archived ubuntu review added Debian review

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+<p>The Debian project, upstream mother of <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/DebianFamilyTree1210.svg">countless Linux distributions</a>, has released Debian 10, also known as “Buster”. And yes, that’s a reference to the character from <em>Toy Story</em>. All Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters.</p>
+<p>Debian has a well-deserved reputation as a rock solid distro for those who don’t want the latest and greatest, preferring instead the stability that comes from sticking with what works. Naturally Debian gets security updates, bug fixes and maintenance releases like any distro, but don’t expect major updates to applications or desktop environments.</p>
+<p>Right now, as with every release, Debian is pretty close to up-to-date with what the rest of the Linux world is doing. But Buster will be supported for five years and Debian 11 won’t arrive for at least two years (Buster comes 26 months after Debian 9). As time goes on, Buster will look increasingly outdated.</p>
+<p>But wait, isn’t Ubuntu based on Debian and it’s not out of date? Ubuntu pulls its Debian base from what Debian calls the Testing Channel. Debian Linux consists of three major development branches: Stable, Testing and Unstable. Work on new versions progresses through each, starting life in Unstable and eventually ending up in Stable. Ubuntu plucks its base from Testing, which, from Debian’s point of view is only about half-baked. Like I said, Debian is conservative.</p>
+<p>At the same time, in decades of using it, I have never had Debian break on me. I am still running several Debian 8 servers and they continue to chug along with very little input from me. They’re set to automatically update to pull in security and bug fixes and they just work.</p>
+<p>In a desktop though, that kind of stability can be a mixed bag. Sure, your system is unlikely to break, but you’re also unlikely to get the latest version of applications, which means you may find yourself waiting on new features in GIMP or Darktable long after every other distro has rolled them out.</p>
+<p>I used to hope that Flatpaks – an application packaging method that separates app from underlying system – would mitigate this somewhat, allowing Debian fans to run stable systems but still get the latest versions of key applications. In practice I have not been able to make this work for me, though I may give it another try now that Debian 10 is here.</p>
+<h2 id="whats-new">What’s New</h2>
+<p>Debian is always a tough distro to get excited about because, while there’s a ton of new things in this release, most of them long ago arrived in nearly every other distro. Debian releases look like the distro is playing catch-up with the rest of the Linux world and in some ways that’s exactly what’s happening.</p>
+<p>This time around though it feels like there’s more to it than that. Most of the major updates in this release involve security in one way or another, making Buster feel a bit like Debian hardened.</p>
+<p>A good example of this is one of the headlining features of Debian 10, support for Secure Boot. Debian 10 can now, in most cases, install without a hitch on UEFI-enabled laptops. Lack of Secure Boot support has long been a stumbling block for anyone wanting to use Debian with all the features of modern machines and now that that’s out the way, Debian feels like a much more viable choice for larger institutions with existing security policies.</p>
+<p>That’s also true of the move to enabled AppArmor by default. AppArmor is a framework for managing application access. You create policies that restrict which apps can access which documents. It’s particularly useful on servers where it can be used, for example, to make sure that a flaw in a PHP file can’t be used to access anything outside of a web root. While Debian has long supported AppArmor and offered it in the repos, Buster is the first release to ship with it enabled by default.</p>
+<p>The third security-related update in this release is the ability to sandbox the Apt package manager. This one is a bit complicated and not enabled by default. Instructions to enable it can be found in <a href="https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.en.html#apt-sandboxing">the Debian release documents</a>. Once you turn it on, you can restrict the list of allowed system calls, and send anything not allowed to SIGSYS.</p>
+<p>Those three updates alone make Debian 10 worth the update, especially on a server where frequent attacks make something like AppArmor a must-have.</p>
+<p>There are some other changes that will affect server users though, and not necessarily in a good way, especially the move from iptables to to nftables for managing your firewall. While nftables is in many respects better than iptables – the syntax for creating rules is simpler, it’s faster, and it offers live tracing – it is still different, and will require sysadmins to adjust their workflow and possibly re-write any scripts they have.</p>
+<p>The other change that strikes me as potentially problematic for some is the move to automatic upgrades to point releases when you enable Debian’s unattended-upgrades package. In the past unattended-upgrades defaulted to installing only upgrades that came from the security suite. With Buster that’s expanded to include upgrading to the latest stable point release.</p>
+<p>Now part of the stability of Debian comes from infrequent changes, but the other part of its stability comes from its very extensive testing process. Debian releases sometimes spend longer in a frozen state, just testing package updates, than Ubuntu spends on an entire release. That means stable point releases are unlikely to produce problems. Still, if you used unattended-upgrades to keep your systems up-to-date with security fixes in the past be aware that you’ll need to tweak your configuration if you want the same behavior going forward. See the file NEWS.Debian in unattended-upgrades for more details.</p>
+<p>Also notable in this release is support for driverless printing via any AirPrint-enabled printer (most printers made within the last few years are AirPrint ready). This feature comes courtesy of the upgrade to CUPS 2.2.10.</p>
+<p>One final note, Buster has finally accomplished the merging of /usr which Debian has been working on for a long time. That means that on a fresh install of Buster the directories /bin, /sbin, and /lib are now aliased to <code>/usr/bin</code>, <code>/usr/sbin</code>, and <code>/usr/lib</code> respectively.</p>
+<h2 id="what-you-get-in-debian-10">What you get in Debian 10</h2>
+<p>Aside from the project-level changes, Debian 10’s release notes are relatively prosaic, as you would expect. Debian’s goal of stability and the ability to work just about anywhere – Debian supports more chip architectures than most people have probably heard of – do not lend themselves to bleeding edge kernels or the latest and greatest graphics driver updates.</p>
+<p>Debian 10 ships with Linux Kernel 4.19.0-4, which is the latest LTS kernel release. It arrived back in 2018 and will be supported through 2020 (Debian 10 itself will be supported through 2024). The 4.19 series kernel brings a number of new things to Debian, notably initial support for Intel Icelake graphics, much improved power management, better support for Intel’s Low Power Subsystem, better touch screen support, and quite a bit more. You can see everything that’s new over at the <a href="https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/10/22/184">linux kernel mailing list announcement</a>.</p>
+<p>I’ve noticed running Debian 10 in my laptop that battery life is at least an hour better than Debian 9 on the same machine. Whether is due to kernel level improvements, or other improvements in the stack is difficult to say for sure, but either way, I highly recommend upgrading if you’re running Debian 9 on a laptop.</p>
+<p>Part of Debian’s original appeal was its comprehesive package availability. If it wasn’t in the Debian repos, it probably wasn’t a Linux app. In today’s world that’s less true, but Debian still offers some of the largest repos around with a grand total to 57,703 packages. Of that number 13,370 are new packages added for this release. As part of Buster’s release some 35,532 packages were upgraded.</p>
+<p>Among the major upgrades are all the desktop environments (more on those below). Debian 10 ships with GNOME 3.30, KDE Plasma 5.14, Cinnamon 3.8, LXDE 0.99.2, LXQt 0.14, MATE 1.20, and Xfce 4.12. Yes, you read that right, the just-barely-ready-for-prime-time LXQt has an official ISO for Debian 10.</p>
+<p>Software you use to get work done has also been updated to the latest available releases like LibreOffice 6.1, Firefox, GIMP 2.10.8 and more. Programmers and developers will be happy to know that Debian 10, while not completely Python 2-free, is moving in that direction and has very good support for Python 3, offering Python 3.7.2 out of the box. Python 2 support will end in 2020 and like many other distros Debian is encouraging developers to migrate their applications head of Python 2’s end-of-life date.</p>
+
+
+[image="debian10-firefox.jpg" caption='Debian 10 ships with Firefox 60.']
+
+<p>Another under-the-hood change in this release is the use of the Calameres installer for Debian-Live images. If you install Debian from the Live CD, you’ll see the distro-agnostic Calameres installer instead of the good old Debian nstaller. The Debian installer has quite a few more features, and it’s still what you’ll get if you use a net install or DVD installer, but the Calameres installer is unquestionably more newbie-friendly. It’s also refreshing to see a distro that <em>doesn’t</em> feel the need to roll its own installer, instead using an existing, relatively mature open source application.</p>
+
+
+[image="debian10-installer.jpg" caption='Installing Debian 10 with the Calameres installer.']
+
+<h2 id="desktops">Desktops</h2>
+
+[image="debian10-gnome.jpg" caption='The default GNOME desktop on Debian 10']
+
+<p>If you needed proof that Wayland has really arrived, Debian 10 is here to provide it. The GNOME desktop in Debian to uses Wayland by default. When a distro as slow to adopt new technology as Debian makes something the default, it’s a safe bet that whatever it is, it’s ready for prime time. Stick a fork in X.org, because as far as GNOME is concerned it’s dead. That said, the X.org display server is also still installed by default and available for those who’d like to use it.</p>
+<p>I have had no issues running GNOME under Wayland on Debian 10. This release brings GNOME 3.30, which is most notable for its speed boost. Developers from both Red Hat and Canonical put some time into fixing memory leaks and trying to make GNOME Shell faster and less resource hungry. The result is indeed a slightly speedier GNOME, though it is still not a fast or lightweight desktop by any stretch of the imagination.</p>
+<p>GNOME is also not what you want if you’re a Debian user. It is the default desktop, as it has been for most of Debian’s history, insofar as there is a default in Debian’s sprawling array of installation methods, but these days it’s not the best choice.</p>
+<p>GNOME Shell updates frequently, making major changes with nearly every release. And those releases arrive pretty regularly, nearly every six months. In the time since Debian 10 froze around GNOME 3.30 earlier this year, there’s already been one new GNOME release and another will arrive in September. Will they eventually make their way into Buster’s repositories? Maybe. Probably even, but it’ll be a while. In my experience, GNOME highlights one of the drawback of Debian stable, it’s, well, too stable.</p>
+<p>In many respects this is my favorite part of Debian. It doesn’t change. It updates what needs to be updated and everything else can wait.</p>
+<p>If you’d like to tap that stability though, and set up a system that you don’t have to think about at all for the next five years if you don’t want to, I would suggest that the ideal desktop would mirror the distro’s own conservative approach the development. Look for something with infrequent updates and when those updates come, nothing much ought to change. Bugs should be fixed, minor updates pushed out, but for the most part your system should be the same after your update as it was before.</p>
+<p>There are several desktops that fit this description to varying degrees, but my favorite desktop of Debian is Xfce.</p>
+
+[image="debian10-xfce.jpg" caption='The Xfce desktop is better suited to Debian's update cycle']
+
+<p>Like Debian, Xfce usually goes more than a year without a major update, often two years. When updates do arrive they’re the kind you want, tons of bug fixes, speed improvements, and little tweaks rather than huge interface overhauls. Ironically, that may not be true this round, as Xfce 4.14 just arrived and makes a fairly major update to GTK 3 components. Still, while you might have to wait a little while for 4.14 to get to Debian 10, rest assured that there won’t be nearly as many Xfce updates coming as what you’ll get from GNOME or even KDE.</p>
+<p>I installed Debian using the net installer, which has a nice graphical installer, though I still opt for the text-based installer. Old habits die hard and something about the text-based installer just feels more Debian to me. Once the base system was running I added Xfce, which is currently at version 4.12.</p>
+<p>Debian’s Xfce is rather plain, not customized in any way. It makes a stable desktop that stays out of your way though. I had no problems whatsoever with Xfce on Debian and while the update to 4.14 looks like a nice one, especially the potential speed boost, not much is going to change in terms of looks or functionality. It will arrive when Debian is ready. If that bothers you, Debian is not the distro for you.</p>
+<p>I was also curious about Wayland in Debian 10 though, so I ran the Sway tiling window manager for a while. I still have clipboard sharing issues under Wayland though. I could not get copy-and-paste working between Wayland and XWayland apps (Vim and a browser for instance), which is deal breaker for me. That said, the rest of my Wayland experience with Sway on Debian 10 was flawless.</p>
+<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
+<p>I’ve been using Debian 10 for three months now (yes, before it was officially released via a testing channel) and, as you would expect, it is a super solid release. This is remarkable only because I did not have the same experience at all on Debian 9. My initial foray into Debian 9 was fraught with problems and I went scurrying back to Debian 8 in a hurry. I tried again after a year and had better luck, but this time around I’ve had no problems at all on either the desktop or server (it’s worth noting here though, before you upgrade, back up any PostgreSQL data, Debian 10 moves from PostgreSQL 9.6 to 11, a significant migration for any live servers).</p>
+<p>While I plan to wait for at least one point release before I test updating any production servers, Debian 10 looks to be a great release. I full expect to be running Debian 10 servers well into the mid 2020s.</p>
+<p>On the desktop side I still prefer Arch Linux to Debian on my main machine. This might sound like diametrically opposed distros to compare – Debian is focused on stability and changes at a glacial pace, while Arch is a rolling release with updates on a daily basis – but in my experience these have both been the most stable, reliable distos I’ve used. The chief difference is that one updates all the time to achieve that stability while other updates hardly at all. Different approaches leading to the same result.</p>
+<p>In the end I stick with Arch on my daily use machine, primarily because I like having the latest releases of photo and video editing software, which is hard to do on Debian. I once thought that Flatpaks, which bundle their own dependencies independent of the system, would solve this problem, but in practice I’ve had far more problems with Flatpaks on Debian than AUR apps on Arch.</p>
+<p>That said, every machine I don’t touch on a daily basis, including all my servers, run Debian and will soon be running Debian 10.</p>
diff --git a/debian10-review.txt b/debian10-review.txt
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+The Debian project, upstream mother of [countless Linux distributions](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/DebianFamilyTree1210.svg), has released Debian 10, also known as "Buster". And yes, that's a reference to the character from *Toy Story*. All Debian releases are named after Toy Story characters.
+
+Debian has a well-deserved reputation as a rock solid distro for those who don't want the latest and greatest, preferring instead the stability that comes from sticking with what works. Naturally Debian gets security updates, bug fixes and maintenance releases like any distro, but don't expect major updates to applications or desktop environments.
+
+Right now, as with every release, Debian is pretty close to up-to-date with what the rest of the Linux world is doing. But Buster will be supported for five years and Debian 11 won't arrive for at least two years (Buster comes 26 months after Debian 9). As time goes on, Buster will look increasingly outdated.
+
+But wait, isn't Ubuntu based on Debian and it's not out of date? Ubuntu pulls its Debian base from what Debian calls the Testing Channel. Debian Linux consists of three major development branches: Stable, Testing and Unstable. Work on new versions progresses through each, starting life in Unstable and eventually ending up in Stable. Ubuntu plucks its base from Testing, which, from Debian's point of view is only about half-baked. Like I said, Debian is conservative. 
+
+At the same time, in decades of using it, I have never had Debian break on me. I am still running several Debian 8 servers and they continue to chug along with very little input from me. They're set to automatically update to pull in security and bug fixes and they just work. 
+
+In a desktop though, that kind of stability can be a mixed bag. Sure, your system is unlikely to break, but you're also unlikely to get the latest version of applications, which means you may find yourself waiting on new features in GIMP or Darktable long after every other distro has rolled them out.
+
+I used to hope that Flatpaks -- an application packaging method that separates app from underlying system -- would mitigate this somewhat, allowing Debian fans to run stable systems but still get the latest versions of key applications. In practice I have not been able to make this work for me, though I may give it another try now that Debian 10 is here.
+
+## What's New
+
+Debian is always a tough distro to get excited about because, while there's a ton of new things in this release, most of them long ago arrived in nearly every other distro. Debian releases look like the distro is playing catch-up with the rest of the Linux world and in some ways that's exactly what's happening. 
+
+This time around though it feels like there's more to it than that. Most of the major updates in this release involve security in one way or another, making Buster feel a bit like Debian hardened. 
+
+A good example of this is one of the headlining features of Debian 10, support for Secure Boot. Debian 10 can now, in most cases, install without a hitch on UEFI-enabled laptops. Lack of Secure Boot support has long been a stumbling block for anyone wanting to use Debian with all the features of modern machines and now that that's out the way, Debian feels like a much more viable choice for larger institutions with existing security policies.
+
+That's also true of the move to enabled AppArmor by default. AppArmor is a framework for managing application access. You create policies that restrict which apps can access which documents. It's particularly useful on servers where it can be used, for example, to make sure that a flaw in a PHP file can't be used to access anything outside of a web root. While Debian has long supported AppArmor and offered it in the repos, Buster is the first release to ship with it enabled by default.
+
+The third security-related update in this release is the ability to sandbox the Apt package manager. This one is a bit complicated and not enabled by default. Instructions to enable it can be found in [the Debian release documents](https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.en.html#apt-sandboxing). Once you turn it on, you can restrict the list of allowed system calls, and send anything not allowed to SIGSYS.
+
+Those three updates alone make Debian 10 worth the update, especially on a server where frequent attacks make something like AppArmor a must-have.
+
+There are some other changes that will affect server users though, and not necessarily in a good way, especially the move from iptables to to nftables for managing your firewall. While nftables is in many respects better than iptables -- the syntax for creating rules is simpler, it's faster, and it offers live tracing  -- it is still different, and will require sysadmins to adjust their workflow and possibly re-write any scripts they have.
+
+The other change that strikes me as potentially problematic for some is the move to automatic upgrades to point releases when you enable Debian's unattended-upgrades package. In the past unattended-upgrades defaulted to installing only upgrades that came from the security suite. With Buster that's expanded to include upgrading to the latest stable point release. 
+
+Now part of the stability of Debian comes from infrequent changes, but the other part of its stability comes from its very extensive testing process. Debian releases sometimes spend longer in a frozen state, just testing package updates, than Ubuntu spends on an entire release. That means stable point releases are unlikely to produce problems. Still, if you used unattended-upgrades to keep your systems up-to-date with security fixes in the past be aware that you'll need to tweak your configuration if you want the same behavior going forward. See the file NEWS.Debian in unattended-upgrades for more details.
+
+Also notable in this release is support for driverless printing via any AirPrint-enabled printer (most printers made within the last few years are AirPrint ready). This feature comes courtesy of the upgrade to CUPS 2.2.10. 
+
+One final note, Buster has finally accomplished the merging of /usr which Debian has been working on for a long time. That means that on a fresh install of Buster the directories /bin, /sbin, and /lib are now aliased to `/usr/bin`, `/usr/sbin`, and `/usr/lib` respectively.
+
+## What you get in Debian 10
+
+Aside from the project-level changes, Debian 10's release notes are relatively prosaic, as you would expect. Debian's goal of stability and the ability to work just about anywhere -- Debian supports more chip architectures than most people have probably heard of -- do not lend themselves to bleeding edge kernels or the latest and greatest graphics driver updates.
+
+Debian 10 ships with Linux Kernel 4.19.0-4, which is the latest LTS kernel release. It arrived back in 2018 and will be supported through 2020 (Debian 10 itself will be supported through 2024). The 4.19 series kernel brings a number of new things to Debian, notably initial support for Intel Icelake graphics, much improved power management, better support for Intel's Low Power Subsystem, better touch screen support, and quite a bit more. You can see everything that's new over at the [linux kernel mailing list announcement](https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/10/22/184).
+
+I've noticed running Debian 10 in my laptop that battery life is at least an hour better than Debian 9 on the same machine. Whether is due to kernel level improvements, or other improvements in the stack is difficult to say for sure, but either way, I highly recommend upgrading if you're running Debian 9 on a laptop.
+
+Part of Debian's original appeal was its comprehesive package availability. If it wasn't in the Debian repos, it probably wasn't a Linux app. In today's world that's less true, but Debian still offers some of the largest repos around with a grand total to 57,703 packages. Of that number 13,370 are new packages added for this release. As part of Buster's release some 35,532 packages were upgraded.
+
+Among the major upgrades are all the desktop environments (more on those below). Debian 10 ships with GNOME 3.30, KDE Plasma 5.14, Cinnamon 3.8, LXDE 0.99.2, LXQt 0.14, MATE 1.20, and Xfce 4.12. Yes, you read that right, the just-barely-ready-for-prime-time LXQt has an official ISO for Debian 10. 
+
+Software you use to get work done has also been updated to the latest available releases like LibreOffice 6.1, Firefox, GIMP 2.10.8 and more. Programmers and developers will be happy to know that Debian 10, while not completely Python 2-free, is moving in that direction and has very good support for Python 3, offering Python 3.7.2 out of the box. Python 2 support will end in 2020 and like many other distros Debian is encouraging developers to migrate their applications head of Python 2's end-of-life date.
+
+Another under-the-hood change in this release is the use of the Calameres installer for Debian-Live images. If you install Debian from the Live CD, you'll see the distro-agnostic Calameres installer instead of the good old Debian nstaller. The Debian installer has quite a few more features, and it's still what you'll get if you use a net install or DVD installer, but the Calameres installer is unquestionably more newbie-friendly. It's also refreshing to see a distro that *doesn't* feel the need to roll its own installer, instead using an existing, relatively mature open source application.
+
+## Desktops
+
+If you needed proof that Wayland has really arrived, Debian 10 is here to provide it. The GNOME desktop in Debian to uses Wayland by default. When a distro as slow to adopt new technology as Debian makes something the default, it's a safe bet that whatever it is, it's ready for prime time. Stick a fork in X.org, because as far as GNOME is concerned it's dead. That said, the X.org display server is also still installed by default and available for those who'd like to use it.
+
+I have had no issues running GNOME under Wayland on Debian 10. This release brings GNOME 3.30, which is most notable for its speed boost. Developers from both Red Hat and Canonical put some time into fixing memory leaks and trying to make GNOME Shell faster and less resource hungry. The result is indeed a slightly speedier GNOME, though it is still not a fast or lightweight desktop by any stretch of the imagination. 
+
+GNOME is also not what you want if you're a Debian user. It is the default desktop, as it has been for most of Debian's history, insofar as there is a default in Debian's sprawling array of installation methods, but these days it's not the best choice. 
+
+GNOME Shell updates frequently, making major changes with nearly every release. And those releases arrive pretty regularly, nearly every six months. In the time since Debian 10 froze around GNOME 3.30 earlier this year, there's already been one new GNOME release and another will arrive in September. Will they eventually make their way into Buster's repositories? Maybe. Probably even, but it'll be a while. In my experience, GNOME highlights one of the drawback of Debian stable, it's, well, too stable.
+
+In many respects this is my favorite part of Debian. It doesn't change. It updates what needs to be updated and everything else can wait. 
+
+If you'd like to tap that stability though, and set up a system that you don't have to think about at all for the next five years if you don't want to, I would suggest that the ideal desktop would mirror the distro's own conservative approach the development. Look for something with infrequent updates and when those updates come, nothing much ought to change. Bugs should be fixed, minor updates pushed out, but for the most part your system should be the same after your update as it was before.
+
+There are several desktops that fit this description to varying degrees, but my favorite desktop of Debian is Xfce. 
+
+Like Debian, Xfce usually goes more than a year without a major update, often two years. When updates do arrive they're the kind you want, tons of bug fixes, speed improvements, and little tweaks rather than huge interface overhauls. Ironically, that may not be true this round, as Xfce 4.14 just arrived and makes a fairly major update to GTK 3 components. Still, while you might have to wait a little while for 4.14 to get to Debian 10, rest assured that there won't be nearly as many Xfce updates coming as what you'll get from GNOME or even KDE.
+
+I installed Debian using the net installer, which has a nice graphical installer, though I still opt for the text-based installer. Old habits die hard and something about the text-based installer just feels more Debian to me. Once the base system was running I added Xfce, which is currently at version 4.12. 
+
+Debian's Xfce is rather plain, not customized in any way. It makes a stable desktop that stays out of your way though. I had no problems whatsoever with Xfce on Debian and while the update to 4.14 looks like a nice one, especially the potential speed boost, not much is going to change in terms of looks or functionality. It will arrive when Debian is ready. If that bothers you, Debian is not the distro for you.
+
+I was also curious about Wayland in Debian 10 though, so I ran the Sway tiling window manager for a while. I still have clipboard sharing issues under Wayland though. I could not get copy-and-paste working between Wayland and XWayland apps (Vim and a browser for instance), which is deal breaker for me. That said, the rest of my Wayland experience with Sway on Debian 10 was flawless.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+I've been using Debian 10 for three months now (yes, before it was officially released via a testing channel) and, as you would expect, it is a super solid release. This is remarkable only because I did not have the same experience at all on Debian 9. My initial foray into Debian 9 was fraught with problems and I went scurrying back to Debian 8 in a hurry. I tried again after a year and had better luck, but this time around I've had no problems at all on either the desktop or server (it's worth noting here though, before you upgrade, back up any PostgreSQL data, Debian 10 moves from PostgreSQL 9.6 to 11, a significant migration for any live servers).
+
+While I plan to wait for at least one point release before I test updating any production servers, Debian 10 looks to be a great release. I full expect to be running Debian 10 servers well into the mid 2020s.
+
+On the desktop side I still prefer Arch Linux to Debian on my main machine. This might sound like diametrically opposed distros to compare -- Debian is focused on stability and changes at a glacial pace, while Arch is a rolling release with updates on a daily basis -- but in my experience these have both been the most stable, reliable distos I've used. The chief difference is that one updates all the time to achieve that stability while other updates hardly at all. Different approaches leading to the same result.
+
+In the end I stick with Arch on my daily use machine, primarily because I like having the latest releases of photo and video editing software, which is hard to do on Debian. I once thought that Flatpaks, which bundle their own dependencies independent of the system, would solve this problem, but in practice I've had far more problems with Flatpaks on Debian than AUR apps on Arch.
+
+That said, every machine I don't touch on a daily basis, including all my servers, run Debian and will soon be running Debian 10.
diff --git a/ubuntu-1904review.html b/ubuntu-1904review.html
deleted file mode 100644
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--- a/ubuntu-1904review.html
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,58 +0,0 @@
-<p>Canonical recently released Ubuntu 19.04, the latest version of its flagship GNOME-based Linux desktop.</p>
-<p>The latest version of the venerable Ubuntu desktop packs quite a few tempting reasons to upgrade, especially for Linux gamers. Ubuntu 19.04 makes the leap to the Linux kernel 5.x series, which offers much improved graphics support.</p>
-<p>Still, while there are some nice updates to the desktop, the emphasis in this release is on Ubuntu as a tool for infrastructure development, server deployment and the good old Internet of Things. The server version of Ubuntu ships with all the latest cloud computing tools and is already available in optimized builds on the major cloud services.</p>
-<p>If you’re a desktop user you might feel a little left out, but despite all the talk of developer tools and enterprise deployment stacks – Canonical has taken to calling Ubuntu the “leading OS for cloud operations” – Ubuntu 19.04 is still a worthwhile upgrade that will leave you with a faster, more polished desktop than its predecessors offered.</p>
-<h2 id="gnome">GNOME</h2>
-
-[image="ubuntu1904-desktop.jpg" caption='The Default Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" desktop']
-
-<p>The default desktop for 19.04 looks, aside from the new wallpaper, more or less like previous releases. There are no major changes to be seen, but there are plenty to be felt.</p>
-
-[image="ubuntu1904-icons.jpg" caption='The new icon theme in Ubuntu 19.04.']
-[image="ubuntu1904-yaru.jpg" caption='Ubuntu 19.04's slightly tweaked "yaru" theme']
-
-<p>Thanks to work both in the upstream GNOME project, along with some contributions from downstream, Ubuntu 19.04 is the snappiest version of GNOME I’ve ever used. In fact, Ubuntu’s GNOME desktop finally feels like it’s about on par with the old Unity, at least in terms of speed and responsiveness.</p>
-<p>Much of the credit here goes to the GNOME project, which has been hard at work speeding things up and to be completely fair to GNOME, they’ve actually made even more speed improvements that didn’t make it into Ubuntu 19.04. Ubuntu is looking to incorporate some more of those improvements down the road. It’s also worth noting that nearly all the improvements to GNOME in 19.04 have been <a href="https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/gnome-3-32-performance-ubuntu-19-04/10208">patched into 18.10</a> and will eventually make it to the 18.04 LTS release as well.</p>
-<p>Suffice to say that, if you’re a GNOME user, the huge, very noticeable speed boost in Ubuntu 19.04 will make you very happy.</p>
-<p>Another trickle down win from the upstream speed improvements is the inclusion of GNOME’s indexing tool, Tracker, which is installed by default in Ubuntu 19.04. Previously Tracker was considered too slow to ship with Ubuntu. You’ve probably never heard of Tracker, it runs behind the scenes and indexes and stores metadata for use in searches throughout GNOME, but adding tracker enables some new features for 19.04. Tracker means you can use the batch rename tool with metadata tags and that searching in the Files app is now full-text.</p>
-
-[image="ubuntu1904-starring-files.jpg" caption='The Files app in Ubuntu 19.04 can make better use of metadata, thanks to GNOME Tracker.']
-
-<p>While Ubuntu 19.04 doesn’t make any radical changes to the basic GNOME user experience, there are a couple of visual improvements worth noting. The new default theme for Ubuntu (known as Yaru) has been further refined and includes a new icon theme that looks more unified – nearly everything gets a rounded square icon now (except of course for any applications you install that aren’t part of the icon set).</p>
-<p>Another immediately noticeable change to the user experience is that alt-tab now switches windows by default. You can cycle through your applications with super-tab. Naturally you can change this using the settings app.</p>
-<p>I should also note that, as with all things GNOME, the many steps forward come with a backward step as well – you can no longer put icons on the desktop in GNOME 3.32. Ubuntu has worked around this change by including a new GNOME Shell extension aptly named “Desktop Icons”. So far so good, but there’s a catch: the extension doesn’t allow you to drag and drop files or apps onto the Desktop. Instead you’ll have to do that using the Nautilus file manager. Drag and drop your file into the desktop folder and you’ll see it show up on the desktop. It’s a small annoyance easily worked around, but an annoyance nonetheless.</p>
-<p>One much-requested new feature in GNOME 3.32 is support for fractional UI scaling, that is the ability to set the interface to something other than 100 percent (1080p and smaller screens) or 200 percent (for HiDPI screens). With GNOME 3.32 you can scale in 25 percent increments – not arbitrary, but certainly better than previous releases. The catch is that it really only works (in my testing) running under Wayland.</p>
-<p>There is some experimental support for Xorg sessions, but you’ll need to enable it yourself. Instructions can be found on the <a href="https://community.ubuntu.com/t/x11-hidpi-scaling-available-for-testing-on-disco/10293">Ubuntu Community site</a>, but in my testing it was pretty buggy, especially with GIMP. My suggestion would be to use Wayland, after all, if your hardware includes a HiDPI screen, it’s probably perfectly capable of running Wayland.</p>
-<p>Several releases ago, Canonical began collecting metrics from willing users (it still does, you can opt out after installation), and one of the bits of data the company mentioned it has learned from that collected data is how often Ubuntu is installed as a virtual machine. Lo and behold, Ubuntu 19.04 will now automatically install the open-vm-tools package (to improve VM integration) when it sees its being installed virtually. It’s a small thing, but one that really helps if you spin up a lot of VMs since saves you the hassle of adding those tools by hand after the fact. With Ubuntu 19.04 you can just start up a virtual machine and when its done installing your clipboard will work inside the guest, you can easily share folders, and you’ll get a much improved graphics experience, all without doing anything extra.</p>
-<h2 id="flavors">Flavors</h2>
-<p>When I said earlier that Ubuntu 19.04 is the snappiest version of GNOME I’ve ever used, the emphasis there is on GNOME. In the broader scheme of Ubuntu desktops there’s really nothing particularly snappy about GNOME. In fact, in my experience it’s the slowest of the bunch. Fortunately, if you’re looking for a faster desktop that uses less system resources, and offers a more “traditional” experience, Ubuntu’s various flavors have you covered.</p>
-<p>All of the under the hood improvements, which I’ll get into below, apply to the flavors as well as the main release, so when I say very little has changed, I mean very little in that flavor’s desktop. And the truth is, very little has changed for most desktops with this release. There’s plenty of improvements in the Ubuntu base packages that all these flavors are built upon, but the user experience in most cases remains largely unchanged.</p>
-<p>After the GNOME-based version, the biggest changes to an Ubuntu flavor come in Ubuntu Budgie. Budgie 19.04 is notable for replacing the Nautilus file manager with Nemo, the file manager found in Linux Mint. This change is Budgie’s way of dealing with the inability to show icons on the desktop in GNOME 3.32. Having tested both Ubuntu and Ubuntu Budgie’s methods of fixing this feature removal, I’d have to give the edge to Budgie.</p>
-<p>Nemo is simply a better file manager. Not only do you get desktop icons, but you also get some useful features GNOME long ago ripped out like a split screen view and tree-view.</p>
-<p>Ubuntu MATE 19.04, which would be one of my top picks in the Ubuntu flavors world, looks to be a relatively minor update with some bug fixes and a couple new features, but it’s probably most notable for what’s not included – the latest version of MATE.</p>
-<p>Ubuntu MATE 19.04 ships with MATE Desktop 1.20 rather than the recently released 1.22. The MATE blog <a href="https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-mate-disco-final-release/">notes</a> that this is for stability reasons. MATE 1.22 introduces some API changes that some third party applications have not yet incorporated, making them unstable. Look for MATE Desktop 1.22 to land in 19.10 later this year.</p>
-<p>As you would expect from an Xfce-based flavor, Xubuntu is more or less the same as the previous release. Indeed the lack of change is one of the best reasons to use Xfce. That said there are some changes in this release that should be welcome news to Xfce-users’ ears: more GTK 3 apps. Xubuntu 19.04 ships with GTK 3 versions of the Xfce file manager and app finder. Xubuntu’s transition to GTK 3 continues to progress and may even be finished by next year’s Xubuntu 20.04 LTS.</p>
-<p>Other Ubuntu flavors like Lubuntu (LXDE-based), Kubuntu (KDE-based) and the oft-overlooked Ubuntu Studio have updates for 19.04. The latter deserves special mention for 19.04 since it’s now possible to install Ubuntu Studio’s configuration and metapackages on top of an existing Ubuntu installation. That means you can have your stock Ubuntu (or other flavor) desktop and get all the Studio goodness as well. If you’ve ever wanted a complete audio/video Linux workstation, without the pain of configuring low level audio and video settings, Ubuntu Studio is the way to go.</p>
-<h2 id="under-the-hood">Under the hood</h2>
-<p>While Ubuntu’s various desktop options all get a little love in this release, most of what’s new and improved in Ubuntu 19.04 lies further beneath the surface, especially all the way down in the kernel, which is now at 5.0.</p>
-<p>There’s a good bit of new stuff in the Linux 5.x line, but the notable new features include support for AMD FreeSync (great news for anyone with a compatible monitor, you shouldn’t see any tearing or latency in video and games), NVIDIA Xavier display support, support for swap files on Btrfs, and support for the Raspberry Pi Touchscreen. There’s also a new 16x32 sized Terminus console font in there as well, which, while not super useful for Ubuntu, might come in handy next time you install Arch on a HiDPI screen.</p>
-<p>Ubuntu 19.04 also includes Mesa 19.0, the latest development release of the open-source graphics driver. There’s quite a few performance improvements in 19.0, including everything you need to get the kernel-supported FreeSync working. Ubuntu’s attention to graphics in this release doesn’t stop there, in 19.04 you can go ahead and install proprietary NVIDIA drivers for your NVIDIA graphics card. Just be sure to check the option during installation to “Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media” (note to Canonical, might be time to split that into multiple options).</p>
-<p>The NVIDIA support is not earth-shattering, but it’s one less thing to do after Ubuntu is installed and it goes a long way to making the overall experience even more hassle free for new users. And anyone who tells you the open source Nouveau drivers are good enough has obviously never used it for gaming.</p>
-<p>There’s a little tease in this release as well, if you open up the Software and Updates app you’ll see a new tab labeled Livepatch, which does… nothing – it’s just there so it can be backported to 18.04. Canonical’s Livepatch feature, which applies security updates that don’t require a system restart, only supports long term releases. Previously it was only available in Ubuntu server and required configuration through the command line. Now it will be available to Desktop users with a handy GUI – just not 19.04 users. If you stick with 18.04 LTS, look for this feature to arrive soon.</p>
-
-[image="ubuntu1904-livepatch.jpg" caption='There's a more finegrained permissions control in GNOME 3.32, but that Livepatch option? That's not going to work on 19.04.']
-
-<p>Ubuntu is also shipping with an impressively up-to-date set of developer tools in this release. Python is at 3.7.3, golang 1.10.4, rustc 1.32.0, and GCC 8.3, with the option to go ahead and use GCC 9. Normally this warrants a sentence and that’s about it, but I think 19.04 shows something of a shift for Ubuntu, which previously was more conservative about updating programming languages. I think this change is indicative of a change in direction for Ubuntu – it’s becoming a more developer-focused distro.</p>
-<p>Another example of this focus on developers can be seen in Snaps, Ubuntu’s containerized app distribution system. In this release you can now install multiple instances of a snap. This means developers can install production alongside development versions of their app (it also paves the way for users to be able to install more bleeding edge versions of apps if they like). That’s a huge win if you’re building out a continuous integration environment</p>
-<p>There’s also a noteworthy new Snap app available that will make some developers happy – Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code. Yes, in 19.04, with a single click you can install an open source Microsoft app on your Linux box. I’ll be honest, that’s not a sentence I ever expected to write.</p>
-<p>But one of the reasons Ubuntu is the closest thing Linux has to a household name is because it focused on making Linux newcomer-friendly and easy to use. Now it seems to be bringing that experience to bear on a subset of the Linux user market – developers.</p>
-<p>To some extent Ubuntu was and often still is the first place people, including developers, experience desktop Linux. That’s a huge part of how Ubuntu became a household name. Since people were comfortable with it on the desktop, they turned to it on the server as well, which is a big part of Ubuntu’s growth in server space over the past decade.</p>
-<p>Now I think that’s coming back around – a new generation of developers who are familiar with Ubuntu on the server are turning to it on the desktop as well. But to capture that developer mind share Ubuntu needs to make the developer experience as smooth as it has made the desktop experience for everyone else. I believe that’s why this release is so focused on developer tools and updated version of programming languages, and yes, even Microsoft apps.</p>
-<h2 id="server-and-iot">Server and IoT</h2>
-<p>Another, more prosaic, reason Ubuntu is popular in the server world is that it provides optimized builds for all the major cloud platforms. This release is no different, optimized Ubuntu Server 19.04 and Minimal Ubuntu 19.04 images are already available on your favorite cloud hosting service.</p>
-<p>That’s not unusual for an Ubuntu release, but more telling is Ubuntu’s <a href="https://blog.ubuntu.com/2019/04/18/open-infrastructure-developer-desktop-and-iot-are-the-focus-for-ubuntu-19-04">press release</a> for 19.04 which is entitled “open infrastructure, developer desktop and IoT are the focus for Ubuntu 19.04.”</p>
-<p>Despite being a press release, it’s worth considering that headline for a minute. Ever since Canonical turned its back on “convergence” and laid off the majority of the developers working on the Ubuntu desktop, these three things – infrastructure, developer tools and the Internet of Things – have been the core focus of its resources.</p>
-<p>It’s also worth noting that this is a trinity of goals that have long served the Fedora project well, producing a quality no-frills desktop loaded with developer tools, a set of server management tools and Fedora’s various cloud-based tools. They also trickle down to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which in turns is a big part of IBM’s acquisition, which is to say that Canonical is following in some very well established footprints here and the release of 19.04 shows its paying off.</p>
-<p>Not only is this a solid desktop release for developers (as well as everyone else), it shows the considerable progress Canonical has made in providing an entire tool chain for its customers. From the bare metal server management system MaaS, to Juju, to LXC/LXD, to Ubuntu Server, to its integrated OpenStack and Kubernetes tools, Ubuntu has something for every part of the enterprise stack.</p>
-<p>That makes Ubuntu a compelling alternative to public clouds, for those that need to role their own, as well as an integral part of those clouds. Seemingly no matter what an enterprise IT department opts for, Canonical wins. This trickles down as well since Canonical’s continued investment in the desktop we users enjoy is made possible, at least in part, by its success elsewhere. And with 19.04 Ubuntu looks to be in a good position to continue growing in both use and mind share.</p>
-<p>Ubuntu 19.04 is not a Long Term Support release and will only be supported for nine months. For the average user that’s not a huge deal, though the question of should you upgrade is complicated by the fact that most of the improvements to the desktop will eventually make their way to the most recent LTS release (last year’s 18.04). My suggestion would be for LTS users to stick with 18.04. If you already upgraded to 18.10, you’ll definitely want to make the jump to 19.04. If you’d like to do so now you can follow <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiscoDingo/ReleaseNotes#Upgrading_from_Ubuntu_18.10">Canonical’s instructions</a>, or just wait a few weeks for the first bug fix release, after which Ubuntu should prompt you to upgrade.</p>
diff --git a/ubuntu-1904review.txt b/ubuntu-1904review.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index c15f0bb..0000000
--- a/ubuntu-1904review.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,89 +0,0 @@
-Canonical recently released Ubuntu 19.04, the latest version of its flagship GNOME-based Linux desktop. 
-
-The latest version of the venerable Ubuntu desktop packs quite a few tempting reasons to upgrade, especially for Linux gamers. Ubuntu 19.04 makes the leap to the Linux kernel 5.x series, which offers much improved graphics support. 
-
-Still, while there are some nice updates to the desktop, the emphasis in this release is on Ubuntu as a tool for infrastructure development, server deployment and the good old Internet of Things. The server version of Ubuntu ships with all the latest cloud computing tools and is already available in optimized builds on the major cloud services.
-
-If you're a desktop user you might feel a little left out, but despite all the talk of developer tools and enterprise deployment stacks -- Canonical has taken to calling Ubuntu the "leading OS for cloud operations" -- Ubuntu 19.04 is still a worthwhile upgrade that will leave you with a faster, more polished desktop than its predecessors offered.
-
-## GNOME
-
-The default desktop for 19.04 looks, aside from the new wallpaper, more or less like previous releases. There are no major changes to be seen, but there are plenty to be felt. 
-
-Thanks to work both in the upstream GNOME project, along with some contributions from downstream, Ubuntu 19.04 is the snappiest version of GNOME I've ever used. In fact, Ubuntu's GNOME desktop finally feels like it's about on par with the old Unity, at least in terms of speed and responsiveness. 
-
-Much of the credit here goes to the GNOME project, which has been hard at work speeding things up and to be completely fair to GNOME, they've actually made even more speed improvements that didn't make it into Ubuntu 19.04. Ubuntu is looking to incorporate some more of those improvements down the road. It's also worth noting that nearly all the improvements to GNOME in 19.04 have been [patched into 18.10](https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/gnome-3-32-performance-ubuntu-19-04/10208) and will eventually make it to the 18.04 LTS release as well.
-
-Suffice to say that, if you're a GNOME user, the huge, very noticeable speed boost in Ubuntu 19.04 will make you very happy. 
-
-Another trickle down win from the upstream speed improvements is the inclusion of GNOME's indexing tool, Tracker, which is installed by default in Ubuntu 19.04. Previously Tracker was considered too slow to ship with Ubuntu. You've probably never heard of Tracker, it runs behind the scenes and indexes and stores metadata for use in searches throughout GNOME, but adding tracker enables some new features for 19.04. Tracker means you can use the batch rename tool with metadata tags and that searching in the Files app is now full-text.
-
-While Ubuntu 19.04 doesn't make any radical changes to the basic GNOME user experience, there are a couple of visual improvements worth noting. The new default theme for Ubuntu (known as Yaru) has been further refined and includes a new icon theme that looks more unified -- nearly everything gets a rounded square icon now (except of course for any applications you install that aren't part of the icon set). 
-
-Another immediately noticeable change to the user experience is that alt-tab now switches windows by default. You can cycle through your applications with super-tab. Naturally you can change this using the settings app.
-
-I should also note that, as with all things GNOME, the many steps forward come with a backward step as well -- you can no longer put icons on the desktop in GNOME 3.32. Ubuntu has worked around this change by including a new GNOME Shell extension aptly named "Desktop Icons". So far so good, but there's a catch: the extension doesn't allow you to drag and drop files or apps onto the Desktop. Instead you'll have to do that using the Nautilus file manager. Drag and drop your file into the desktop folder and you'll see it show up on the desktop. It's a small annoyance easily worked around, but an annoyance nonetheless.
-
-One much-requested new feature in GNOME 3.32 is support for fractional UI scaling, that is the ability to set the interface to something other than 100 percent (1080p and smaller screens) or 200 percent (for HiDPI screens). With GNOME 3.32 you can scale in 25 percent increments -- not arbitrary, but certainly better than previous releases. The catch is that it really only works (in my testing) running under Wayland. 
-
-There is some experimental support for Xorg sessions, but you'll need to enable it yourself. Instructions can be found on the [Ubuntu Community site](https://community.ubuntu.com/t/x11-hidpi-scaling-available-for-testing-on-disco/10293), but in my testing it was pretty buggy, especially with GIMP. My suggestion would be to use Wayland, after all, if your hardware includes a HiDPI screen, it's probably perfectly capable of running Wayland.
-
-Several releases ago, Canonical began collecting metrics from willing users (it still does, you can opt out after installation), and one of the bits of data the company mentioned it has learned from that collected data is how often Ubuntu is installed as a virtual machine. Lo and behold, Ubuntu 19.04 will now automatically install the open-vm-tools package (to improve VM integration) when it sees its being installed virtually. It's a small thing, but one that really helps if you spin up a lot of VMs since saves you the hassle of adding those tools by hand after the fact. With Ubuntu 19.04 you can just start up a virtual machine and when its done installing your clipboard will work inside the guest, you can easily share folders, and you'll get a much improved graphics experience, all without doing anything extra.
-
-## Flavors
-
-When I said earlier that Ubuntu 19.04 is the snappiest version of GNOME I've ever used, the emphasis there is on GNOME. In the broader scheme of Ubuntu desktops there's really nothing particularly snappy about GNOME. In fact, in my experience it's the slowest of the bunch. Fortunately, if you're looking for a faster desktop that uses less system resources, and offers a more "traditional" experience, Ubuntu's various flavors have you covered. 
-
-All of the under the hood improvements, which I'll get into below, apply to the flavors as well as the main release, so when I say very little has changed, I mean very little in that flavor's desktop. And the truth is, very little has changed for most desktops with this release. There's plenty of improvements in the Ubuntu base packages that all these flavors are built upon, but the user experience in most cases remains largely unchanged.
-
-After the GNOME-based version, the biggest changes to an Ubuntu flavor come in Ubuntu Budgie. Budgie 19.04 is notable for replacing the Nautilus file manager with Nemo, the file manager found in Linux Mint. This change is Budgie's way of dealing with the inability to show icons on the desktop in GNOME 3.32. Having tested both Ubuntu and Ubuntu Budgie's methods of fixing this feature removal, I'd have to give the edge to Budgie.
-
-Nemo is simply a better file manager. Not only do you get desktop icons, but you also get some useful features GNOME long ago ripped out like a split screen view and tree-view.
-
-Ubuntu MATE 19.04, which would be one of my top picks in the Ubuntu flavors world, looks to be a relatively minor update with some bug fixes and a couple new features, but it's probably most notable for what's not included -- the latest version of MATE. 
-
-Ubuntu MATE 19.04 ships with MATE Desktop 1.20 rather than the recently released 1.22. The MATE blog [notes](https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/ubuntu-mate-disco-final-release/) that this is for stability reasons. MATE 1.22 introduces some API changes that some third party applications have not yet incorporated, making them unstable. Look for MATE Desktop 1.22 to land in 19.10 later this year.
-
-As you would expect from an Xfce-based flavor, Xubuntu is more or less the same as the previous release. Indeed the lack of change is one of the best reasons to use Xfce. That said there are some changes in this release that should be welcome news to Xfce-users' ears: more GTK 3 apps. Xubuntu 19.04 ships with GTK 3 versions of the Xfce file manager and app finder. Xubuntu's transition to GTK 3 continues to progress and may even be finished by next year's Xubuntu 20.04 LTS.
-
-Other Ubuntu flavors like Lubuntu (LXDE-based), Kubuntu (KDE-based) and the oft-overlooked Ubuntu Studio have updates for 19.04. The latter deserves special mention for 19.04 since it's now possible to install Ubuntu Studio's configuration and metapackages on top of an existing Ubuntu installation. That means you can have your stock Ubuntu (or other flavor) desktop and get all the Studio goodness as well. If you've ever wanted a complete audio/video Linux workstation, without the pain of configuring low level audio and video settings, Ubuntu Studio is the way to go.
-
-## Under the hood
-
-While Ubuntu's various desktop options all get a little love in this release, most of what's new and improved in Ubuntu 19.04 lies further beneath the surface, especially all the way down in the kernel, which is now at 5.0.
-
-There's a good bit of new stuff in the Linux 5.x line, but the notable new features include support for AMD  FreeSync (great news for anyone with a compatible monitor, you shouldn't see any tearing or latency in video and games), NVIDIA Xavier display support, support for swap files on Btrfs, and support for the Raspberry Pi Touchscreen. There's also a new 16x32 sized Terminus console font in there as well, which, while not super useful for Ubuntu, might come in handy next time you install Arch on a HiDPI screen.
-
-Ubuntu 19.04 also includes Mesa 19.0, the latest development release of the open-source graphics driver. There's quite a few performance improvements in 19.0, including everything you need to get the kernel-supported FreeSync working. Ubuntu's attention to graphics in this release doesn't stop there, in 19.04 you can go ahead and install proprietary NVIDIA drivers for your NVIDIA graphics card. Just be sure to check the option during installation to "Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware and additional media" (note to Canonical, might be time to split that into multiple options). 
-
-The NVIDIA support is not earth-shattering, but it's one less thing to do after Ubuntu is installed and it goes a long way to making the overall experience even more hassle free for new users. And anyone who tells you the open source Nouveau drivers are good enough has obviously never used it for gaming.
-
-There's a little tease in this release as well, if you open up the Software and Updates app you'll see a new tab labeled Livepatch, which does... nothing -- it's just there so it can be backported to 18.04. Canonical's Livepatch feature, which applies security updates that don't require a system restart, only supports long term releases. Previously it was only available in Ubuntu server and required configuration through the command line. Now it will be available to Desktop users with a handy GUI -- just not 19.04 users. If you stick with 18.04 LTS, look for this feature to arrive soon.
-
-Ubuntu is also shipping with an impressively up-to-date set of developer tools in this release. Python is at 3.7.3, golang 1.10.4, rustc 1.32.0, and GCC 8.3, with the option to go ahead and use GCC 9. Normally this warrants a sentence and that's about it, but I think 19.04 shows something of a shift for Ubuntu, which previously was more conservative about updating programming languages. I think this change is indicative of a change in direction for Ubuntu -- it's becoming a more developer-focused distro.
-
-Another example of this focus on developers can be seen in Snaps, Ubuntu's containerized app distribution system. In this release you can now install multiple instances of a snap. This means developers can install production alongside development versions of their app (it also paves the way for users to be able to install more bleeding edge versions of apps if they like). That's a huge win if you're building out a continuous integration environment
-
-There's also a noteworthy new Snap app available that will make some developers happy -- Microsoft's Visual Studio Code. Yes, in 19.04, with a single click you can install an open source Microsoft app on your Linux box. I'll be honest, that's not a sentence I ever expected to write.
-
-But one of the reasons Ubuntu is the closest thing Linux has to a household name is because it focused on making Linux newcomer-friendly and easy to use. Now it seems to be bringing that experience to bear on a subset of the Linux user market -- developers.
-
-To some extent Ubuntu was and often still is the first place people, including developers, experience desktop Linux. That's a huge part of how Ubuntu became a household name. Since people were comfortable with it on the desktop, they turned to it on the server as well, which is a big part of Ubuntu's growth in server space over the past decade. 
-
-Now I think that's coming back around -- a new generation of developers who are familiar with Ubuntu on the server are turning to it on the desktop as well. But to capture that developer mind share Ubuntu needs to make the developer experience as smooth as it has made the desktop experience for everyone else. I believe that's why this release is so focused on developer tools and updated version of programming languages, and yes, even Microsoft apps.
-
-## Server and IoT
-
-Another, more prosaic, reason Ubuntu is popular in the server world is that it provides optimized builds for all the major cloud platforms. This release is no different, optimized Ubuntu Server 19.04 and Minimal Ubuntu 19.04 images are already available on your favorite cloud hosting service. 
-
-That's not unusual for an Ubuntu release, but more telling is Ubuntu's [press release](https://blog.ubuntu.com/2019/04/18/open-infrastructure-developer-desktop-and-iot-are-the-focus-for-ubuntu-19-04) for 19.04 which is entitled "open infrastructure, developer desktop and IoT are the focus for Ubuntu 19.04." 
-
-Despite being a press release, it's worth considering that headline for a minute. Ever since Canonical turned its back on "convergence" and laid off the majority of the developers working on the Ubuntu desktop, these three things -- infrastructure, developer tools and the Internet of Things -- have been the core focus of its resources.
-
-It's also worth noting that this is a trinity of goals that have long served the Fedora project well, producing a quality no-frills desktop loaded with developer tools, a set of server management tools and Fedora's various cloud-based tools. They also trickle down to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which in turns is a big part of IBM's acquisition, which is to say that Canonical is following in some very well established footprints here and the release of 19.04 shows its paying off. 
-
-Not only is this a solid desktop release for developers (as well as everyone else), it shows the considerable progress Canonical has made in providing an entire tool chain for its customers. From the bare metal server management system MaaS, to Juju, to LXC/LXD, to Ubuntu Server, to its integrated OpenStack and Kubernetes tools, Ubuntu has something for every part of the enterprise stack.
-
-That makes Ubuntu a compelling alternative to public clouds, for those that need to role their own, as well as an integral part of those clouds. Seemingly no matter what an enterprise IT department opts for, Canonical wins. This trickles down as well since Canonical's continued investment in the desktop we users enjoy is made possible, at least in part, by its success elsewhere. And with 19.04 Ubuntu looks to be in a good position to continue growing in both use and mind share.
-
-Ubuntu 19.04 is not a Long Term Support release and will only be supported for nine months. For the average user that's not a huge deal, though the question of should you upgrade is complicated by the fact that most of the improvements to the desktop will eventually make their way to the most recent LTS release (last year's 18.04). My suggestion would be for LTS users to stick with 18.04. If you already upgraded to 18.10, you'll definitely want to make the jump to 19.04. If you'd like to do so now you can follow [Canonical's instructions](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DiscoDingo/ReleaseNotes#Upgrading_from_Ubuntu_18.10), or just wait a few weeks for the first bug fix release, after which Ubuntu should prompt you to upgrade.