[HN Gopher] Canonical releases Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Canonical releases Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster
        
       Author : el_duderino
       Score  : 84 points
       Date   : 2023-04-20 19:13 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (canonical.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (canonical.com)
        
       | eis wrote:
       | I just did the update on a workstation of mine. During the update
       | to 23.04 the Firefox snap was _downgraded_ from 112.0.1-1 (latest
       | /stable) to 111.0.1-2 (latest/stable/ubuntu-23.04). When trying
       | to start Firefox after the reboot it will detect the downgrade
       | and in order to prevent data corruption offer two choices: create
       | a brand new user profile or quit. Oh Canonical, the Firefox snap
       | fun never ends.
        
       | elcritch wrote:
       | Ugh, great another pointless name to memorize. I really have come
       | to dislike the "cute names" Ubuntu uses and "Lunar Lobster" just
       | makes me not want to. Not that Debian or MacOS are much better.
       | 
       | Sure maybe they're great if you're dealing with it all day, but
       | to I have to Google which version is newer half the time. Or sit
       | there and sing the alphabet song to myself cause I forget if h or
       | k comes first.
        
         | MattPalmer1086 wrote:
         | Oh come on! Nobody actually refers to the versions by the fun
         | names anyway, the date version numbers are what people search
         | for when they need info. They're just a bit of fun.
        
         | zokier wrote:
         | Ubuntu release names are alphabetical, that makes them great.
        
       | oriettaxx wrote:
       | how much $$ do they want for security patches? ;)
        
         | voytec wrote:
         | I'm sure you'll learn this from ads in motd, apt (if it's still
         | working) and possibly new places which Canonical's suits found
         | suitable for ads placement.
        
         | frant-hartm wrote:
         | Is it really that hard?
         | 
         | https://ubuntu.com/pricing/pro
        
       | 988747 wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | transfire wrote:
       | I have yet to install a snap that failed to fail. Usually it
       | seems to do with accessing drives. For instance Firefox will not
       | open the Downloads folder and will not open file dialog for email
       | attachments in gmail.
        
         | dcminter wrote:
         | Check you haven't accidentally uninstalled xdg-desktop-portal-
         | gtk - sounds like an issue I had with that cause.
         | 
         | (I loathe snaps, but they do mostly work IME)
        
         | joshxyz wrote:
         | nodejs snap, there will be errors in using the vm context for
         | javascript sandboxing.
         | 
         | nodejs deb, there wont be errors.
         | 
         | weird snaps.
        
       | warner25 wrote:
       | I got the upgrade to Fedora 38 on my machines today too (although
       | I see the official release was a couple days ago).
       | 
       | I'm curious about who gets excited about and uses these non-LTS
       | Ubuntu releases. It seems to me that the five-year LTS offering
       | is the main reason to use Ubuntu, if you want stability and don't
       | like Debian and don't need to pay for RHEL. If you want fresher,
       | why not Fedora or an Arch derivative?
        
         | ohgodplsno wrote:
         | It's a jack of all trades with no very particularly weak
         | points, that allows me to just work. I'm done fucking around
         | with config files because oops Arch wants to install glibc-
         | alpha-rewrote-in-haskell.
         | 
         | Want a recent kernel ? Ubuntu is relatively good at that. Want
         | software that's more or less up to date, without needing the
         | bleeding edge ? Their repos are good at that. Not in the repos
         | ? You can probably add-apt-repository something and you'll be
         | good to go. Need a reliable DE ? Gnome is fine. Hate Gnome ?
         | It's alright, there's a KDE and Xfce version too. What's that,
         | you want snaps ? Yeah, it's there. Flatpaks ? There too. Is
         | more or less Debian compatible, which is pretty much the only
         | distro you can expect people to properly package for ? Gotcha.
         | Weird setups like Optimus that end up being broken in most
         | places ? Works just fine. Proprietary nvidia drivers ? Sure.
         | 
         | I'm done fucking around for hours getting Arch to not be crap,
         | or Fedora to not use fucking pacman, give me apt. I just want a
         | work distro that will handle 99% of what I throw at it without
         | any issues.
        
         | vegabook wrote:
         | May sound trite, but Ubuntu feels more visually polished than
         | any other distro. It's clearly in the Canonical DNA to actually
         | care how stuff looks design wise which is an otherwise major
         | failing across the other distros.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | Historically, it's been popular as a user-friendly desktop
         | distribution, in which case updating semi regularly to stay on
         | a current version makes perfect sense
        
           | themodelplumber wrote:
           | Agreed, if you know how Ubuntu works fairly well, and want to
           | maintain a relatively modern system feel, LTS might not even
           | be the right track. I used to aim to upgrade to non-LTS plus
           | an .01 or .02 at the very end, ideally.
           | 
           | Moving to LTS later on as an experiment was extremely stable
           | but I had to ask how much stability I really needed, as the
           | excitement with my desktop was waning. :-)
        
         | rcarmo wrote:
         | I upgraded all my machines to 38 today (I stopped running
         | Ubuntu on desktop due to snaps), _except_ servers (which are
         | all Ubuntu LTS except hypervisors). I tend to stick to Ubuntu
         | LTS on servers and never try .10 releases, let alone interim
         | years...
        
         | MuffinFlavored wrote:
         | > and don't like Debian
         | 
         | why might somebody not like Debian?
        
           | linsomniac wrote:
           | The primary reason I'm using Ubuntu rather than Debian is the
           | LTS. I know the general consensus is that "Debian is as
           | stable as Ubuntu LTS", but we are still working on upgrading
           | our 18.04 boxes a few months ago.
           | 
           | We can't change all of our platforms as quickly as Debian
           | retires old releases. Especially not while also doing our
           | other operations work. In some cases we can just lay down the
           | new OS and run Ansible and we're good, but in other cases
           | porting to new OS releases can take months of effort.
        
             | warner25 wrote:
             | I thought Debian releases were good for the same five-year
             | lifecycle.
             | 
             | I expected the answer to the parent's question to be
             | Ubuntu's support for non-free things out-of-the-box.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | numeromancer wrote:
       | Canonical releases Ubuntu 23.04 Luzer Lockdown
        
       | als0 wrote:
       | Does anyone else remember when Ubuntu releases
       | felt...significant? Since 12.04 changes have felt incremental.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | voytec wrote:
         | Sure. Forcing snap by breaking apt was significant for all
         | users valuing efficiency and non-commercial OSs.
        
         | g8oz wrote:
         | Some changes have been detrimental like trying to force Snaps
         | onto people.
        
         | illiarian wrote:
         | I, for one, don't want significant releases. I want releases
         | that focus on stability and fixing bugs. You want a significant
         | release? Make it a one-in-five-years deal.
        
         | zokier wrote:
         | since 12.04 we have had unity->gnome, xorg->mir->wayland,
         | upstart->systemd, python2->python3, iptables->nftables,
         | addition of zfs, snap, livepatch, lxd, and dropping 32bit
         | support.
         | 
         | All of those were pretty major changes and definitely not just
         | incremental. And that is just top of my head, I probably missed
         | lot of things. On the other hand, most gnome2 era releases are
         | pretty much a blur in my mind. What to you made those feel more
         | significant?
        
         | Veen wrote:
         | Is that a bad thing? It's quite nice to have a stable and
         | consistent OS.
        
           | themodelplumber wrote:
           | If it's even a thing at all? The incremental changes add up
           | to a pretty huge deal, especially if using the LTS only.
        
         | Scarbutt wrote:
         | What macos releases felt significant?
        
           | voytec wrote:
           | For users, in a positive sense, something around Snow
           | Leopard.
           | 
           | For AAPL investors - every version after that is more
           | "significant", especially after OS X was renamed to macOS and
           | dark mode was used to keep nose-y media out of anti-privacy
           | changes like user being _informed_ what is  "shared with
           | Apple" instead of being _asked_ whether anything should be
           | "shared with Apple".
           | 
           | Downhill after that - children are used in hideous manner by
           | Cook to invade users' privacy, like scanning and profiling
           | their files as a _pretense_ of looking for child porn. I find
           | Cook 's use of child porn argument to spy on all users
           | absolutely disgusting.
        
             | sbuk wrote:
             | You know they did a 180 on that, right?
        
               | redeeman wrote:
               | there is no going back. once you expose your way of
               | thinking about your customers, its done
        
         | rad_gruchalski wrote:
         | 1. It's free. 2. Boring is good. 3. Unlike Windows -
         | significant but meh, more adverts in the product one paid for!
        
           | eastbound wrote:
           | > It's free
           | 
           | I want to pay for my Linux.
           | 
           | I'd write a wishlist but anyone could write another one, but
           | I'd take any OS that convinces me to pay $300 a year.
           | 
           | I'd pay for anything as nice as macOS (with the old control
           | panel). I pay that price for my IDE and an OS is worth way
           | more, open-source at that, which actually advances humanity.
           | Linux is the VIIth wonder of the human civilization, a
           | demonstration of human selflessness, as opposed to Windows,
           | Linux will be here in 50 years becauE OSS is a donation of
           | code to our children; Also no human construction has ever
           | been so widespread across the world and even on other planets
           | (Linux is powering the helicopter flying on Mars), of course
           | I wish I could pay for... for a Linux that made me
           | productive, not like Ubuntu.
           | 
           | Also paying means it would actually receive good marketing
           | teams.
        
             | rad_gruchalski wrote:
             | > I want to pay for my Linux.
             | 
             | Go for it: https://ubuntu.com/pro/subscribe.
        
               | eastbound wrote:
               | We need a serious talk about that attitude.
               | 
               | It's been systematic that each time someone says "I'd pay
               | for a good linux", they're given the link as if to assume
               | we're not already paying. You forgot that I want a nice
               | OS in exchange.
               | 
               | Moreover, I _left_ Ubuntu. It's software that I can't be
               | convinced to use even if it were free. Canonical's
               | choices (with Unity at the time, but also the mouse
               | issue, and so on) are of the rare kind that they can
               | convince someone to uninstall it and go buy 2x more
               | expensive hardware to run macOS.
               | 
               | What's missing is, I'd pay good money, but I don't want
               | to fiddle around with the OS. I'd pay for the betterment
               | of the OS, but with distribs, if you pay, you're still
               | not the customer.
               | 
               | And I pay for Debian. But it's not my desktop OS.
        
             | vlunkr wrote:
             | This would be easier if there were only one Linux desktop
             | environment. However, that would be antithetical to the
             | whole idea of Linux.
        
             | yamtaddle wrote:
             | Making Linux significantly better to use on the desktop
             | would require taking tight control of the GUI stack [EDIT:
             | really, the entire _multimedia_ stack] to de-balkanize it
             | and integrate  & standardize its various layers, which
             | would also mean modifying practically every program that
             | uses it (which is why one can't just declare some GUI stack
             | their official one and be done with it--the overall
             | experience will still be super-janky).
             | 
             | That's... let's go with _unlikely to happen_.
        
             | dmonitor wrote:
             | https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-
             | platforms/enter...
             | 
             | Is this not the theory behind Red Hat?
        
             | Arnavion wrote:
             | At the OS level, the amount of money spent on developers
             | will not be satisfied by a small number of individual users
             | paying $300/year. At that level the funding comes from
             | enterprise customers.
             | 
             | You're welcome to use that $300/year to sponsor individual
             | projects / developers.
        
       | aendruk wrote:
       | Release notes:
       | 
       | https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LunarLobster/ReleaseNotes
       | 
       | (Can't see Canonical's site behind the tracking popup.)
        
       | themodelplumber wrote:
       | Looking this over..enterprise stuff, more enterprise stuff, third
       | party dev tools upgraded as usual, which is great...and oh what's
       | this?
       | 
       | > Updates for running snaps download in the background and are
       | applied automatically when the app is closed.
       | 
       | Boom, that's a big one.
       | 
       | > Users and administrators can now pause automatic updates of
       | specific snaps as long as desired.
       | 
       | What, wow.
       | 
       | Something tells me the usual critics still won't be satisfied,
       | but these are both a big deal and tell a story about listening to
       | the improvements that were desired by users.
       | 
       | > Ubuntu 23.04 includes GNOME 44, delivering further usability
       | improvements with a focus on new quick settings options for
       | bluetooth device management and dark mode.
       | 
       | Not a small change...
       | 
       | > The Firefox snap also benefits from significant performance
       | gains on the Raspberry Pi with hardware accelerated rendering.
       | 
       | Q: Is this limited to Raspberry Pi, or not so much?
       | 
       | The Steam changes also seem like potentially huge conveniences to
       | me.
       | 
       | Nice job Ubuntu team! Satisfied user since 2004 here; I do switch
       | between the various buntus (kurrently Kubuntu) & love to discover
       | other distros too.
       | 
       | I was thinking back today...Ubuntu was awesome to me when I
       | Photoshopped and Netflixed in Windows in 2009 [1], played with
       | various hardware & learned to stream video to some of those
       | devices on the WLAN, like my n810 [2] (does VLC encode & stream
       | the given RSS feed at this point in time? That was part of the
       | experiment...), and got really into creating my own journaling
       | and notetaking methods for life-improvement purposes and extreme
       | weight loss [3] in recent years. It's supported everything I
       | wanted to do and has effectively run my local business admin &
       | creative this whole time as well.
       | 
       | Being a Linux enthusiast since the late '90s, this is way more
       | than I would have dared hope for! Very happy to reflect on all
       | those experiences.
       | 
       | 1. https://www.friendlyskies.net/images/435t.jpg
       | 
       | 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7PYUZ5z1wM
       | 
       | 3. https://www.friendlyskies.net/images/396t.png
        
         | voytec wrote:
         | > Something tells me the usual critics still won't be
         | satisfied, but these are both a big deal and tell a story about
         | listening to the improvements that were desired by users.
         | 
         | Critic here. apt is still handicapped and snap is still being
         | pushed down users' throats for profit. Improvement of undesired
         | change resulting in less user control than the state before
         | undesired change is an act of pulling the wool over people's
         | eyes. snap is an unfriendly garbage with which you never know
         | if you should use `--classic` without trial and error. Doing
         | small fixes to this garbage doesn't fix the fiasco that
         | handicapping apt to push snap was.
        
           | silisili wrote:
           | Same exact complaint. I'm fine with snaps existing. I'm even
           | fine with it being the default. But I should be able to
           | easily avoid using them, and apt sure as hell shouldn't be
           | tricking people into them. The fact that they had to even do
           | that shows that people didn't want them.
        
           | tzs wrote:
           | How is apt handicapped? I Googled but didn't find anything.
        
             | nixcraft wrote:
             | They are talking about forcing snap even when you type `apt
             | install firefox` or `apt install lxd`. The Ubuntu will
             | redirect to the snap package (e.g. `apt install firefox` ->
             | `snap install firefox`).
        
               | grumpyprole wrote:
               | Wow that's pretty misleading
        
             | phil9909 wrote:
             | One example: `apt install firefox` installs the snap
             | variant (which the user probably just uninstalled to
             | replace it with the apt variant, as it is installed by
             | default.)
        
           | wmf wrote:
           | Install Debian.
        
             | NexRebular wrote:
             | Or run ubuntu as lx-zone on illumos.
        
             | dcow wrote:
             | Ubuntu feels like the macOS of Linux distros. Debian still
             | feels like... a Linux distro. I haven't used Ubuntu in
             | awhile though maybe I should try again just to compare to
             | my Debian machine.
        
               | pmontra wrote:
               | I switched from Ubuntu 20.04 to Debian 11 at the end of
               | 2022. If you gave me the updated laptop without telling
               | me anything I'm not sure that I'd notice any difference.
        
               | ithrow wrote:
               | How do you handle chromium in Debian stable? It always
               | lags behind significantly behind chromium/chrome
               | releases.
        
               | capableweb wrote:
               | The trick: Don't use Debian Stable, use Testing. Despite
               | it's name compared to "stable", Testing is pretty stable
               | in my experience.
               | 
               | - Chrome Stable - 112.0.5615.137
               | 
               | - Debian Bullseye (stable) - 108.0.5359.94
               | 
               | - Debian Bookworm (testing) - 112.0.5615.49
               | 
               | Most people I know who run Debian for personal desktops
               | uses Testing, not Stable. Vice-versa for servers.
        
               | doubled112 wrote:
               | The security repo that is added by default has newer
               | Chromium packages
               | 
               | https://wiki.debian.org/Chromium
               | 
               | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-
               | package/c...
               | 
               | - buster 90.0.4430.212-1~deb10u1
               | 
               | - bullseye 108.0.5359.94-1~deb11u1
               | 
               | - bullseye (security) 112.0.5615.121-1~deb11u1
               | 
               | - bookworm 112.0.5615.49-2
               | 
               | - sid 112.0.5615.138-1
        
               | skovati wrote:
               | My philosophy has been to let the distro package manager
               | handle system packages (kernel, OpenSSL, etc) but then
               | use flatpak [1] to install user progs like Chromium and
               | VSCode so I get bleeding edge releases and sandboxing.
               | 
               | [1]
               | https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.chromium.Chromium
        
               | forty wrote:
               | I use Firefox ESR with Debian stable + backports, and the
               | internet seems to work as far as I can tell (I'm not
               | doing anything fancy with it though)
        
             | monsieurgaufre wrote:
             | That's what i don't get about all the snap complaining. If
             | you know what a snap is, you're already an outlier. If it
             | bothers the user so much, why don't they go straight to the
             | source to begin with (aka Debian)? You can get to the exact
             | same setup.
        
               | silisili wrote:
               | I haven't tried Debian in a decade or so, in fairness,
               | but it used to be the case that -
               | 
               | a) ubuntu had newer packages
               | 
               | b) ubuntu had a much nicer installer
               | 
               | c) ubuntu had nice defaults/polish on the ui and fonts
               | 
               | Maybe Debian has changed since, but that's why I'd been
               | hesitant to install it in the past.
        
               | doubled112 wrote:
               | The current stable Debian (11) is two years old. Of
               | course it has older packages than distros released more
               | recently.
               | 
               | Debian 12 is newer than 22.04 right now, and probably
               | about the same as Ubuntu 23.04. It's in hard freeze, and
               | soon to be released though.
               | 
               | The Debian live DVDs are using the Calamares installer
               | now, if that's more your style. Debian's normal installer
               | is still the same as it always was.
               | 
               | Debian is still more default, you set it up for yourself
               | than Ubuntu. I don't like Ubuntu's defaults, but I know
               | what you mean. GNOME's defaults are better now, if that
               | helps out.
        
               | forty wrote:
               | For a/ you can use Debian testing and I think it's more
               | or less the same.
               | 
               | For b/ I don't install my OS often enough that it matters
               | that much to me (I think on a laptop I went from Ubuntu
               | 9.04 to 18.04 without ever re installing)
               | 
               | These days I like old and stable and use Debian stable +
               | backport (mostly for kernel) even for desktop, and I'm
               | really happy :)
        
               | zokier wrote:
               | Ubuntu lts and debian release on pretty comparable
               | cycles, so the newer packages doesn't really hold
               | anymore. Debian installer is pretty straightforward these
               | days imho, but I might be just used to it. Ubuntu has
               | done more customization on the DE compared to pretty much
               | everyone, with Debian you get closer to vanilla gnome
               | experience. This can be seen both as pro and con.
        
               | johnny22 wrote:
               | or use a derivative like popos or mint. that way you get
               | newer packages than debian.
               | 
               | I am interested to see how they will fare in the long
               | term as ubuntu moves farther and farther away from debian
               | though.
        
           | robocat wrote:
           | > snap is still being pushed down users' throats for profit
           | 
           | Unless you are paying for Ubuntu, there is little point
           | complaining. Change distro if you don't like what they are
           | doing - there's plenty of choice out there.
           | 
           | Alternatively pay for Windows 11 and get way more
           | advertisements!
        
         | Y_Y wrote:
         | I don't know any users who both know what snaps are and like
         | them. Why did Ubuntu hit 18.04 and then decide to only make
         | things worse in future?
        
           | chrsig wrote:
           | > Why did Ubuntu hit 18.04 and then decide to only make
           | things worse in future?
           | 
           | Oh, ubuntu beem making decisions that many users think make
           | things worse since it was first released
           | 
           | and yet it's still quite popular
        
           | NathanOsullivan wrote:
           | Snaps is just the latest in a long line of failed attempts to
           | differentiate their desktop.
           | 
           | Give it a few years and they will switch to Flatpack.
        
           | icelancer wrote:
           | I run selenium for a ton of tests and snap + chromedriver is
           | easily one of the worst parts of the experience.
        
             | jupiter_flyby wrote:
             | Same. I had sucess with
             | https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/docker-selenium
        
         | mrtweetyhack wrote:
         | [dead]
        
       | dopeboy wrote:
       | User since the Hoary Hedgehog days. Congrats Canonical on the new
       | release.
       | 
       | Slight tangent - is 22.04 in a good place as a daily driver? I
       | know it's an LTS release. Mostly recalling concerns around
       | wayland and zoom playing well together. Running a thinkpad t15
       | gen 2 if that helps.
        
         | themodelplumber wrote:
         | I use Kubuntu 22.04...dot 04 I think?, haven't tried Zoom yet
         | but all of my video-related stuff has worked fine, from
         | streaming to video editing to various games. It's been solid
         | here FWIW. I'm considering turning on backports, for that
         | quasi-rolling experience.
         | 
         | Note, I don't generally take the upgrade path and install from
         | scratch before migrating my home folder & cron jobs and all
         | that. Apt-clone can help as well.
        
         | hef19898 wrote:
         | As total Linux noob, I run Ubuntu 22.04 as a daily driver on my
         | private Lenovo X1 Extreme Gen 2. No issues whatsoever, runs
         | better than Windows. Exception: battery life, but I only use
         | the nVidia graphics regardless of OS, and even under Windows
         | that didn't reault in great battery life.
         | 
         | The sole caveat, not all of my Steam library has been ported to
         | Linux. Other than that, I hardly ever boot Windows on that
         | machine anymore.
        
         | javier2 wrote:
         | I want the Wireguard changes for GNOME 44, and 43 had lots of
         | nice UI updates as well.
        
         | 3836293648 wrote:
         | I've never even had a good experience with the zoom app on X.
         | But it all works perfectly with the web version on both X and
         | Wayland
        
         | linsomniac wrote:
         | Been using 22.04 for ~a year now as my primary workstation. My
         | main pain-point is that I can't do screen sharing or snapshots
         | with Wayland. If I had it to do over again, I'd avoid Wayland.
         | Also, Firefox as a snap has largely pushed me away from
         | Firefox.
        
           | dopeboy wrote:
           | Does it work in X?
        
             | linsomniac wrote:
             | Unsure. It should. I went all in on wayland, and have
             | decided to just use my mac for screen sharing and snipping
             | rather than messing around with X. Is it easy to switch?
             | Switching to Sway was easy.
        
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       (page generated 2023-04-20 23:03 UTC)