These days I use Xubuntu, with Xfce, because that's a bit more to my liking as
a desktop: focus follows mouse is not something I care to do without.

~~~
johnchristopher
May I ask what you are missing from Debian as a desktop ?

I went from Ubuntu minimal to Debian (stable, nonetheless),tiling wm for me,
gnome for friends and guests, and found Debian easier to maintain (for me and
my friends whose computers I manage).

I must say I feel Debian's desktop experience is really top notch and crosses
all the check marks of what a desktop is supposed to do (for me at least) and
so I don't really see what is gained from switching from Debian to Ubuntu
regarding desktop features.

~~~
davidw
> May I ask what you are missing from Debian as a desktop ?

When I switched, Debian was in the process of taking 3 years to go from woody
to sarge. After that it would be another 5 before etch.

I'm sure Debian makes a fine desktop these days. I could definitely see
switching back at some point.

I do like that there is someone who takes decisions Ubuntu; I think that
streamlines things in some ways. Debian can get into pretty long and involved
flames/discussions about things. Sometimes good comes of it, sometimes it just
distracts people from putting out a good OS.

~~~
liotier
I went down the same path when Ubuntu's appearance suddenly made Debian look
slow and outdated. Now I have been back on Debian for a few years and it just
feels better - Debian has come a long way... I believe that Ubuntu's mere
existence gave it a good jolt !

~~~
davidw
Yeah, a better release schedule helps. I recall Debian servers from 'back in
the day' where you'd start accumulating all this stuff from unstable because
you started needing something that wasn't 4 years old, and then it would have
dependencies, and so on. It could get a bit messy.

------
dijit
So, before I knew what linux was (and was teased on various forums) I ordered
some free CD's from Ubuntu. (I didn't have the internet at home). (eventually
I got them; ubuntu 5.04 I think [Horny Hedgehog from memory])

When I received them I was pleased, everything worked.. well, not everything,
but it sorta worked! I had a desktop environment and a command line and I felt
a small sense of accomplishment because I'd navigated the strange menu's
safely _before anakonda or full-framebuffer installers_

Because of the peer pressure I learned about how to do my bits, and I carried
on.

Later in the year I found fedora, and Blue is a nicer colour than brown (I was
young and fickle) but it was less user friendly, so I committed to learn that
and get off the "Noob Friendly" Ubuntu OS.

Many years later I got a small laptop for my mother, at this stage in my life
I was "awoken" and I knew the power a machine could hold if it ran linux, so I
put ubuntu on it- She's not the most technically apt lady in the world but was
able to do most things with ease, and I put that down to having a "Good UX
outside microsoft" (since most people who learn the microsoft way are
generally committed to a mindset and anything outside of that is pushed away).

A few issues with Flash, some performance hiccups on some websites that seemed
to try and avoid supporting linux in strange ways (that I take for granted I
know how to bypass) and eventually the machine gave up the ghost.

I bought a new machine and put ubuntu on it (13.10 I think) and she was
somewhat less than pleased, the UX had changed, she didn't know what was
available anymore, nothing was organised in a way she understood.. and so I
installed mint, she's now happy.

So I'll say this for Ubuntu, they put linux in the hands of people who we
should really be targetting, it allowed me access to linux acting as a base
plate and later acting as a full blown system for someone who was not
interested at all in computers. And they pushed a trend for that, so we should
all be thankful.

~~~
dijit
A follow on from this story and many moons after my "fickle" switch to
Fedora/RHEL.

At this point in my life I'd been involved in a half dozen large companies and
used linux on enormous scale.

I moved to a company that was using ubuntu LTS (10.04) (old at the time) in
production, it was heavily invested and I expected that wouldn't change as
Developers were very hesitant to change to debian (which is too old/doesn't
make things easy enough) or centos/RHEL which suffers the same issues and has
the added benefit of having SELinux (which I'm an advocate of understanding
rather than disabling).

I go through my daily security advisories and a local privilege escalation
means all our virtual machines and virtual machine hosts are affected, luckily
it's patched as 10.04 is still supported so I apt-get update;apt-get upgrade
and send out an email saying the server will be down for 30 minutes while it
receives patches.

I was wrong, it was down for 6 hours.

unfortunately someone upsteam caused that particular kernel update to rebuild
all initramfs' on the machine, and had also named lvm2 to lvm, so now my
drives wouldn't mount.

On any kernel version/initramfs version

normally you can drop to shell load the module, mount the drives and continue
startup, but unfortunately that stopped a lot of things from loading such as
the bonding we had in place on the nics.

obviously I didn't know why it broke at the time and was attempting to get
help from #ubuntu on freenode.

the response was "Sometimes it's better not to know why it broke"

that server was smoothly running CentOS before I left that company.

So in my opinion support and enterprise is where it falls down.

------
hpaavola
For me the biggest thing about Ubuntu is that it does not feel like a
distribution. It's an OS. They don't just pack others stuff inside one image
and call it a day. Ubuntu does things in a way that they feel is the correct
way. If there is a suitable OSS package for that, great. If not, then they
make it. Fedora, Debian and others just gather what's there and ship it. AFAIK
Elementary OS is the only other distro that works kinda like Ubuntu, but it
looks like an OSX clone.

~~~
SunShiranui
Elementary does look like OSX, but I wouldn't judge them negatively for that.
I've been using the distro for a while and I'm quite happy with it.

~~~
rkuykendall-com
As a mac user that gets nervous when Apple announces new OS X versions, I'm
glad there are linux users out there keeping the principles that make OS X
great alive. If OS X ever goes too iOS / iCloud for me to bare, I hope
Elementary is waiting for me with the same attention to detail, stability, and
ease of use that god me hooked on OS X.

~~~
t0mislav
Same thing here.

------
latch
There's gotta be a lot of OSX users like me who'd switch in a heartbeat given
better laptop options. I know they're getting better, but it still isn't that
close.

~~~
tormeh
What we need is for Canonical to release their own laptops where they support
the entire hardware+software combo. Canonical Nexus, please?

Any other company with their own Linux distro and hardware would also work, I
guess. I really like Unity, though.

~~~
peatmoss
The Nexus model chooses a manufacturer and then works with them to create the
current year's creation. I'm not sure Canonical has enough resource or
leverage to do that.

That said, I'd love to see an Apple-esque model where I could point to 3
laptops each year and say "large, medium, and small" and know that they would
work completely with zero fussing.

Maybe Canonical could start down this road by refitting their devs with new
laptops on an annual cycle and saying, "these are the laptops we will be using
this year."

I'm a NetBSD-to-Apple switcher (circa 2003) who has a fair bit of ambient
familiarity with Ubuntu as his auxiliary OS. I don't run any proprietary
system beyond what comes bundled with OS X nowadays. I could switch to Ubuntu
for day-to-day work and be perfectly content.

I can say that the SOLE factor of why I haven't has everything to do with not
finding a rival to my MacBook Air 11". Part of that may be there simply isn't
a comparable machine. But part of that may be that the hassle of searching for
alternatives is simply too great.

~~~
Mikeb85
There is the Dell XPS 13 developer edition which comes from Dell with
Ubuntu... ThinkPads work great with Ubuntu (at least the T, X, and W series),
I've been using a T530 for a few years now and every single function key, the
fingerprint reader, absolutely every feature it has works. And of course there
are a few boutique manufacturers that ship Linux systems.

I'm sure other laptops work great with Ubuntu but these are the ones I'm
familiar with...

~~~
pessimizer
I use one of the boutique systems (the ZaReason UltraLap) as my work laptop
and like it a lot, but when my home laptop started to give up the ghost for
the fourth or fifth time (a 6-year old Dell Inspiron 1525), I realized that
for home use I need the secondary parts market to be active. I fix computers
that break (the Inspiron is on its second motherboard, third power board, and
the screen and backlight inverter of someone else's 1525 that they were
throwing out.) The ThinkPad T430 is cheap enough that it often undercuts the
boutiques, but I'm not locked out of ebaying for a new power board.

------
_nedR
As an Ubuntu user since 10.04, what I would really like to see is Ubuntu
matching or beating Windows/OS X with regards to battery life. When I first
installed 10.04, my ubuntu setup actually beat Windows Vista in battery life
and stability. Then 10.10 came out with serious power regressions (related to
kernel regressions, Unity, etc.) - which I still blame from killing my
battery.

Since then, Windows 7 and 8 have gotten more stable and better battery life
while Ubuntu has struggled to keep up. With 14.04, Ubuntu is better (finally
with basic support for NVIDIA PRIME)but has yet to catch up with Windows.

Seriously, Mark Shuttleworth and Ubuntu devs, if you are reading:- Ubuntu is
promoting global warming and creation of electronic waste with its current
actions. Forget the features and fluff for now - Fix the battery issues and
make sure things just work.

Thank you Ubuntu for all the great work you guys have done for Linux over the
last 10 years. Still love you.

~~~
mattfrommars
Have you tried TLP out?

~~~
_nedR
No. I would like to, when I get the time (Also powertop
-[http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_14...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_1404_powertop&)
)

But thats the point. Lot of us depend on our computer for work and don't have
the time to fiddle with lot of error-prone settings.

This is why Linux users have been migrating to OS X for years. Deep down, we
are all idealistic hackers who would love for FOSS, and open-source to win,
and give the finger to big brother, but we also need to put food on our
tables.

Canonical lately has been chasing unicorns and leprechauns to find the Next
Big Thing (never mind that they are late to mobile, tablet, and even unified
interfaces). Canonical is right that mobile is the future. Mobile first of all
includes laptops, tablets , phone. And the basic requirement for a successful
mobile platform is battery life.

------
lmedinas
I like Ubuntu, we use (LTS releases) at work and it's been very stable and
easy to maintain. It's also by far the most popular Linux distro for a lot's
of reasons. Although i rarely use it at home (switched to OSX) I still keep
myself updated and try every release. Imho i feel they should get more in the
"latest technologies" bandwagon like they did a few years before Unity (for
those who remember Ubuntu pushed always the latest GNOME releases with the
latest technologies developed by RedHat and get it right even before Fedora)
and upstart in order to not cause more fragmentation on the Linux desktop.
Let's take Unity example: First was desktop on top of GTK2 which looked and
worked better than gnome-shell. Then the transition of GNOME3 started and now
GNOME was able to get a ecosystem of applications that fit's on GNOME not
Unity, so currently GNOME apps don't fit on Unity desktop and even gnome-shell
perhaps it's more useful than Unity. Same for upstart: It started as an new
modern init system but then systemd came out and become the standard in Linux
(or at least it's trying to). Now Ubuntu is migrating to systemd because their
init system never gained traction. Not to mention the manpower they invested
and now they don't get any result out of it. I fear the same will happen with
MIR since it will NOT become the standard on Linux like Wayland.

For the future I hope Canonical don't pull the plug on Desktop and Server
(which is also very popular) and give it's users the choice of using Wayland,
GNOME, X11, systemd, XFCE, LXDE or other technologies instead of the "home
made" technologies. Also let's hope for more bright 10 years ahead trying to
get Linux Desktop in the right direction giving people a choice between
Operating Systems.

------
bubblemachine3k
I've had a play with Ubuntu on the Nexus 5. I don't think it's a daily driver
for me yet, but I'm excited and they look like they are working hard to get
there. Can't wait.

------
adamors
"Linux for human beings" sounds like an oxymoron to me, after 5+ years of
tinkering with Linux on the desktop.

After years of Ubuntu (and Arch, Debian, Mint etc.) I'm not ashamed to say I'm
really happy on OS X. Less customisation and more time to focus on actual
work/leisure.

~~~
Dewie
Ubuntu is really user-friendly... until you are having any kind of non-trivial
problem, which can happen to anyone if they are unlucky with their drivers,
the sound doesn't work, etc.. Then you are relegated to copying command line
gobbledygook from askubuntu into the terminal, being able to understand
nothing about what it does. At least with those tedious "click on X, then on Y
when that pops up"... you're able to understand the gist of what you're doing.

I'm a programmer so I've become somewhat accustomed to working with the
command line. But it's hardly a nice user interface for most people.

~~~
slgeorge
I would estimate (from a relatively well-informed position) that about half
the serious issues that users face are due to hardware interactions. You'll
remember that a few years ago the famous example was WIFI chip-sets.

The reality for the distributions is that if there is good support from the
component manufacturer and the OEM then you can provide a good user-
experience. We put massive effort into enablement with manufacturers such as
Dell, HP and Lenovo [1].

As a user the best thing you can do is to buy hardware with components that
will work. In the old days that used to mean looking at hardware component and
comparing them to whether they worked with Linux. Now we have certification
sites.

The second sort of problem is the general end-user issues. I actually think
that Ubuntu is beyond the point where you need to open the command line for
normal end-user activities. The big weakness there is that there's no
equivalent of the 'Genius Bar' for Linux users.

[1]
[http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/](http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/)

~~~
Dewie
I guess I was lucky in that installing Ubuntu on my Acer mostly just worked. I
had some problems, which were not easy to figure out as a Linux rookie, but
some help from forums and installation of some proprietary drivers were enough
to give as good of an experience for casual use as I was having on Windows.

Since I installed Ubuntu initially out of necessity, I never really had the
time to consider whether my hardware would be supported or not.

------
weavie
As someone who's current phone is more powerful than his laptop, I am really
looking forward to seeing what Ubuntu Touch can deliver.

------
bufordsharkley
I love, love Unity; I love keyboard shortcuts for getting things done quickly,
and Unity's keyboard shortcuts are intuitive and cover just about everything.
And the visual design is beautiful.

...I just know that if the average person could walk into their Best Buy and
get a Windows laptop for $X and an Ubuntu version of that laptop for slightly
less, we'd see Ubuntu everywhere. One can dream.

------
maouida
I tried to switch from Windows to Ubuntu multiple times but I go back to
Windows each time.

I have mainly 2 issues:

\- Upgrade to newer version always fails. I'm left with a broken OS at the
end.

\- Although the UI has improved a lot since the early days of Ubuntu, I still
don't like it. I know I can customize it but it always causes issues on some
apps.

~~~
tribaal
I've been upgrading my laptop through 6 releases (it's 3 years old), and never
had a single failure.

Do you use the provided upgrade path? It's very surprising to me to hear that
- we test upgrades pretty thoroughly.

Disclaimer: I work for Canonical.

~~~
cowardlydragon
I've had to rebuild with a new OS install twice. I've run Ubuntu for
probably... crap, is it 10 years now?

It usually coincided with a oh-well-might-as-well-upgrade decision...

At least one was a two major version upgrade. But still.

------
danbee
Ubuntu got popular during the 3 year period between Debian Woody and Sarge. I
think many Debian users jumped ship because they got bored of waiting for a
new release so a new distro that was basically Debian but up to date was
welcome.

The joke around that time was that Debian was either obsolete or unstable.

------
tatterdemalion
> Like it or not, Ubuntu or whatever your OS of choice is does have root
> access to your machine. Not literally of course, but it's effective access
> given that their code is running with root privileges on your machine and
> chances are you haven't reviewed it lately. You trust your distro to make
> sure that code is secure, stable, and acting in your best interests.

Actually, I trust that of the millions of Ubuntu users, there is at least one
person who would sound the alarm if Canonical had slipped spyware into their
distribution (as, of course, people did about the absurd Amazon lens). Free
software means trusting the public at large to audit the software rather than
trusting the software's producer.

------
_navaneethan
If Ubuntu is not avail now, _then I have to go payment course for learning
Windows_

Ubuntu is pure white box to learn. I am enjoying it from my college life where
I just touched the computer initially, then immediately ubuntu was loaded.

~~~
hackmiester
I love that it's becoming so common. I don't use Ubuntu personally but I think
it is a great "first experience" with Linux.

------
bitwize
I have an ambivalent relationship with Ubuntu. Personally, I hate Ubuntu but
I'm glad it exists. It means a few more people who otherwise would have used
Windows, don't. I keep coming back to Slackware because it's in a nice sweet
spot where "stable", "just works", "lets me configure it just the way I want"
and "doesn't bother me with needless distro-specific cruft" all intersect. So
Ubuntu is definitely not for me. For the people it is for, it does a pretty
good job.

------
sandaru1
One of the main reasons Ubuntu got popular (compared to other distros) on Sri
Lanka because they shipped free CDs. Lots of people in Sri Lanka didn't have
Cable or DSL internet connections by that time. It was limited to a smaller
area of the country - even when people had it, it was 512kbps.

No one was going to bother download a huge distro DVD to try out a new OS.
However, when you get a CD, you tend to try it out. The smooth installation
process certainly helped a lot.

------
Aloha
I actually think Ubuntu has done wonders to enhance the usability of debian
out of the box. We've come so far in 10 years, when I first used debian, I had
to write an X config by hand, now thats all automatic, its so much easier to
use. I stopped using Ubuntu even though I was an early adopter, and went back
to debian, but the development downstream of debian has clearly from my point
of view rolled back up hill.

------
bigbugbag
This article overlook a few facts of history such as ubuntu actively trying to
poach debian devs in an attempt to take over debian, or the fact that packages
were out of date for 6 months and that the upgrade process from one version to
the other often ended in a reinstall from scratch. Not to mention the numerous
things that kept breaking (video drivers, pulseaudio and so on).

------
unknownBits
I'm on arch linux with kde. I tried ubuntu several times, but I can't stick
with it. The installation is a breeze, but for the rest it's not that exiting.
Btw, I consider myself as a human being too!

Still, I am very happy with the existence of Ubuntu, helping millions of
people moving away from Windows and OSX. This is a huge boost for the
development of software for linux.

------
johnchristopher
I remember when I firs tried Ubuntu 10.4 [0] and forum acquaintances were
teasing me about it because there were no MP3 support out of the box. `What
distro doesn't include that ?`. Well, it certainly was way easier to install
and run than the RedHat from those days (but the handbook was.. there actually
was a handbook at least).

[0] edited

------
buckbova
I've been trying various distros for 15 years now and pretty much stopped at
Ubuntu.

Every week I used to visit [http://distrowatch.com/](http://distrowatch.com/)
and look for a new distro to try. I liked Mint and #! too, but Ubuntu gave me
the most consistent experience with the best repositories.

------
era86
I used Ubuntu in 2004 right when I started college as a comp-sci student. It
was the only distro that worked with my laptop with very minimal effort. I
also love the package management (though Brew on OSX is a close second).

Great read, thanks for sharing!

------
KedarMhaswade
I am still unhappy with wifi detection/configuration and problems with Compiz.
But overall, I agree, Ubuntu is getting better.

------
jamesfisher
> By Canonical's estimates, Ubuntu has roughly 90 percent of the Linux market.

Wat? Seriously? How is this measured?

------
badloginagain
I'm surprised they didn't bring up shuttering Ubuntu One cloud service.

------
cobbliu
I have transferred from Ubuntu to Mint recently.

------
cowardlydragon
Ubuntu has been going backwards for at least two years.... \- Unity doesn't
seem to improve, and just further fractures and balkanizes the linux desketop
\- They dropped the installation versions where I can do software RAID
setup... all my desktops are RAID0 dual HDD and SSD OS/swap/boot. \- Ubuntu
desktops have been getting slower as I upgrade my hardware, not faster.

OSX has maddening keyboard shortcuts, and Windows is committing suicide.

With the excess cores, GPU power, huge disk space, virtualization, and other
advancements, I should be able to seamlessly run several OSs at once. There is
such amazing potential out there, but it is pretty clear that Canonical is now
just putting minimal resources into Ubuntu.

It still mystifies me that Google didn't make a seriously good desktop
distribution on par with OSX to destroy the windows monopoly. Instead...
ChromeOS?

~~~
aruggirello
You can still install Ubuntu on a RAID0 or 1 mdadm device (I did so on a
couple SSDs). You just have to use the Ubuntu Server iso instead of the
Desktop one, and follow a few more steps:

[http://www.ubuntulinuxguide.com/software-raid-
ubuntu-14-04-s...](http://www.ubuntulinuxguide.com/software-raid-
ubuntu-14-04-setup-install-configure/)

