I'm here just to remind everybody that the Debian Stable release cadence is about the same as Ubuntu LTS. Plus Debian doesn't have snaps, Unity and the other Ubuntu-specific "value-adds".
(on the other hand, Debian's bug report is stuck in the 1920's, still being completely based on e-mail)
Edit: also, if you use new hardware, just install Debian Testing, configure /etc/apt/sources.list to say "trixie" instead of "testing", which will ensure that next year you'll be using Debian Stable then Trixie becomes Stable.
Even when I worked at Canonical I never installed the latest LTS until at least its first point release in the summer. Maybe I'm part of the problem: if more people followed my lead, the initial release would get buggier and buggier.
Haven't used any Linux Distribution on Desktop so cannot comment that side or the installer but my home server has been running Ubuntu LTSes for over a decade. Last night I upgraded it to 24.04 LTS and I was really surprised how well and easy it was to upgrade. Couple of previous upgrades were a lot more hairier things breaking in surprisingly ways after upgrade but this time everything worked perfectly from the first reboot.
As a person responsible for endpoints in my company, I was awaiting 24.04 with impatience, because of how they promised TPM-based LUKS encryption. Finally, no telling users why they need TWO passphrases on their machines!
Well, yes. You bet the encryption works. Even an advanced hacker will have a hard time unlocking the hard drive... if after the install the TPM refuses to escrow the key, and you can only see your recovery seed AFTER a successful installation!
Ubuntu is the buggiest distro I've ever used.
It's ironic cuz it's supposed to be the most stable, mainstream one. But, from installation to day to day usage, it was crashtastic in the years I was on it.
By comparison, my equal number of years split between Manjaro and Arch, I've had almost zero issues. Somehow, the scary, dangerous rolling distros seem the most stable. It's hard to wrap a brain around.
What’s the best alternative distro for ML work? I mainly need the nvidia stack + PyTorch
the .0 releases can have their problems, but a canonical engineer also did literally submit a kernel patch to fix a bug that prevented my machine from booting with any new enough kernel in response to a bug report.
I have had issues with the installer crashing frequently. I’ve been unable to get it to run to completion. I am trying to install it on a ThinkPad which I replaced as my primary laptop a few months ago. The laptop previously had Windows 11 installed on it and the drive encrypted with bitlocker. When I could get the installer to the drive selection screen without crashing it wouldn’t let me install on the drive encrypted with bitlocker. It repeatedly prompted that I had to free space using windows or choose the option to erase the entire drive and then install. Problem is that I was choosing the option to install the erase the drive. I just wiped the drive using gparted. That got me passed that issue hit the installer never completed without crashing once I got beyond that. When I have bandwidth next weekend I’ll try the new Fedora release instead.
Be careful if you use ZFS-on-root, make sure not to snapshot bpool or it will brick your system and require a complete reinstall.
23.10 installed and worked great on my homebuilt i5-12600k (AMD RX 6600) PC. 24.04 has been buggy/crashy with multiple things, even after a wipe and reinstall.
Still sticking with it and attempting to hold out for 24.04.1 before going back to Fedora. I much prefer apt over dnf.
I installed 24.04 LTS Server on a 2012 Mac Mini last night, had no issues whatsoever.
I'be heard that a long standing issue with the test releases is still present in the release and can result in a unbootable system if you try to upgrade.
Be warned that the do-release-upgrade -d might well make your system unbootable.
More info at: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/04/dont-upgrade-to-ubuntu-2...
Or at least be prepared with a backup and a reinstall from scratch, or just switch to debian.
I've been running the 23.10 Desktop version on a Pi 5 for the last few months for a project and it was working reasonably fine. Tried the 24.04 release the past few days and it's genuinely unusably laggy and unresponsive. I suppose it'll be sorted out eventually, maybe they forgot to add Vulkan support or something haha. 24.04 Server works fine it seems at least, might be worth trying to install KDE on it, GNOME delenda est.
Looks like 2024 won't be the year of the Linux Desktop after all :D
FIX:
"write Ubuntu ISO to USB flash with dd" (from the video comments)
That sucks, man. Real pity. Had it installed just yesterday and it worked like a dream. But perhaps I will try Debian with nvidia proprietary drivers.
I stopped using Ubuntu after its installer failed on me, removing all partitions. Unprompted.
EDIT: I remember I got up to enabling third-party drivers before partitioning, it was behaving weirdly so I went back, then it crashed and I restarted to see no partitions. I don't remember the details but my thing is I'm sure it was before partitoning.
First comment on the video - from the maker of the video - is " FIX (worked for me): write Ubuntu ISO to USB flash with dd"
So, yeah. Okay.
(Speaking as ex-Canonical, and still Ubuntu user. I upgraded my ThinkPad 2 days before release, and it was a catastrophe I had to manually un-fudge with the help of the apt maintainer. It was a packaging problem).
My feeling on this particular release is that it was rushed out, and should probably have been kept back for a month or two. The xz and t64 (2038) issues occupied some unexpected time this cycle.
Also, there used to be a dedicated QA lab which did a whole slew of automated tests. I don't believe that still exists.
Also, also. The Ubuntu community has shrunk, which means fewer people doing QA.
Also, also, also. The guy running the desktop team left the day after the release. Read into that what you will.
Debian.
I hear silverblue is worth a look
Rather use windows than be subjected to Ubuntu.
Are there some insights on why they chose the rather unusual stack of using rust and flutter for the new UI? To the outside observer, it seems like it's not a carefully taken business decision but some random engineer who wanted to learn rust and flutter.
Firstly rust for an installer UI? Does it need to be especially fast or memory safe? Maybe. Does it have nice bindings for a UI layer? Maybe, or did they create the bindings for flutter (a UI framework designed for object-oriented Dart) by themselves? So why flutter? I guess it can do some pretty animations. Being maintained by Google and designed for Dart, it may just get abandoned in some time, amplified by the fact that noone uses Dart, except for flutter.