Canonical have announced the Ubuntu forums have been hacked


http://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/07/1...ubuntu-forums/

To their credit, they've been open and upfront about what's happened, what the risks are and what action is taking place to prevent a re-occurrence of the situation.

This time, I hope that there's no external disinformation and distortion since an instance of a hacked website and forum does not equate to an actual insecure operating system (Ubuntu is way more secure than anything Redmond puts out: http://insights.ubuntu.com/wp-conten...rt-Summary.pdf )

Today I have mostly been moving everything I want to keep from my bigger sda1 partition where Mint 17.3 was, to the smaller sda2 where my new 18 is. Hoping I got everything 'cause I deleted everything old and copied everything from the new install to the bigger partition using rsync (and then chroot to set up Grub). I've done it before, but it's always a relief when it works.

So, as my smaller ssd partition is now free, I'm just writing 'io GNU/Linux Multimedia Studio' to a pen drive ready to install on my newly free test partition. http://io.gnu.linux.free.fr/

It uses the Enlightenment (e21) window manager and I haven't used that for years. Should be fun. The pen drive is written, so I'll soon know.

Just want to give some free publicity to this project.

Having been a https://ubuntu-mate.org/ for ages and recommend it to people to use. Still nothing wrong with it, but no matter how much i mess with themes, the household always say it looks dated.
I am afraid after calling Gnome3 since it came out i recently discovered
https://kororaproject.org/ The household said, ooh that looks modern, yes i know it's shallow, but it not only looks modern it also does what i need it to.

Having tried the likes of Fedora and openSUSE ans UbuntuGnome, Manjaro etc.
Even thought the likes of Debian use it as the default, i could never get in to Gnome3.

But been using https://kororaproject.org/ for a while now, and its now my replaced Mate.
They also do other versions.
Can't believe its been out for 6yrs https://kororaproject.org/about
Completely slipped under my radar.

Yes I've seen Korora before, when it was called Kororaa. It's Fedora with bells on, and they do a great job as far as I can see. I tried it live once and really liked it, but it wasn't enough to make me switch away from Mint. However, like you I am now in the mood for some Gnome, so may give it another go. The newest Fedora is getting great reviews so I expect Korora will shine too.

Very much in the mood for some distro hopping at the moment. Mint is awesome but it's time may have come for me. We'll see, but I have found my self missing Manjaro with it's awesome KDE, and likewise Gnome as I say. Do I have a weekend free...

I thought that was the appeal of Ubuntu Mate - a throwback to ancient times before the arrival of the controversial Marmite Unity interface.

That said Korora looks good and I'm keeping a watch too on Solus which looks promising: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=solus

And now for some statistics...

According to netmarketshare.com, Linux's operating system market share was at 1.65% in April but for June that figure had gone up to 2.02% which is a 22% rise albeit from a relatively low level and I think that's quite promising.

This is anecdotal but from comments I've read, some of that increase is down to people not upgrading to Windows 10 but opting instead for dual boot options, e.g. Win 7 + Linux Mint or Win 8.1 + Ubuntu so that they avoid the upgrade and get used to Linux before support is switched off for their Microsoft operating system.

Bizarrely, it seems to be Windows 10 which is contributing to this increase in Linux use but that is not something that happened when the controversial Windows 8 arrived on the scene. I have no explanation for that.

I also think it's worth providing the following two links not least because Chrome OS on Chromebooks is a Linux variant:

Chromebooks outsell Macs for the first time. Google has quietly become an important force in PC sales, according to latest figures.

Google Chromebook Now Owns Over 50 Percent Of Educational Tech Market Share In US. Google has inched past rivals Microsoft and Apple when it comes to the educational technology space thanks to its Chromebook.

Nice video, long but stick with it.
Mint fans may get a bit at some comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgBQ...outu.be&t=2439

Shame Clem wasn't in it.

OpenMandriva 3.0 is out! Not heard from these guys in a while, but this looks like a great release. I don't know about you but Mageia never inspired me much after the death of Mandriva, but this might just fill the gap. I miss Mandriva. Was my first Linux. Gonna download and give it a go.

Heh, didn't Ikey used to work with Clem on Mint?

I can't get upset with the comments. All I can do as a user is listen to what they say and see if they can convince me that they are doing anything better. It's not happened, yet. I know a lot of old-school Linux guys hate Mint. They sort of have to because it's so popular. But until I can get my hands on something that works better for me as a home user, I'm sticking with it. But I always keep my eyes open for a new Linux to take it over.

Well that was a waste of time. Created a bootable USB, but that didn't progress beyond the splash screen. I got an error message about HD,0 and then decided to burn a DVD, assuming the fault being my PC. But the DVD won't work either. It gets to the language/license selection, but won't progress from it. No sooner have I attempted to click my language selection, when the process repeats and resets. The dialogue just keeps resetting. Does no-one quality test these releases? I even went back and re-downloaded the iso from scratch. Same process - same result. Two blank DVD's and a Sunday morning gone.

To be honest, it's all very well a bunch of Linux devs sitting there ranting smugly about Mint, but the reality is outside of it the Linux landscape is really rough looking at the moment. Ubuntu could not be any less interested in desktop Linux, and those based off them clearly aren't finding things any easier.

There are one or two alternatives, but whether they could be trusted as a home user's daily driver I'm not sure. Manjaro was very nice but it changes in such frequent, massive and dramatic ways that I couldn't, nay DAREN'T keep it around. OpenSUSE has been quiet for some time now, Fedora's recent one was looking good until I heard about the recent kernel update destroying installs. And so on.

So I'd be struggling to find something to replace Mint, even if I wanted to. I'm not a dev or a coder of any kind. I'm a home desktop user who wants it to work and is quite happy to put money where my mouth is. Is Solus any good? Ikey certainly talks a good fight. I haven't tried it yet but the screens look good.

I'm not sure that's being entirely fair to Canonical. For example, they have been making improvements to their free Ubuntu distribution including the replacement of the original, and laggy, Ubuntu Software Center. I think that there'll always be something useful from the free offshoots of the commercial Linux providers such as Canonical, Suse and Red Hat.

One thing though, I think there are far too many unnecessary "me too" clone respins of Ubuntu and Debian that don't really add much in terms of either originality or quality. I like what Elementary, Solus and Cub are doing in terms of originality and what Korora and Linux Lite are doing in terms of easy of use.

I do agree though that developers ought to test and retest distributions to ensure that they're safe for release. I installed the latest LXLE 16.04 on my laptop one evening last week and that was soon rescinded because the CPU was always working at 100% and the fan was on full blast all the time. Perhaps it was just my combination of equipment but I shall not be repeating that particular experiment. The installation also had the effect of corruption the bios setting so disabling wifi operation and that had to be rectified too.

Yes, you're probably right. I've just got the hump on. I've been using my Ubuntu install recently and can't complain. Take no notice.

Decided to give Solus 1.2 a go. Downloaded and copied to USB no problem, and - surprise! - it actually works. Why other distros struggle to get the USB booting right I do not know.

Have since had an hour or so with it, and have to say it lives up to recent reports. I am massively impressed with the desktop. A quick browse through the packages shows that it has everything I use too (Retroarch! KeepassX! Handbrake! A newer version of MKVToolNix! Other things!). But the Budgie desktop is absolutely aces. Extremely quick and pretty, and very easy to use. It takes a moment to orientate yourself with the settings, but once you're in it's really nicely centralised.

I'm actually seriously considering switching.

^^ That looks good. What was it they used to say abut Mint? From design came elegance? Looks like Solus has taken 'elegance' to a new level.

I used Mint's USB Image Writer to write the .iso to a stick. It has worked for everything else I've tried. Golang looks interesting.

Hmm. Looks like I'll need to erase the OS on /dev/sda2 before it'll let me install there (using the manual method). Seemed to have to go to screen extremes to reboot (top right corner - then bottom right corner). May just need some configuration. Looks worth the effort though. Amazingly fast boot from the USB stick.

It's seriously impressive isn't it? I'd heard good things but it really does feel curated for the desktop.

As soon as I get a bit of free time I'm going to commit it to disk and see how it fares. Apparently they've recently decided to make the distro rolling-release.

In view of the discussion directly above, l think it is worth mentioning the Budgie Remix project which aims to bring the Budgie desktop environment to Ubuntu and the developers concerned hope that it will eventually become an official Ubuntu flavour (and good luck to them):

http://www.webupd8.org/2016/04/a-qui...-1604.html?m=1

I'd be interested to know if you find the same problem with the install procedure as I did. I always go for the manual option, but I can't even get it to use the swap partition. Can't select any other partition either.

Goes to try again. I bet it works this time

ETA: And it did. No idea why clicks didn't work the first time. Installation is as fast as USB boot! It took less than 20 seconds after providing the details.

Good to have the option to not install a boot loader, but I think something got changed down there as my Mint 18 was very slow to get past the blinking cursor top left hand of the screen mode. Have just updated grub, so I'll go have a look at it.

All's well with Solus 1.2, but I need more settings. Couldn't find one for high dpi, which is essential for me. Very few appearance settings available, but everything else is there and looking good.

Fastest install and boot up I've known. Boot takes about 12 seconds from the grub menu to the desktop and network established.

Re settings, don't think Solus comes with full settings enabled, as shown in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj3HZg2xfNE

Re HDPI..
From the man himself, Solus has issues with it
https://github.com/solus-project/bud...top/issues/390
https://solus-project.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1567

https://www.reddit.com/r/BudgieRemix...supportissues/

Thanks for the links. Just too many decisions taken which I don't like and no obvious way to change things to my preference mean it's not for me right now. I like the high contrast desktop look, but elsewhere, where I'm more likely to need high contrast, things are pale and indistinct.

Things like the mouse mileage I'd need to do to switch off or reboot would annoy me and I couldn't even find how to get the file manager out of icon mode.

I believed the big tick on the Software and updates app. meant it was all up to date. Unlikely as I'd only just installed it. It wasn't.

Do agree, lots of choice of Distros out there, that's not always a good thing! except for Korora and GeckoLinux

Re Fedora, SUSE and Ubuntu.
Im tending to stay away from any Ubuntu OS even moved away from my highly praised Ubuntu Mate.

Having recently discovered
https://kororaproject.org/

Tonight m trying
https://geckolinux.github.io/

Yes i could just download original Fedora or OpenSUSE But that means loading extra codecs/multi media stuff etc etc, but never found them to work too great.


So if somebody is willing to do that and test it for me others, im ok with that

Very interesting. I'm still gonna gamble it and install it as a main OS for now. Faint heart and all that. I'm a bit worried as I remember Ikey having a similar project some years ago, based on Debian, and this got binned due to lack of support. I hope this isn't the case now as this seems really well put together, and I like the idea of going in at this stage to see it grow, rather than cling on to the rafters as it collapses!

Anyway, meant to do it last night but internet went down (thanks Virgin), but it's OK now so I'll give it a go. Be back later (prob tomorrow).

Well that was short lived but interesting. I probably shouldn't have tried to use it as a main OS, and stuck it on the spare partition instead. But never mind. Back to Mint anyway....

I liked it. It's surrounded by magic "ifs" at the moment for me. I love the design, though I though the omission of the Plymouth screen was a bad choice. Now, I get that Plymouth is a right fecking mess, but for me a black screen would have been a better option than ugly text. The Linux geeks love their ugly text scroll, but I prefer the option of it rather than having it as default. It's easier for a geek to switch to text boot, than it is for a home user to get a splash installed.

As I suspected, once in, it's missing many of the niceties of the Mint desktop I'm used to. They can scream all they like, Cinnamon has these things down pat. Lovely simple user tools, like the USB creator. Again, yes I can use dd, no problem, but it much more approachable to have the lovely GUI.

The package manager took an age to install Chrome, in fact I exited it as I think it's building it from source. But I'd decided I wasn't keeping it for now anyway. And yes I did have an issue with the installer too, but this was because I wasn't clicking the right bit. This wasn't exactly clear imho, but maybe this is because I'm used to things like Calamares and the Ubiquity installer.

Many of these things will no doubt improve over time, but for me despite my enthusiasm I'm going to retreat to a see what happens position. The community is again very small and this resulted in Ikey's last project having to quit. I do hope this doesn't happen here, which makes me feel a bit bad for removing it. It needs support.

Maybe the next release I'll stick it on a spare partition longer than I did this time. Like I say I shouldn't have attempted to remove Mint for it. Overall my opinion is really positive, but...not yet!

A few days late. But happy birthday

https://bits.debian.org/2016/08/debian-turns-23.html

And now for a useful development:

Linux can now sync notifications from your Android phone and reply to SMS messages. It works just like Cortana does between Windows 10 PCs and Android phones, and like Apple’s Continuity feature works between Macs and iPhones.