5 people who care about Ubuntu
1. Mark Shuttleworth
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Ubuntu 15.04 is here – almost. The first beta of Vivid Vervet has been delivered, and with it have come images of the penguin flock that nestles on this OS. I looked at Xubuntu, Kubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu MATE but there’s also Lubuntu and the China-centric Ubuntu Kylin, which I didn’t test. These are beta releases and …
Nothing here to bring me back from Mint.
As for KDE ... I tried a magazine disk of 14.10 a couple of days ago. The current 4.x version reminded me of why I dislike that distro. The (experimental) v5 looked cleaner but seemed to be otherwise more or less identically unpleasant. I'm sure both are quite functional, I just don't like using them.
@Len Goddard - "Nope. Nothing here to bring me back from Mint."
Not to beat a dead horse here, but saying "I'll use Mint, but not Ubuntu" seems a bit awkward to me. Same repositories, same package manager, same installer, same tools, same internals, just a different window dressing. If you said, "I prefer the Mint Cinnamon version of Ubuntu, but I refuse to use Unity", that would sound more accurate.
Almost but not quite - aside from Cinnamon there are other little godsends like Mint's fork of the Nautilus file manager, Nemo. Nemo still lets us do basic things like: having an 'Up' button, toggling between a file path location bar and buttons, and (my personal favourite) pressing F3 to split the window between two folders. These features were all once standard in Nautilus but have been systematically removed. The Mint developers actually listen to their users, which results in there being a lot of little touches like this throughout the OS that make it a joy to use. Mint is more than just Ubuntu+Cinnamon.
Almost but not quite - aside from Cinnamon there are other little godsends like Mint's fork of the Nautilus file manager, Nemo. Nemo still lets us do basic things like: having an 'Up' button, toggling between a file path location bar and buttons, and (my personal favourite) pressing F3 to split the window between two folders. These features were all once standard in Nautilus but have been systematically removed. The Mint developers actually listen to their users, which results in there being a lot of little touches like this throughout the OS that make it a joy to use. Mint is more than just Ubuntu+Cinnamon.
All things that Konqueror has had for years, but it's good to see other file managers picking up ideas and running with them.
My way is shorter.
TBH, I loathe Unity and I hate KDE. Of the 'Buntus I could use Xubuntu or Lubuntu but the other side of my growing disenchantment with Ubuntu is the tendency to produce things like Mir and hoist them on their users. So I'll go with Mint and, btw, I use Mate because I prefer bling free UIs.
14.04 is the current LTS release. Everything that comes out until the next LTS release is where the developers get to try out new stuff.
If I recall correctly, the overwhelming majority of Ubuntu users stick with the Unity version, and they upgrade from LTS release to LTS release and don't try out the intermediate versions or alternate desktops. These tend to be people who are more interested in just using their PC rather than experimenting with it.
The Ubuntu MATE users seem to be largely former Xubuntu users or people switching from Mint to Ubuntu because of problems with the former. Kubuntu has never been that popular with KDE fans, personally I think that other distros have tended to do KDE better. The target market for Lubuntu was old low end PCs, but with the original hardware targets dying of old age and even the lowest end of most of the "old PCs" still around today having more than enough oomph to run the more mainstream desktops, there's not a lot of reason for it anymore so fewer people are using it.
The company behind Ubuntu, Canonical, backs the version with Unity. The other desktops are put out by enthusiasts who get to use Canonical's servers for free.
Seriously you can't work out the numbering system?
They're released every 6 months, with a new Long Term Support release every 2 years.
14.04 is from the 4th month (April) in 2014, and the next one is 14.10, i.e. the 10th month (October) in 2014. after that they increment the year (2015) and go to months 4 and 10 again.
That pretty much is the only real difference.
Yeah, it's just that a windowing system & appset can be quite a large number of associated packages. KDE isn't small (by Linux standards) so having to install one default environment and then install more is just filling your hard drive with crap you don't need.
Each is one meta package, and doesn't require a separate distribution. I have Unity (which I never use), KDE (which I rarely use) and Gnome (which I mostly use) on my home desktop. But for beginners that's quite complex and there are quite a lot of decisions to make, so I do see the advantage of different flavours. After all, especially with KDE vs Gnome, changing window manager implies also changing a whole slew of essentially unrelated packages.
A suggestion: Do what I did (2 years ago) and get a cheap SSD drive for your laptop/desktop, then install MINT Mate on it and play with it. You can swap back to Win7 easily as part of this no-risk procedure. When I say 'play with it', I mean 'kick the s**t out of it'. You can do what you like to it and do a fresh install as often as you like (no license keys or internet activation procedure). You can massage it in many ways to make it look like how you want it to look. There will be swearing; this phase will pass.
When you've got it singing and dancing as you want it, just clone your hard drive and you can then restore it in case of disaster (no annoying checking to see if you've changed the hard drive or the motherboard). There are more clever and more subtle ways of backing up your 'system' but I use whole partition cloning since I'm a fan of big boots and big stick methods. (You'll keep your personal data on a separate partition of course.)
If you don't like MATE, try Cinnamon or KDE or XFCE or LXDE (lovely on old hardware). They're just Desktop Environment interface layers though they do come with their own ecosystem of colour coordinated and matching accessories. You install them from the one-stop-shop which is the Software Manager which also takes care of internally 'registering' them and managing dependencies.
If you get stuck or confused, there are many forums and a quick Google search will usually find a posting or article of use to you. Go on, give it a try. The most you'll loose is some time and some sanity but you will have a spare SSD drive at the end of it all if it turns out to be not suitable for you.
Or you can probably boot from a USB stick without having to open up the PC, if you're daunted by that sort of hardware adventure (a quick delve into the bootup BIOS settings may be all it takes). Or use the free VirtualBox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualBox) software, download the Linux ISO and install it on there to get a feel for how it works. Plenty of ways to skin this particular cat.
Well worth doing, to see how you get on with it and escape the limitations and annoyances of Windows. Should be well within the abilities of anyone who understands how to install software and do a little research here and there.
If most of your needs are web browsing and other general purpose activities that don't depend upon Window-only software, you're good to go.
Or, if money and time are constraints, download the live DVD or better yet put it on a memory stick. Quite easy to do and you can have a poke around and see whether or not it might be something that could spark your interest. It will also tell you whether or not your hardware is detected without any issues.
Especially from a USB stick, the live version works relatively well. And it won't touch anything on your system unless you choose to.
All the way!
"""One of the more lightweight Ubuntu flavours, Xubuntu 15.04 is shaping up to be a relatively minor release, or at least the portions pertaining to the Xfce desktop are."""
And that believe it or is a good thing, XFCE changes slowly and for the good of its users.
No crazy new paradigms here but proper refining.
Tried most distros at one time or another.
Mint is for XP refugees as far as I can see, don't like it much.
Xubuntu is Xcellent, run my Main home server (which doubles as a Kitchen desktop) on it, with MythTV and Zoneminder (for security cams).
Lubuntu isn't bad, used it on my netbook until I got a tablet.
I use Ubuntu 14.04 as my main desktop at home, but I use Android more and more, the desktop is becoming a fading memory for many.