path: root/ubuntu1604review.txt

Canonical has released a new version of Ubuntu Linux, Ubuntu 16.04 or Xenial Xerus, as this release is known. Ubuntu 16.04 is Ubuntu 16.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release, meaning that Canonical will provide support for the next 5 years.

Typically Ubuntu's LTS release tend to be conservative in nature, after all no one want to try to support a brand new, potentially buggy piece of code for half a decade. That, combined with the experience of the last few Ubuntu releases -- which offered almost nothing in the way of new features -- and you'd be forgiven for thinking that 16.04 is possibly the most boring release to date.

The potential is certainly there but happily for Ubuntu users, that's not actually the case. In fact Ubuntu 16.04 is the most exciting release Canonical has put out in recent memory and possibly the best release its had to date.

That's good news for Ubuntu fans, but it's also good news for Canonical which has largely ignored its desktop in favor of mobile dreams. Those mobile plans are still coming, Unity 8, the Mir display serve and the "convergence" those tools will enable are still a big part of Ubuntu's future, but they aren't part of 16.04 (not in stable form anyway).

Instead 17.04 focuses on improvement to the desktop, through perhaps the biggest change comes from Ubuntu's experience on the server-side, namely the container packaging system Canonical calls Snap packages (more on that in a minute). The result is that, for the first time in a long time, Ubuntu's desktop release feels like an actual release rather than something its obligated to push out every six months.

## Ubuntu 16.04: Now With 100% Less 'Spyware'

For all the new stuff in 16.04, probably the biggest headline grabbing change in this release actually what's not there, namely the online search results. The controversial search "feature" debuted back in 2012's autumn release, Ubuntu 12.10. What made it controversial is that it was on by default which meant that by default all your search terms were sent first to Canonical's service and then from there on to Canonical's partners. That alone was enough for the Free software Foundation's Richard Stallman to brand Ubuntu "spyware."

Even if Canonical getting a record of your search terms didn't bother you, the feature could still be annoying for its habit of returning totally irrelevant search results, and worse, often potentially NSFW results. One frequently cited example being searches of "Bra" for the Brasero CD burning application sometimes returned results from Amazon for bras. 

Canonical dug themselves an even deeper hole when it went after a site site critical of the search feature for trademark violations. FixUbuntu.com, which showed users how to disable the search features, was asked to "remove Ubuntu word from you domain name and Ubuntu logo from the website." Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth later called the letter a mistake in his blog, saying, "someone at Canonical made a mistake in sending the wrong response to a trademark issue." Whatever its intentions, it merely furthered the PR disaster that was the online shopping results. 

Now the search lens is off be default, which is good for users, but the damage it did to Canonical's image and standing in the free software world is unlikely to undone at this point. In the end, Canonical managed to generate a tremendously amount of ill will for a features the majority of its users didn't seem to want and which in all likelihood generated a negligible amount of profit for the company.

If you found the search results helpful, you can turn them back on in 16.04 by heading to the system settings app.

## What's new in Ubuntu 16.04

Perhaps the biggest change for Users upgrading from Ubuntu's previous LTS release -- which is two years old now -- is the Ubuntu now uses the systemd init system rather than its homegrown init, Upstart. As with several of Ubuntu's attempts to go its own way, it has since abandoned its efforts in favor of upstream tools. In this case the work of stripping systemd out of Debian just to put in Upstart was deemed more effort than it was worth. 

For most users systemd will be old news, but anyone who sticks with LTS release, well, one of the last ways to avoid systemd is now gone.

In practical terms the move from Upstart to systemd is not particularly difficult, certainly nothing like upgrading straight from an older init system like System V. Still, it is a significant change to be aware of, particularly on servers where Ubuntu's LTS release are incredibly popular.

A more visual change in 16.04 is ability to move the Unity launcher to the bottom of the screen. This long requested feature has actually been possible via third-party tools for some time, but there were always some inconsistencies and odd behavior. Thanks to the work of <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1552630">the Ubuntu Kylin developers</a>, its now an officially sanctioned option (in fact it's the default layout for Ubuntu Kylin, the official Chinese version of Ubuntu).

That said, it does still require installing the dconf editor and diving into the options a bit to turn it on. Once you've installed dconf-editor, navigate to com > canonical > unity > launcher > launcher-position to find the option to switch the launcher position (alternately, the third party Unity-tweak-tool supports it as well).

Systemd isn't the only example of an upstream project replacing one of Canonical's own, the Ubuntu Software Center sees a similar makeover, though in this case the replacement is a bit closer -- GNOME Software. 

The Ubuntu Software Center has been largely abandoned for some time. GNOME on the other hand has been pouring considerable effort into its own software app so the move makes sense for Ubuntu. It's just upstream and it's flexible enough that Canonical can customize it, but doesn't have to maintain it directly. If you're already familiar with both apps the first thing you'll notice is that Canonical appears to have just mashed the two together. The result is not, to my eye, quite as nice as GNOME Software on its own, but it does bring in all the reviews and content of the old Ubuntu Software Center (which incidentally, is still in the repos if you want it).

Ubuntu's version of GNOME Software also gets some of the nice new upstream features like support for firmware updates via the Software Center. Provided your firmware is available via the Linux Vendor Firmware Service you'll be able to update your devices with a single click in the Software Center.

If you eschew graphical software apps for the simplicity of the command line, be aware that Ubuntu 16.04 supports the simpler `apt` command alongside `apt-get` in addition to marginally less typing, apt nicely unifies a bunch of apt- commands with better documentation and support for progress bars.

## Snap Packages

Ubuntu 16.04's biggest change looks quite innocuous at first glance. There's nothing graphical to see, but the release brings Ubuntu Snappy to the desktop and with it the possibility to completely change the way you install and maintain software on Ubuntu (and Linux more broadly).

Ubuntu server users have likely already encountered Snappy through the distro's various container deployment options, but this is the first time Snappy has been integrated into the desktop.

To understand what Snap Package are, it helps to first understand how applications are installed. When you select an application to install in the Software Center it doesn't just install itself, it also installs other applications (in this context, applications are generally referred to as "packages") that it needs. 

Some applications you install might need only one or two other package to work. Others may use hundreds. Application packaging systems like APT do a reasonably good job on working on which additional packages you need to install the application you actually want so that you don't have to worry about. APT also does a reasonably good job of making sure that you get the right version of the packages in question. But what happens when one application you have installed needs package X version 1.1 and another needs package X version 1.2? With APT you've got yourself a potentially system breaking problem. 

Snap package solve this problem by creating self-contained packages. With Snap packages applications are installed in their own container and all the third-party applications are installed with them so that there are no version conflicts. Snap packages are also smart enough to not install a package more than once so aplications installed via Snappy don't take anymore disk space than regular applications.

You're probably wondering why this matter and how it's going to change Ubuntu for the better. The answer is that Snap package make it possible to install the latest and greatest software without worry about whether or not Ubuntu has updated every component package you might need for the latest and greatest version of your favorite app. For example I like to run the bleeding edge release of Darktable, which is typically at least a point version ahead of what's in the Ubuntu repos. Right now there's a deb maintained by a Darktable developer who does his best to make sure nothing breaks, but essentially one person putting in ton of effort is all that keeps Darktable from potentially breaking the rest of my system. It works, I've never had a problem, but it's hardly idea.

With Snap package there would be no danger of accidentally breaking your system with an application update because the application is completely self-contained.

This means you could run a very conservative release, like an Ubuntu LTS and still have the latest versions of all your favorite applications. It's the best of both worlds -- a stable system running the latest userland software.

All of this is supported in Ubuntu 16.04, but so far there are very few Snappy version of desktop applications available. That will likely change in the very near future. Mozilla has already announced that Firefox will be available as a Snap package very soon (web browsers are a great use case for Snap packages since they update frequently) and expect other big projects to likewise embrace Snap package now that 16.04 has launched.

As nice as Snap package is, it does have one problem -- once again Canonical is rolling its own solution when there are several upstream possibilities it could have elected to use instead. Both GNOME's xdg-app and the cross-distro [app-image](http://appimage.org/) system do exactly what Snap package do, but they 


and how Ubuntu has a history of going its own way and then coming back to the fold, will snap packages be the same way?

## Kernel and other new stuff

???

## Ubuntu Flavors

MATE desktop 
conclude with link to LAS and info on how to install the MATE software center.

## conculsion

best release in some time,
snap packages are a bigs deal
future looks bright.
Unity 8 will be next big change.