Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and derivatives experience.

BulletDust

BulletDust

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I thought I'd make a thread where people could share their experiences regarding Ubuntu 16.04 LTS including all of the Ubuntu derivatives. Personally, I'm currently running Ubuntu Mate, last night I upgraded from 15.10 to 16.04 LTS and I have to say with the exception of a new 'Software Boutique' in the Control Centre not a lot has changed from my perspective - Not that I had any issues with 15.10 anyway and it is early days so give me time and I'm sure I'll notice more little changes under the hood.

So what's everyone else's experience? Did it brick your install? Are there any new features that took you by surprise? Any advice?

Feel free to share all feedback regarding 16.04 here.
 
Apparently Bumblebee isn't needed anymore regarding Optimus, you just go into the Propitiatory Nvidia drivers, select Nvidia as primary and log out/back in and everything just works?

I can't confirm it, although my source is pretty reliable, but that's gotta be a step in the right direction?

C'mon B00nie, you know you want to do it.... :)
 
I actually just installed it on a VM... so far, I can't tell any differences between it and 14.04 on the surface. The only thing I've really done with it so far is play SimCity 3000. Getting it to run on any modern Linux is a PITA... but you can't run RedHat 6.3 in a VM without either backporting XFree86 4.x, or building your own VESA driver for it, so you're pretty much stuck doing every stupid little hack involved in patching it and running an unwieldy cocktail of commands every time you want to play unless you have a Pentium II lying around.

I really wish I'd purchased the Windows version... Linux is fine for servers and basic office tasks, but I probably wouldn't buy a game for Linux in the future unless I also get rights to the Windows version of the game. The way Steam is licensing Half-Life, for instance.

That being said, I like Ubuntu because it always just works. Seems to have the highest compatibility, and I keep going back to it even though I don't like the Unity interface that much. I can run other WMs, but all the control panel features and easy volume controls don't work in those, so I've just learned to live with Unity under Linux.
 
athenian200 said:
I actually just installed it on a VM... so far, I can't tell any differences between it and 14.04 on the surface. The only thing I've really done with it so far is play SimCity 3000. Getting it to run on any modern Linux is a PITA... but you can't run RedHat 6.3 in a VM without either backporting XFree86 4.x, or building your own VESA driver for it, so you're pretty much stuck doing every stupid little hack involved in patching it and running an unwieldy cocktail of commands every time you want to play unless you have a Pentium II lying around.

I really wish I'd purchased the Windows version... Linux is fine for servers and basic office tasks, but I probably wouldn't buy a game for Linux in the future unless I also get rights to the Windows version of the game. The way Steam is licensing Half-Life, for instance.

That being said, I like Ubuntu because it always just works. Seems to have the highest compatibility, and I keep going back to it even though I don't like the Unity interface that much. I can run other WMs, but all the control panel features and easy volume controls don't work in those, so I've just learned to live with Unity under Linux.
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So why not use Ubuntu Mate instead? Or Xubuntu?
 
Does a user have an option between Unity 7 (+ X.org) and Unity 8 (+ Mir) during installations? How does that work?

Just read Wikipedia on this release and info seems outdated.
 
Been using Kubuntu for a little bit on a test laptop and its been great. Probably my favorite flavor of Linux to date.
 
KarsusTG said:
IMO 16.04 LTS is a shameful release for them.
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Shameful? Why? There really don't seem to be any glaring bugs, in fact I was thinking of replacing the old version of Mageia I have on my Linux test machine with this version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is one of the best-maintained Linux distributions out there (Debian might be the only real competitor here), and it's probably the best one for newbies to Linux.
 
He's probably talking about the privacy and control issues with the new distros. Systemd, zeitgeist etc.
 
B00nie said:
He's probably talking about the privacy and control issues with the new distros. Systemd, zeitgeist etc.
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Wait, what? Could you elaborate on this or link me to something? This is the first I've heard of this... one of the main reasons people use Linux over Windows is that it offers more privacy and control. That's really going to hurt Ubuntu, a lot of people get into Linux because they want total control over their system.
 
athenian200 said:
Shameful? Why? There really don't seem to be any glaring bugs, in fact I was thinking of replacing the old version of Mageia I have on my Linux test machine with this version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is one of the best-maintained Linux distributions out there (Debian might be the only real competitor here), and it's probably the best one for newbies to Linux.
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No glaring bugs?!?! Seriously, the software center isn't even indexed properly. Honestly, just look for Ubuntu-restricted-extras, one of the most commonly installed pacs on Ubuntu. It's not even in synaptic either. Steam? Nope. You have to install them from cli.

And there are tons of glaring ui theming errors.

Simply put this is supposed to be the uber polished super stable LTS release. This is just tarded.

Oh, and wtf is with unity 7? We have been promised Unity 8 since LTS 12 I think?
 
BulletDust said:
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I thought I'd make a thread where people could share their experiences regarding Ubuntu 16.04 LTS including all of the Ubuntu derivatives. Personally, I'm currently running Ubuntu Mate, last night I upgraded from 15.10 to 16.04 LTS and I have to say with the exception of a new 'Software Boutique' in the Control Centre not a lot has changed from my perspective - Not that I had any issues with 15.10 anyway and it is early days so give me time and I'm sure I'll notice more little changes under the hood.

So what's everyone else's experience? Did it brick your install? Are there any new features that took you by surprise? Any advice?

Feel free to share all feedback regarding 16.04 here.
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I wish I could say I had a pleasant experience with 16.04, but it didn't for some reason because the upgrade from 14.04 failed and now I'm paying the price. It might have failed though because I didn't tell it where to make find swap when it was asking.
 
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I have told everyone on 14.04 that has not changed yet to wait for it to get fixed or see what mint 18 brings to the table. It seems to be the consensus floating around.
 
This new version of Ubuntu is handling Wi-Fi in a new, confusing manner. I have a Dell system that has nearly always worked flawlessly with Ubuntu's wireless network support. It especially worked very well in recent versions of Ubuntu... until 16.04 LTS. Now, in order to use Wi-Fi, Ubuntu demands that secure boot should be disabled. Wi-Fi doesn't work at all when secure boot is enabled. (They even seem to have constructed a convoluted method of disabling secure boot. At first glance their method seems pointless compared to simply disabling it oneself.) But why? Before it was possible to have both secure boot and Wi-Fi at the same time!

As a side note, the above may not apply to some network hardware. Maybe I ended up with an antenna that was not approved by RMS.

Funny how this comes shortly after the news that Canonical abused Microsoft's agreement with regard to boot security and thereby weakened the security of the entire Windows platform.

Update: It's even worse than I thought. Wi-Fi doesn't work at all for me in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, even with secure boot disabled.
 
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I have to say, running Ubuntu MATE 16.04 I have experienced no issues whatsoever. However, running vanilla Ubuntu 16.04 as a VM on my Mac I immediately ran into problems installing software and found that the software centre was horribly broken making it impossible to install Chrome or Steam via their .deb installers without installing GDebi first. Searching for software on the new software centre also resulted in a complete inability to find anything that wasn't already installed on the machine, so while the new software centre looks cool, it doesn't work at all! A bit of an oversight IMO.

Currently running 14.04 with no issues whatsoever...
 
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16.04 refused to install to Virtualbox on my macbook pro. VMWare player worked fine with it though.
 
Runs fine under Parallels, I only use VMware on my Linux PC and I'm not a fan of Virtualbox TBH.
 
B00nie said:
16.04 refused to install to Virtualbox on my macbook pro. VMWare player worked fine with it though.
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That is surprising to me. I have two virtualbox VMs running 16.04 since the week it was released. Other then an annoying issue with the mouse pointer being slightly off in Virtualbox 5.0.20 I don't recall anything not working. The mouse issue also was present in 14.04 VM I was using for work, so I guess its not even specific to 16.04. I also have it running on my 2 linux desktops 16.04 with no real problems.

I do not care for systemd either, but we are going to have to face it, It's not going away any time soon.
 
Have Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS on my laptop (an older HP DM4) that I carry with me on out of town runs. No issues that I can perceive.
 
I've also got a laptop running Ubuntu Mate, I use it for work and take it with me to jobs - It runs great, never misses a beat.
 
I've been running Xubuntu 16.04 LTS for a few weeks now.
The only deal breaker was the fact you cannot use the OEM Flrgx drivers. You have to use embedded drivers in the 4.4 kernel.
Well, the works OK; but for Xubuntu I was having terrible screen tearing. After some poking around I found it is because there is no (good) OpenGL compositing installed. Xubuntu uses Xrender.
So I installed Compton and the screen tearing is a thing of the past. 2D is silky smooth.
There are AMD GPU PRO drivers available but they don't support older cards. So my HD7870 is out of style now.

Other than the typical issues with AMD video; (problem with every distro) so far 16.04 is looking pretty good.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
I've been running Xubuntu 16.04 LTS for a few weeks now.
The only deal breaker was the fact you cannot use the OEM Flrgx drivers. You have to use embedded drivers in the 4.4 kernel.
Well, the works OK; but for Xubuntu I was having terrible screen tearing. After some poking around I found it is because there is no (good) OpenGL compositing installed. Xubuntu uses Xrender.
So I installed Compton and the screen tearing is a thing of the past. 2D is silky smooth.
There are AMD GPU PRO drivers available but they don't support older cards. So my HD7870 is out of style now.

Other than the typical issues with AMD video; (problem with every distro) so far 16.04 is looking pretty good.
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I don't run Xubuntu but I do use XFCE on my Arch install. Compton is definitely the way to go for the compositor. Far better then the default crap. Like you said it tears horribly and Compton fixes all that.

Interesting about the driver issue though. AMDGPU should work for you as it does support Southern Island based cards. I have a 7640G in my laptop (AMD A8 chip) and I run the AMDGPU drivers just fine.
 
Vermillion said:
I don't run Xubuntu but I do use XFCE on my Arch install. Compton is definitely the way to go for the compositor. Far better then the default crap. Like you said it tears horribly and Compton fixes all that.

Interesting about the driver issue though. AMDGPU should work for you as it does support Southern Island based cards. I have a 7640G in my laptop (AMD A8 chip) and I run the AMDGPU drivers just fine.
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At first the Steam client would install but wouldn't launch. I only recently had the time to dig into it and find out why and get it fixed. I've not loaded any games on my system as of yet; so I can't really report on the embedded drivers. What I can tell you that in the past the "default" drivers (x11 or whatever) have been dismal at best so I always loaded the OEM drivers. Not perfect but they usually work.
From what I have read the AMD kernel drivers (AMDGPU) are a hybrid. 2D is open source, the 3D is provided by AMD. On kernel 4.4 with this distro; later release should be much more refined.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
At first the Steam client would install but wouldn't launch. I only recently had the time to dig into it and find out why and get it fixed. I've not loaded any games on my system as of yet; so I can't really report on the embedded drivers. What I can tell you that in the past the "default" drivers (x11 or whatever) have been dismal at best so I always loaded the OEM drivers. Not perfect but they usually work.
From what I have read the AMD kernel drivers (AMDGPU) are a hybrid. 2D is open source, the 3D is provided by AMD. On kernel 4.4 with this distro; later release should be much more refined.
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I never cared for the old open source drivers. Their performance was pretty meh. I used them though over the official drivers because of Xorg issues. The new AMDGPU ones though I really like. Especially once kernel 4.5 came out. Huge performance boosts with 4.5 for AMDGPU. DOTA2 runs 100% better now on the AMDGPU drivers compared to the old open source driver.
 
Is anyone currently having trouble with Wi-Fi and secure boot in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and derivatives?
 
No WiFi issues here, but GRUB never plays well with secure boot - Can you disable it?
 
BulletDust said:
No WiFi issues here, but GRUB never plays well with secure boot - Can you disable it?
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I've had a few good experiences with signed kernels, secure boot & grub. Ubuntu is one of the (very) few distros that actually provides a subset of signed kernels. I still need to figure out how to make that work on Arch though with the linux-pf kernel.
 
If I have to use Ubuntu I prefer Ubuntu Mate. I just don't like Unity. Overall I can't say I have any major issues with Ubuntu although it's not my preferred distro.
 
I've been on Ubuntu Gnome for a couple of months now and I'm liking it. I had some weird SELinux issues with Korora that were messing with my local Apache or I would have stayed on that. My current Ubuntu is stable. I prefer it over my Mac I use for work.
 
I am trying this with a different computer now and not having the wireless problem with secure boot. The main thing is that wireless is working with no configuring necessary.
yeongil said:
I also have a problem with WiFi, but it's different than what the_servicer is experiencing. On more than one occasion, when resuming after suspend, WiFi no longer works -- I can't connect to my router. I have to reboot before WiFi works again. The WiFi card I have is an Intel 8260 (?)
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