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author | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2018-02-06 09:15:53 -0600 |
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committer | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2018-02-06 09:15:53 -0600 |
commit | 324cb42973831f322c5c436d36c820f70be047dd (patch) | |
tree | f186f6fdd1e244c27aa12a184e6ba74d6f5ba47d | |
parent | 0ea8c220c90e6a4b192aaaeb5929c33334844b65 (diff) |
archived published work
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-rw-r--r-- | invoices/paid/scott_gilbertson_invoice_90.doc (renamed from invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_90.doc) | bin | 16384 -> 16384 bytes | |||
-rw-r--r-- | invoices/paid/scott_gilbertson_invoice_91.doc (renamed from invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_91.doc) | bin | 15872 -> 15872 bytes | |||
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-rw-r--r-- | published/fedora26review.txt (renamed from fedora26review.txt) | 0 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | published/linux-mint183.txt | 47 | ||||
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-rw-r--r-- | published/open-source-insider-1711.txt | 23 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | published/open-source-insider-1801.txt | 22 | ||||
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-rw-r--r-- | published/ubuntu1710-flavors.txt (renamed from ubuntu1710-flavors.txt) | 0 | ||||
-rw-r--r-- | published/ubuntu1710final.txt | 45 |
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@@ -1 +1,2 @@ published/*/ +*.jpg diff --git a/fedora-desktop.jpg b/fedora-desktop.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 933a7b5..0000000 --- a/fedora-desktop.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/fedora-notifications.jpg b/fedora-notifications.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 24f161e..0000000 --- a/fedora-notifications.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/fedora-software.jpg b/fedora-software.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 085589e..0000000 --- a/fedora-software.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/flavors/kubuntu.png b/flavors/kubuntu.png Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 69fa0d3..0000000 --- a/flavors/kubuntu.png +++ /dev/null diff --git a/flavors/ubuntu-mate.png b/flavors/ubuntu-mate.png Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 17959ff..0000000 --- a/flavors/ubuntu-mate.png +++ /dev/null diff --git a/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_90.doc b/invoices/paid/scott_gilbertson_invoice_90.doc Binary files differindex 570f17c..570f17c 100644 --- a/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_90.doc +++ b/invoices/paid/scott_gilbertson_invoice_90.doc diff --git a/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_91.doc b/invoices/paid/scott_gilbertson_invoice_91.doc Binary files differindex e9e5fb8..e9e5fb8 100644 --- a/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_91.doc +++ b/invoices/paid/scott_gilbertson_invoice_91.doc diff --git a/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_92.doc b/invoices/paid/scott_gilbertson_invoice_92.doc_ Binary files differindex b1b3e50..b1b3e50 100644 --- a/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_92.doc +++ b/invoices/paid/scott_gilbertson_invoice_92.doc_ diff --git a/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_93.doc b/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_93.doc Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3444190 --- /dev/null +++ b/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_93.doc diff --git a/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_94.doc b/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_94.doc Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e707fae --- /dev/null +++ b/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_94.doc diff --git a/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_95.doc b/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_95.doc Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..02e75f6 --- /dev/null +++ b/invoices/scott_gilbertson_invoice_95.doc diff --git a/fedora26review.txt b/published/fedora26review.txt index fbb5e56..fbb5e56 100644 --- a/fedora26review.txt +++ b/published/fedora26review.txt diff --git a/published/linux-mint183.txt b/published/linux-mint183.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a9bbbe7 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/linux-mint183.txt @@ -0,0 +1,47 @@ +The Linux Mint project turned out an early Christmas present, as it usually does, but this year's release is perhaps more important than usual given that Linux Mint is much more alone in the Linux distro world than it was just one year ago. + +The past year saw Ubuntu abandon the Unity desktop and come back to the GNOME fold, which means that Linux Mint is now the most popular distro that doesn't ship with GNOME. Mind you, Linux Mint doesn't just not ship GNOME by default, it doesn't ship a GNOME version at all. That alone makes it unique, but more than unique it makes Linux Mint more important than ever. + +Some might argue it doesn't matter which desktop distros ship with by default since there are dozens of desktops out there and most will work with any distro. It is true that choice has long been one of the appeals of the Linux desktop, but as study after study has showed, users very rarely stray from the defaults and that is why Linux Mint is more important than ever -- it and openSUSE are now the only major distros not shipping GNOME by default. + +Instead Linux Mint offers two different homegrown desktops -- Cinnamon and MATE. + +Several years ago Linux Mint altered its release strategy to track upstream Ubuntu LTS releases instead of chasing each new Ubuntu update. This foundation means that Linux Mint gets the security and maintenance updates Ubuntu LTS users get, but Mint can continue to refine its own desktops, Cinnamon and MATE. It's worth noting that, if the past is any guide, this will be the last Mint release based on Ubuntu 16.04. Linux Mint 19 will likely change its underlying code base to use Ubuntu 18.04 LTS when the latter is released later this year. + +Under the hood in Linux Mint 18.3 you'll find Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, specifically the up-to-date Ubuntu 16.04.3 release. That means you get kernel 4.10, which provides quite a few hardware fixes that plagued earlier kernels (my bluetooth actually works without issue from 4.10 onward, which was not the case when Ubuntu 16.04 was first released). You'll also find X.org 1.18.4 and the usual update to all the GNOME software suite, including the notably faster Firefox 57. + +You'll also find something very interesting in Linux Mint 18.3 -- support for Flatpak applications. Flatpak applications solve one of the core potential problems with Linux Mint. Because Linux Mint is built on a package base which doesn’t change, potentially for five years, it's both stable and safe, but naturally there’s a trade-off -- you don’t have access to new versions of software applications, you can only run the versions which are in that Ubuntu LTS base. That means some apps in Linux Mint can be as much as three years behind what you'll find in, say, Ubuntu 17.10. In practice that rarely happens and when it does there's probably a .deb version of the app available, but then what if that .deb version has dependencies and you need to upgrade core libraries, now your system isn't going to have that stable base anymore. + +Flatpaks solve this problem by packaging applications separately from that base system, so you can have the stable core and the latest and greatest applications. What's interesting about Mint throwing its weight behind Flatpaks is that there's another option you might think they'd be interested in -- Snap packages, which are essentially the same idea, but created by Ubuntu, which is directly upstream from Linux Mint. + +In explaining why it chose to natively support Flatpaks, the <a href="https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3418">Mint blog says</a>, "Flatpak is also flexible and doesn't rely on a middle-man between the editor and the users. Editors and users can choose to rely on centralized app stores if they wish, but they don’t have to. For instance, an editor could ask Flathub to publish its application but it could also publish it directly, or even create its own store (i.e. 'remote'). And downstream users could very well set up their Flatpak client to point to either Flathub or the editor’s store directly, or both of them even. That flexibility is key and it contrasts with Snap which wasn't designed with multiple repositories in mind." + +While there may be advantages to Flatpak for Linux Mint, I would have preferred to see both Flatpak and Snap supported out of the box since there are apps available for one that are not for the other. After all Ubuntu itself ships with first class support for both, it's hard to believe Mint couldn't do the same if it wanted to. As it stands you can install Snapd, the Snap package manager, yourself and it will work, but it's not there by default. For now Linux Mint natively supports only Flatpak applications. + +Linux Mint 18.3's Flatpak support is excellent and is configured by default to point to two Flatpak repositories: Flathub and gnome-apps. You'll find a new section in the Software Manager for Flatpaks. It can be a little confusing since there's apps available either through the traditional repo and through the Flatpak portion of the Software Manager, and visually speaking installation is the same, but this same problem happens in GNOME Software and in Ubuntu. For now it's just a little bit confusing unless you already know what's going on. Still, despite that issue, you'd be hard-pressed to come up with an easier way to install Flatpaks than what Linux Mint has delivered in 18.3. + +It's also worth noting that the Software Manager in this release is considerably snappier in both Cinnamon and MATE. This release also seems to boot a bit faster as well, which helps offset that fact that Mint 18.3 Cinnamon is quite a bit heavier on the RAM. + +If you followed the link to that Linux Mint blog post you might have noticed one other newsworthy bit, the Linux Mint KDE version is going away. Linux Mint 18.3 KDE Edition is the last of its kind. Going forward there will be Cinnamon, MATE and Xfce. You will of course be able to install KDE atop future releases, you'll just have to do it yourself. + +This release sees Linux Mint putting quite a bit of work into its Backup Tool, which was almost entirely re-written and to a certain extent, re-envisioned. Backup tool is now dedicated to making a backup of your home directory, that's it. It saves all your files into a tar archive and will then restore them right where they were with the original permissions and timestamps preserved. + +If you want to back up the rest of your system you'll want to use Timeshift, a system snapshots tool that ships with Mint 18.3. Timeshift works a bit like rsnapshot (another option if you're comfortable with the command line) combining rsync and hard links to make incremental backups of your system. The Mint developers worked with Tony George, the developer of Timeshift, to improve localization, the UI, and add support for window progress and encrypted directories. The improvements are also available upstream as well, so even if you don't use Linux Mint, thank the developers next time you use Timeshift on another distro. + +While most of what's new in Linux Mint 18.3 is distro-wide (everything mentioned so far is the same for both primary desktops), there are a few desktop-specific changes, especially in the Cinnamon release. + +The Cinnamon Edition of Linux Mint 18.3 features Cinnamon 3.6, which is perhaps most notable for supporting GNOME Online Accounts. That means you can now browse your Google Drive or NextCloud files directly in Nemo, the Cinnamon file manager. Another change is that the Synaptics touchpad driver, has been replaced by Libinput. Practically speaking this should have no effect for most users, but if you wrote your own config files you'll want to update them to use the libinput syntax and file location (or you can uninstall libinput, Synaptics is still there and will be used if libinput is removed). + +Cinnamon continues to improve its HiDPI support, the release turns on HiDPI support right out of the box and the UI scaled correctly on HiDPI displays for me with no need to configure anything (it even worked correctly in Virtualbox). + +There are dozens of other improvements in Cinnamon though none of them are particularly earth-shattering, instead this release feels like an iterative one, where most of the focus has been in polishing and improving all the little rough edges of the last release. + +The MATE edition of Linux Mint 18.3 sees, well, pretty much nothing new. It ships with MATE 1.18, which was released back in March of 2017 and while it features plenty of improvements over the previous release, there hasn't been a release since. To some extent the MATE desktop feels very much complete at this point. I have no doubt there will be feature improvements and changes in the the future, but even if there were MATE would be a very solid, relatively lightweight desktop. + +The same could be said of Linux Mint 18.3 more generally, it's a rock solid, relatively speedy desktop experience no matter which desktop you opt for. If you want the stability of Ubuntu LTS releases, but don't want to make the leap to GNOME, Linux Mint 18.3 makes a great alternative. + +linumint-mate-desktop.jpg -- The default MATE desktop in Linux Mint 18.3 +linumint-cinnamon-desktop.jpg -- The default Cinnamon desktop in Linux Mint 18.3 +linumint-backup.jpg -- Making backups with Timeshift and Backup Tool in Linux Mint 18.3. +linumint-flatpak.jpg -- Installing Flatpaks through the Linux Mint Software app. +linumint-software.jpg -- The revamped Linux Mint Software app. diff --git a/open-source-insider-1707.txt b/published/open-source-insider-1707.txt index 783e30b..783e30b 100644 --- a/open-source-insider-1707.txt +++ b/published/open-source-insider-1707.txt diff --git a/open-source-insider-1708.txt b/published/open-source-insider-1708.txt index c140530..c140530 100644 --- a/open-source-insider-1708.txt +++ b/published/open-source-insider-1708.txt diff --git a/open-source-insider-1709.txt b/published/open-source-insider-1709.txt index ff283ff..ff283ff 100644 --- a/open-source-insider-1709.txt +++ b/published/open-source-insider-1709.txt diff --git a/published/open-source-insider-1711.txt b/published/open-source-insider-1711.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8fa1bb8 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/open-source-insider-1711.txt @@ -0,0 +1,23 @@ +Mozilla is getting ready to roll out Firefox 57, a massive update for Firefox and one that just might send many of its users scurrying for the LTS release. + +First the good news. Firefox 57 is faster, quite noticeably faster, thanks to the improvements to what Mozilla calls Project Quantum. Quantum encompasses several smaller projects in order to bring more parallelization and GPU offloading to Firefox. That's developer speak for Firefox now uses more of that really fast GPU you've got. And again, the results are noticeable (some of them have already rolled out). + +Firefox 57 however marks a major change on another front -- Firefox extension. + +For a long time Firefox has supported two types of extensions, the traditional legacy ones we're all used to and the WebExtension variety that work more like what Chrome uses. As of Firefox 57 legacy extension will no longer work. When you upgrade your legacy extensions will be disabled. If you're lucky your favorites will already be available as WebExtensions. I happened to be lucky, for the most part, one of my favorites, an extension that adds Vim-like keybindings to Firefox will never be upgraded (the developer isn't interested in re-writing it). Fortunately there's a fairly capable replacement available. + +Not everyone is going to be so lucky. There's a good chance you're going to lose some extensions if or when you upgrade. Mozilla has put together quite a few resources for users looking for replacement extensions. There's a website, <a href="https://arewewebextensionsyet.com/">Are we WebExtensions yet</a> that tracks the most popular add-ons and can point you to replacements where they exist. There's also a long thread of users suggesting replacements both on <a href="https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/favorite-webextensions/17087/39">Mozilla's site</a> and on <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/6i1fu2/webext_equivalents_to_legacy_addons/">Reddit</a>. + +Quite a few big names haven't yet ported their extensions. Lastpass, DownThemAll, HTTPSEverywhere and Flashblock are among the extensions I happened to notice. But before you pour yourself a nice hot cup of outrage keep in mind that this change is not a surprise to Firefox extension developers. The roadmap has been published for well over a year now. Of course it's understandable that some haven't wanted to do it. + +Downstream software gets orphaned all the time, sometimes by API changes like this, sometimes just because the developer gets tired of doing it. Still Firefox 57 raises an interesting question -- what obligation, if any, do upstream developers have to downstream developers, and by extension, users? + +There is the ruthlessly capitalistic answer: upstream projects have no obligation to anyone whatsoever. That's the approach that most of Silicon Valley's darlings take these days (and one that even its has-beens have belatedly adopted as well). Most services don't even bother with an API and those that do deliberately cripple and limit them so they won't compete with the company's own offerings. The result of this tactic is all around us. Twitter's API is the internet's worst joke, Instagram seems to have an API mainly to show what outside developers can't do, and Flickr is a hollowed out shell of its former self, to pick just three APIs. + +Mozilla, however, is not a ruthlessly capitalistic company. Still the opposite answer is not necessarily better. Legacy extensions slow down Firefox and cause stability problems that end users often blame of Firefox. Mozilla has the telemetry data to prove it. WebExtension add-ons solve that problem. They also allow Firefox to move forward with quite a few other projects that are going to improve the browser down the road. + +Still, it's annoying to have all your extension suddenly stop working. That's a fairly dramatic lack of backward compatibility to send downstream to users. It doesn't take much imagination to see the tech press headlines coming: Firefox breaks everything. If you head over to Reddit or even the Mozilla thread linked above you can read plenty of users already doing just that and Firefox 57 isn't even out as of today. + +Mozilla appears ready to weather the storm, it certainly isn't delaying Firefox 57 until everything is ported. Will someone fork Firefox to maintain support for legacy add-ons? Probably. Will that browser become the new Firefox? Probably not. That's not how software development works at this stage of the game. The users do not and have not ever had control of the tiller, not at Mozilla and not anywhere else. + +It may just be though that this is the art of software development: finding the balance point between two conflicting views: developers wanting to push forward, users wanting to keep things where they are. Software is like life, it is not static, it changes or it dies. Firefox 57 will be one of the largest pieces of software to tiptop the edge of that conflict and I for one, wish it the best of luck. diff --git a/published/open-source-insider-1801.txt b/published/open-source-insider-1801.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..98b10d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/published/open-source-insider-1801.txt @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ + The biggest open source story of 2017 was unquestionably Canonical's decision to stop developing its Unity desktop and move Ubuntu to the GNOME Shell desktop. + +What made the story that much more entertaining was how well Canonical pulled off the transition. Ubuntu 17.10 was quite simply one of the best releases of the year and certainly the best release Ubuntu has put out in a good long time. Of course since 17.10 was not an LTS release the more conservative users -- which may well be the majority in Ubuntu's case -- still haven't made the transition. + +The repercussions of this move are still being felt in the open source world and I believe this will continue to be one of the biggest stories in 2018 for several reasons. The first is that so many have yet to actually make the move to GNOME-based Ubuntu. That will change with 18.04, which is an LTS release set to arrive later this year. Users upgrading between LTS releases will get their first taste of Ubuntu with GNOME come April. + +The second, and perhaps much bigger, reason Ubuntu without Unity will continue to be a big story in the foreseeable future is that with Ubuntu using GNOME Shell, almost all the major distributions out there now ship primarily with GNOME, making GNOME Shell the defacto standard Linux desktop. That's not to say GNOME is the only option, but for a new user, landing on the Ubuntu downloads webpage or the Fedora download page or the Debian download page, the default links will get you GNOME Shell on the desktop. + +That makes it possible for Linux and open source advocates to make a more appealing case for the platform. The ubiquity of GNOME is something that hasn't been the case previously. And it may not be good news for KDE fans, but I believe it's going to have a profound impact on the future of desktop Linux and open source development more generally because it dovetails nicely with something that I believe has been a huge story in 2017 and will continue to be a huge story in 2018 -- Flatpak/Snap packages. + +Combine a de facto standard desktop with a standard means of packaging applications and you have a platform that's just as easy to develop for as any other, say Windows or OS X. + +The development tools in GNOME, particularly the APIs and GNOME Builder tool that arrived earlier this year with GNOME 3.20, offer developers a standardized means of targeting the Linux desktop in a way that simply hasn't been possible until now. Combine that with the ability to package applications independent of distro and you have a much more compelling platform for developers. That just might mean that developers not currently targeting Linux will be willing to take another look. + +Now this potential utopia has some downsides, as already noted it leaves KDE fans a little out in the cold. It also leaves my favorite distro looking a little less necessary than it used to. I won't be abandoning Arch Linux any time soon, but I'll have a lot harder time making a solid case for Arch with Flatpak/Snap packages having more or less eliminated the need for the Arch User Repository. That's not going to happen overnight, but I do think it will eventually get there. + +There's two other big stories to watch in 2018. The first is Amazon Linux 2, Amazon's new home-grown Linux distro based, loosely it seems, on RHEL 7. While Amazon Linux 2 screams vendor lock-in to me, it will certainly appeal to the millions of companies already heavily invested in the AWS system and it appears, from my limited testing, to offer some advantages over other images on EC2. One is speed, AL2 has been tuned to the AWS environment, but perhaps the bigger advantage is the uniformity and ease of moving from development to production entirely through identical containers. + +The last story worth keeping an eye on is Firefox. The once, and possibly future, darling of open source development had something of a rough year. Firefox 57 with the Quantum code re-write was perhaps the most impressive release since Firefox 1.0, but that was followed up by the rather disastrous Mr Robot tie-in promo fiasco that installed unwanted plugins in users situations, an egregious breach of trust that would have made even Chrome developers blush. + +I think there's going to be a lot more of these sorts of gaffes in 2018. Hopefully not involving Firefox, but as open source projects struggle to find different ways to fund themselves and attain higher levels of recognition expect there to be plenty of ill-advised stunts of this sort. I'd say pop some popcorn because the harder open source projects try to find money, the more sparks -- and disgruntled users -- are going fly. + diff --git a/schedule.txt b/published/schedule.txt index a236cb1..a236cb1 100644 --- a/schedule.txt +++ b/published/schedule.txt diff --git a/ubuntu1710-flavors.txt b/published/ubuntu1710-flavors.txt index bd29160..bd29160 100644 --- a/ubuntu1710-flavors.txt +++ b/published/ubuntu1710-flavors.txt diff --git a/published/ubuntu1710final.txt b/published/ubuntu1710final.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bd52a5d --- /dev/null +++ b/published/ubuntu1710final.txt @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +[Update: Canonical has pulled Ubuntu 17.10 downloads from its website last month due to a "bug" that could corrupt BIOS settings on some laptops. Lenovo laptops appear to be the most common source of problems, though users also reported problems with Acer and Dell. + +The bug is actually a result of Canonical's decision to enable the Intel SPI driver, which allows BIOS firmware updates. That sounds nice, but it's not ready for prime time. Clearly. It's also clearly labeled as such and disabled in the upstream kernel. For whatever reason Canonical enabled it and, as it says on the tin, the results were unpredictable. + +According to chatter on the Ubuntu mailing list, a fix is a few days away, with testing happening now. In the mean time, if you've been affected (for what it's worth, I have a lenovo laptop and was *not* affected) OMGUbuntu has some <a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/01/ubuntu-17-10-lenovo-fix">instructions that might possibly help</a>. + +It's a shame it happened because the BIOS issue seriously mars what was an otherwise fabulous release of Ubuntu.] + +This innocuous sounding low-level level kernel feature gives Linux the ability to upgrade BIOS firmware on a motherboard directly. could corrupt the BIOS of an affected laptop, leaving the user unable to save settings or make changes. In extreme cases the bug left users unable to boot their laptop at all. + +Ubuntu 17.10 is upon us and, for the first time in recent memory, there are some very big changes in the latest release of Ubuntu. + +This release is the first since Canonical announced it would cease development of its Unity desktop, Mir display server and its long-touted goal of "convergence" -- AKA one OS to rule them all. All that is gone and in its place Ubuntu has returned to the GNOME desktop. The result is a revamped Ubuntu that feels a bit snappier and more modern than Unity, and, more importantly, seems to have imbued Canonical with a renewed sense of purpose as a distro. + +If you've been using Ubuntu long enough (since prior to 11.04) you're really returning to GNOME, though if you enjoyed Unity it may be something a bittersweet homecoming. While Ubuntu has a done a nice job of integrating GNOME extensions to create something that bears at least some resemblance to Unity -- making things at least look similar means a less jarring transition for users -- there are undeniably missing features compared to Unity. + +There are then two reviews to write here: first, how is Ubuntu with GNOME? And second, how is Ubuntu with GNOME compared to Ubuntu with Unity? + +The answer to the first question is that it's, well, pretty damn good. In fact, were it not for a few bugs that seem to make Ubuntu 17.10 unstable under Wayland, I would call 17.10 a great way to experience GNOME 3.26. Ubuntu has done a good job of integrating a few plugins that improve GNOME's user experience compared to stock GNOME -- most notably a modified version of the Dash-to-Dock and the App Indicator extensions, which go a long way toward making GNOME a bit more like Unity. It's worth nothing that Ubuntu's fork of Dash-to-Dock lacks some features of the original, but you can uninstall the Ubuntu version in favor of the original if you prefer. In fact you can really revert to a pretty stock GNOME desktop with just a few tweaks. Canonical said it wasn't going to heavily modify GNOME and indeed it hasn't. + +The result is a very nicely themed GNOME desktop for Ubuntu that is very reminiscent of the way Ubuntu used to customize GNOME prior to the advent of Unity. Unfortunately, there have been several stability issues in the course of my testing. Trying to configure UFW via the GUI pretty reliable crashes GNOME thanks to <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/synaptic/+bug/1712089">this bug</a>. It's easy enough to configure UFW via the terminal, but that bug affects other applications as well, particularly anything launched by using sudo appname. It's really a GNOME bug, but for whatever reason 17.10 is the first time I've encountered it. + +From my testing the big crashing system stoppers are all limited to running under Wayland though so, my suggestion is, until 18.04 arrives, if you want a rock solid system, stick with running Ubuntu under X.org. + +While the out of the box experience for Ubuntu 17.10 is generally good, it is not arriving out of the blue. It is replacing an arguably more powerful desktop -- Unity. + +There are the obvious missing features, for example the HUD is gone and no GNOME extension I've tried has worked the same way save <a href="https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1250/gnome-global-application-menu/">this one</a> but unfortunately when I tested it was quite buggy. + +There are, however, some other things to be aware of even if you don't care about the HUD and other Unity-specific features, most notably the considerable differences between GNOME applications that used to ship with Unity and those that ship with GNOME proper. Canonical has long patched and heavily modified quite a few stock GNOME apps, but one that's most obvious is Files. Files (formerly Nautilus) has completely different right-click menus and toolbars. + +Other changed apps include Archive Manager, Gedit and Deja Dup, which now only works with NextCloud. The latter is one of those classic GNOME dictatorial decisions that have alienated so many users. Once upon a time Deja Dup supported Amazon S3 and some other very nice online backup solutions, but those were deemed "asking casual users to set up an Amazon S3 account is too high a bar". Last time I checked all you had to do to set up an S3 account was create an AWS user, which while perhaps a bit harder than Google Drive, seems well within the capabilities of most people. Except those that GNOME considers its core. But what drives me batty about this kind of thinking isn't that S3 is too complicated for "casual users" it's that once that decision is made the feature must be removed for everyone. + +Technically speaking you can get the S3 option back. Open conf-editor and navigate to /org/gnome/deja-dup and change the backend key to either gcs, openstack, rackspace, or s3. However, before you resume backing up your files with Deja Dup, consider this note about the future of S3 and other apparently complicated backup services: "Eventually, we might drop support for backing up to them. And then later, maybe we'll drop support for restoring from them too." You don't say. If you're the sort of user who likes to control your data, and likes, for instance making encrypted backups to S3, might I suggest you learn how to use the considerably more powerful and future-proof, s3cmd. + +Alas this is the sort of thinking that pervades the GNOME project, as far as I can tell, from top to bottom. GNOME is not (perhaps it never was) a desktop for those who like customize, do things themselves, or have any say in the future of the software they use. + +This is also where I see a bumpy future for the Canonical-GNOME relationship. Canonical has always been very good at assessing and understanding what the users want and need. They've posted quite a few surveys just to see what people wanted for the transition to GNOME and appear to have taken the feedback to heart. Canonical is also not afraid to turn its back on projects that don't work. A lot of companies would never have admitted that the vision of convergence wasn't what people wanted. That's the sort of move that takes guts and honest appraisal of what you're doing, what's working and what's not. The GNOME project has never displayed that kind of thinking. And as far as I can tell, it operates on nearly the opposite premise. It's to early to say, but I predict conflict down the road. Keep a bag of popcorn handy, I believe there will be plenty of fireworks to watch. + +For now though Ubuntu 17.10 feels very much like Ubuntu has some of its mojo back. For the first time in a long time there are updates worth mentioning and the distro no longer feels like it's in limbo, waiting on convergence. Instead it feels like the groundwork has been laid for a brand new, rejuvenated Ubuntu. While I find this release a little unstable, it's a nice preview of what I think will be the release to jump on board with the new Ubuntu -- next spring's Ubuntu 18.04. + +Screenshots: + +ubuntu1710-desktop.jpg: The new GNOME-based Ubuntu desktop +ubuntu1710-files.jpg: The GNOME Files app, somewhat different than the heavily patched version previous Ubuntu desktops used. +ubuntu1710-software.jpg: The new Ubuntu software app is largely the same as in the previous release. |