Has Ubuntu become a boring distribution?

Has Ubuntu becoming boring?

Many new Linux users start out with Ubuntu, and become enthralled with all of the new possibilities Linux has to offer. But has Ubuntu matured to the point where it has become boring? One Linux redditor shared his thoughts after transitioning from Windows to Ubuntu.

YourBrainOnJazz reports on his move to Ubuntu:

I’m pretty new to Linux. Started about 6 months ago. At first I was enthralled with all the minutiae of Ubuntu. I reveled in the power that was awarded to me. Want to install 6 packages at once? GOFERIT. Want to completely change the UX/UI? DONE.

But now, 6 months later, its totally normal, even maybe a bit boring. Its just a way for me to get work done, just like Windows or OSX or Android. A portal to the internet. When I first started Linux, all my non-technology friends would shudder and their eyes would glaze over when I even mentioned Linux. They all thought that it was only for television hackers and scientists…. If they even knew what it was. And as a person with a non-tech job, I thought that it would be a fun challenge. Its not challenging or difficult, its just like Windows and OSX. (Granted, I am not doing Linux Wizardry on a daily basis for a job.)

I can’t believe how normal and second nature it has become, and now when I am forced to use Windows, I find the whole ordeal distasteful. After using Ubuntu, and getting used to that, I can definitely feel Microsoft breathing down my throat a bit when I use Windows. Worse then that, my computer is this 12 year old Lenovo disaster where the case is literally falling apart, so I can hardly even turn on Windows anymore because it takes 20 minutes to boot with all the updates.

I think us normal people can get behind Linux once were properly introduced to it, but I can definitely see why its tough to get people to step out of their comfort level. You can lead a horse to water, and all that jazz.

More at Reddit

His fellow redditors chimed in with their thoughts about Ubuntu:

Captain-Davy: “Linus once said something like “You don’t use the Operating System, you use the software… When the user notices the OS exists, that’s when something went wrong””

Whotookmynick: “best daemon is one that does its job yet you don’t even know it’s running

–idk who”

Wasabi-Poops: “That’s how I felt about ubuntu in ’04, and it’s just gotten boringer. Synaptic was so awesome, after wrestling with the rpm hunt in Suse.

More and more I’m getting too lazy to deal with windows. I’m a programmer and occasionally I keep a windows box just for some proprietary VPN software and little else.

Ubuntu’s not perfect. People hate unity and the F/OSS diehards turn up their nose at all the closed source blobs, but it usually does “just work”.

There are distros that are faster out there, more lightweight, better security, better emphasis on open source. I’d be interested to see if there’s one that’s better for lazy people such as myself.”

Rahen: “Ubuntu is great in that regard, it’s the perfect distro for those who want something that just work, and couldn’t care less about the inside of their computer. In that regard, I’m one of the few who are glad Unity, systemd, pulseaudio and wayland/Mir happened to the Linux desktop, I think it helped bring it to the 21st century.

Most other distros see Linux as a hobby and treat their users like they should fix the distro issues by themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that approach (it’s just the classical Linux elitism and conservatism), but it has also contributed to lock the Linux desktop to a very niche market. The mainstream distros should focus on leaving the user alone and make sure that everything just work, or at least auto repairs. And indeed, this is where Ubuntu shines.”

Pooerh: “I’ve used a lot of distros over the past 18 years. Gentoo for almost 5 of that, Slackware and Arch 3 each. I know Linux pretty well, I would say.

My daily driver? Ubuntu. I want to get shit done. I don’t have the time to fix the occasional update issue, use the latest bleeding edge versions that sometimes crash, I don’t remember when was the last time I compiled something from source. I don’t even customize a lot, apart from a few tweaks here and there in /etc, a non-default theme or something. Ubuntu just works™, and that’s what I love about it.”

OlderThanGif: “Honestly, one of the great things about using Ubuntu is, if an issue does come up, you just Google for “ubuntu problem description” and there’s a pretty solid chance you’re going to find something from somebody with exactly the same configuration as you. Having a big userbase is a real advantage there.”

Justthisguyyouknow: “That is the main reason i switched from Mint to Ubuntu. The Ubuntu forums wound up being more helpful for my problems and when a solution didn’t exist on the Ubuntu forum, it usually didn’t exist on the mint forum either.”

Berkes: “I started with SuSE5.0, 17 years ago ;).

I do, however, compile, build, tweak and tune a lot. But on servers. My laptop is my working space and that should, at all times, Just Work. I consider myself a power user, allthough as a sysadmin and not a kernel dev or anything.

And that often gets stupid remarks from other Linux users. “Hey nice, you are using Ubuntu, cool! You must love being spied upon by amazon and you must feel a true and utter loser because you cannot change the buttons from right to left. Here, let me give you some completely and utterly stupid advice on a tiling window manager on top of a self-built distro that you should really use in order to be a Real Linux User.”

Edit: To which, by the way, I replied with “No thank you. Ubuntu is my preferred and most trustworthy gateway to vim”.”

Archaeolinuxgeek: “Some people just don’t care about their Linux street cred. My wife won’t use anything but Xubuntu, she’s an engineer and doesn’t have the time nor the inclination to learn the ins and outs of an OS. I’m a computer scientist and flip between Arch, Kali, Cent, and Suse on a daily basis. For all of the hate Canonical gets, people need to acknowledge that they made an easy to use distro that is actually gaining traction.”

_johngalt: “I feel like a newb when I tell people I use Ubuntu/Mint/etc, but the difference is, I use them 8–10 hours a day, every day. I don’t want to mess around with things that don’t work.

Ubuntu and Mint just work.”

More at Reddit

Counter-Strike 1.6 ported to Android

Counter-Strike 1.6 brings back many fond memories for some gamers, and now you can finally play it on Android.

Phil Oakley reports for Android Police:

Let’s state this now: Counter-Strike is awesome. Many an hour has been passed playing the legendary first-person shooter mod for Half-Life, and now even more hours can be whiled away, as the game has come to Android.

Reddit user /u/a1baomarov has posted in /r/Android detailing how to get Counter-Strike working on Android, which involves moving files over from an existing Steam installation, and installing the Xash3D apk.

In my tests, the game worked well, with little to no lag on my Nexus 6P. The controls are admittedly fiddly (for example, it took me a few attempts to get through a normal-sized door), but this is to be expected with a game that was never designed with mobile touchscreens in mind. I attempted to take a short video, but unfortunately adb screenrecord doesn’t record at a high enough framerate for this to come out well. From reading the reddit thread, I noticed that there doesn’t seem to be keyboard/mouse or controller support, but unfortunately I am unable to test this.

More at Android Police

Google releases its annual Android Security Report

Security is a moving target for any operating system, including Android. Google has been working hard to improve Android’s security, and now the company has released its annual Android Security Report.

Adrian Ludwig reports for the official Google Blog:

Today, for the second year in a row, we’re releasing our Android Security Annual report. This detailed summary includes: a look at how Google services protect the Android ecosystem, an overview of new security protections introduced in 2015, and our work with Android partners and the security research community at large. The full report is here, and an overview is below.

One important goal of releasing this report is to drive an informed conversation about Android security. We hope to accomplish this by providing more information about what we are doing, and what we see happening in the ecosystem. We strongly believe that rigorous, data-driven discussion about security will help guide our efforts to make the Android ecosystem safer.

In the last year, we’ve significantly improved our machine learning and event correlation to detect potentially harmful behavior.

We continued to make it even more difficult to get PHAs into Google Play. Last year’s enhancements reduced the probability of installing a PHA from Google Play by over 40% compared to 2014.

More at the Google Blog

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