Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus - Oh Shucks ... it's Schuster!

Spring time. Vivaldi. Distros. And a long, thorough review of Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus 64-bit edition, the latest Ubuntu LTS release, covering live session, installation in a multi-boot (Windows and Linux, 16 partitions) setup on a laptop with UEFI, Secure Boot and GPT, and post-install use and configurations, including look & feel, network connectivity - Wireless, Bluetooth, Samba sharing and printing, and issues with the Realtek driver and frequent network freezes, Ubuntu software, applications, extras, online accounts, multimedia support - HD video and MP3 playback, smartphone support - iPhone and Windows Phone, system testing, performance, responsiveness, stability, customization, and various problems like more network bugs after waking from suspend, missing packages and discrepancy between GUI and command line, Flash installation errors, short battery life, and more. Enjoy.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/ubuntu-xerus.html


Cheers,
Mrk

 

Thanks for the review.
Your words are harsh but you're right. I've been multibooting 16.04 flavours (Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubun Mate) for the last week and the experience has been quite bumpy.
Not excusable for a company with the clout of Canonical.

 

That's how Linux is working for the past few years: rushing things, products not ready, a LOT of regressions, etc.

The Radeon/Mesa guys, while doing a lot of good things, also introduce a ton of bugs. So does VALVe.

Developers don't seem to care anymore these days, only a few actually do listen to the community, fix bugs and everything.

And being big doesn't mean much either. For the past 6 years or so, it seems distros are only adding new wallpapers and a handful of unimportant features, making breakages the big players in town.

It's like the game industry: New and exciting things are not coming from big developers/plublishers (watch "EA in a nutshell", on YouTube), but from indie developers. The new and exciting things seem to be coming from small developers, like the Mesa guys, MATE, user forums, etc.

 

That's one heap of LTS disappointment.
Pfff.
"Stay away, children!" edition.

 

Tried Ubuntu-MATE 16.04 and it was buggy.
Went back with Debian immediately...

 

The problems seem to be mostly drivers. My Ubuntu 16.04 VM is doing great but it didn't do so good in my X220T.

 

The biggest joke for this LTS, one that is still going on, is that you CAN NOT install third party .deb packages with Ubuntu Software. You have to either use dpkg under terminal, or use GDebi to install the .deb. This is unacceptable. It is beyond my wildest imagination how the hell such a bug could survive all the testing stages: alpha, beta1, beta2, and RC, and Final. So sick of that I immediately restored my 14.04.4 disk image.

 

I don't know if that observation is generally true. But in the case of Ubuntu I think that one important aspect is their fixed release dates. They don't deviate from these dates even if bugs still exist or new features are not yet fully tested. Now look how, e.g., Fedora handles such things: They've often postponed releases (in some cases several times) until existing bugs were fixed. I'm not saying that Fedora is perfect - but their release policy is as it should be, IMHO. Why can't Ubuntu do it it that way?

 

Yeah, it's ridiculous. I found that out when I tried to install Google Chrome and failed. I had to install Gdebi Package Installer and then everything was fine. It wasn't that way in 14.04.x.

 

That's not an issue for Debian Part of Ubuntu's problem is that their release cycle is poorly thought of; you can see that because their freezing period is only 1 month (contrary to 6 months on Debian) and that's not enough time to fix most bugs.

To be honest, each release cycle (e.g. stable, testing, etc) has it's advantages and disadvantages. While not pushing things early is a good thing, the test-bed is much smaller and this delays the release of things.

But I agree that Ubuntu shouldn't ship if it's not ready.

 

you do know schuster is basically a derivative of the german word for **** right? which is ********

so you are basically calling Ubuntu 16.04 a piece of ****

is that the proper spirit for the open source world?

 

This is actually the title of a South African comedy show/film from the 80s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oh_Schucks...._It's_Schuster!

The name of the guy behind that series is Leon Shuster.

That's his name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Schuster

So no, this is not what you have in mind.

Mrk

 

Yes! I was not arguing against release cycles in general. All I'm saying is: Most users wouldn't be all to appalled if they got a 16.05 or 16.06 release instead of a 16.04.

 

No, that's entirely wrong. I don't know where you got that from.

 

Ah - I see now. I over-read into it (as is sometimes my habit)
apologies

 

No harm done. And you learned something new and interesting.
Worth watching too. Entertaining in a kitschy kind of way.
Mrk

 

Oh well ... maybe Canonical will swat the bugs soon.

 

I'm also surprised that no one mentioned the fact - Shuster = South African comedy, Mark Shuttleworth = South African. Too subtle?
Mrk

 

Too subtle for me, although I'm also pretty sure Ubuntu isn't Zulu for 'can't install Debian'. lol

 

To be honest, I don't think that's enough.

IMO Ubuntu shouldn't have non-LTS releases, they take too much effort out of Canonical.

Canonical should do somewhat like Debian:

• LTS's released every 2 years, with 6 months of freezing instead of 1;
• A rolling-release branch, like Debian Testing;

 

Something similar was suggested and discussed about 2 years ago but declined by Shuttleworth for whatever reason.

 

All bugs have been weeded out and Ubuntu LTS runs stable and does its job. Best of all Debian removed LSB that was followed by Canonical. Those with Epson printers which requires drivers were stuck so were Google Earth users and many other program users like Maple and more. Canonical listened via launchpad bug and restored LSB making everything functional. deb package and software center issue was fixed within few days.

 

Yes right now 16.04 LTS runs quite well and stable on all my 4 computers. Tried manjaro linux on one of them but never could get the sound to work. Fedora 24 has quite a few annoyances such as programs won't quit, slow response etc. Ubuntu appears to be the most hardware compatible distro, working fine on vastly different hardware sets. So my journey to finding a different distro ends and I ended up with Ubuntu LTS on all my devices. Ubuntu LTS just works.

 

Yabbut Unity....

Im kidding, but I could never get past Unity's layout, bloat, horrific battery life, and overall appearance. With the *buntus ive always liked Xubuntu, and I suppose Kubuntu might be pretty slick now that the head developer left canonical.

 

I haven't had any issues with 16.04 even in its earliest releases. The bugs were annoyances, nothing serious. I still use 14.04 on everything I've installed it on previously. I'm not up for reinstalling Bumblebee or redoing any of the other serious tweaks I've done with it but 16.04 will go on any new installs.

I actually like Unity a lot. It is minimalistic and efficient. It works great with Virtualbox VMs which fit quite nicely inside its layout. I haven't seen any power use issues, it hums along quietly without excessive power consumption so I would say any battery issues were due to something other than Unity.