Ubuntu News From Later March
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-28 10:52:41 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-28 10:53:47 UTC
Pundits
In the same way, the conflicts between Ubuntu and its commercial counterpart Canonical on the one hand and other free software projects on the other hand are not just about Unity, the wording of the Canonical Contributors' License Agreement, the technical differences between Mir and Wayland, or any of the half dozen other issues being so passionately discussed at any given time.
Ubuntu is famous for being a distribution where newcomers can discover Linux in a community environment. With ample support and tons of software in the repositories, it's a distro that seems to have it all.
E-mail
Add an email client to the list of homegrown open source software applications that Canonical is building for the Ubuntu operating system. A few days ago, an Ubuntu developer wrote about the touch-aware, "converged" email client his team is building for Ubuntu mobile platforms.
Tablets
The current Ubuntu 14.04 development cycle has been heavily focused on bringing the tablet spec up-to-spec for a v1.0 release this April, while work on honing the Mir display server to handle the adaptive convergent needs of larger screens has also progressed at speed.
Phones
Why does it matter? “A phone’s baseband can be exploited in a number of ways by malicious external devices that force it to surrender information about the user that can sometimes lead to suppression of protests or even death,” says Tynan. “A closed baseband does not allow for the examination of one of the most critical components of the phone, which goes against the open-source philosophy many Ubuntu users have come to embrace.”
Canonical has announced the release of a set of Ubuntu Touch images. While they have yet not been promoted to stable, they bring along a host of new and interesting additions.
Ubuntu developers are putting all the effort they can possibly muster into Ubuntu for phones, and this can be easily seen from their latest release, which is one of the biggest and most important in a while.
It is a known fact that Canonical is prepping up to get the Ubuntu Touch Qt 5.2.1-based images off the ground. As expected, there were a number of roadblocks in getting it in the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and Ubuntu Touch. Anyhow, it is noteworthy to add that the developers are working at an impressive speed in bringing the first promotable image for users.
Spanish mobile start-up Geeksphone is reportedly in discussions with Canonical to offer Ubuntu Touch in its new phone, the ‘Revolution’. Featuring a 4.7-inch IPS display, the dual-OS running smartphone was released last month.
The dual-core Intel-based smartphone currently packs two operating systems – Android Jelly Bean and an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox OS.
Starting his presentation with an introduction to the fifth LTS release, 14.04 LTS, Shuttleworth proudly announced that statistics suggest that enterprises using Linux are fast moving towards Ubuntu and LTS releases. Moreover, some of the largest desktop deployments are also running on LTS releases.
'Apps'
The Ubuntu developers have set out a roadmap for the new Ubuntu Software Store during a session at the Ubuntu Developer Summit. The current Software Centre in Ubuntu is pretty good and has come a long way since its creation in 2009. It gives users a way to search for new software, read and write reviews, and rate the programs they download. However the Developers seem to doing a significant overhaul of the current system for its inclusion in Ubuntu Touch. The reason for this is to make it more focused on Mobile, have better user experience and to incorporate their mobile packaging format ‘Click’.
Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth (pictured) said he is “pretty confident about the pace of the app ecosystem growth” for the Ubuntu platform in the mobile market, despite the fact that it has not so far been available in commercial devices.
Ubuntu 14.04
Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 LTS Beta 2 (Trusty Tahr) has been made available by its developers featuring a small number of changes and updates. It follows the release of the Ubuntu base (with the only beta in this release cycle) and Kubuntu.
As of nowish, the archive is frozen for 14.04 Final Beta preparation, and will continue to be frozen from here until Final release next
month.
In my usage of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in its late development state on my new main production system, the ASUS Zenbook UX301LA, there's three new system setting additions to Unity in this newest Long-Term Support release that I've found to be really useful and welcomed.
“The objective of the Ubuntu Kylin project is to create a variant of Ubuntu that is more suitable for Chinese users. We are committed to provide you with a delicate, thoughtful and fully customized Chinese user experience out-of-the-box. For instance, by providing a desktop user interface localized in Chinese and installing common software that Chinese users commonly use by default. Ubuntu Kylin has been a formal member of the Ubuntu family, since UbuntuKylin 13.04. Now, we are working on 14.04,” reads the official announcement.
For a couple of years, Valve has been saying that, when properly optimized, games run faster on Linux than on Windows. Granted, the company hyped Linux — most notably, Ubuntu — for quite some time because its upcoming Steam Machine was set to use Linux as its operating system of choice, as Valve tried to forego Windows.
When trying out Ubuntu 14.04 LTS last week on the same hardware, the experience went much better. When booting Xubuntu 14.04 LTS off USB, the system quickly booted and the Xfce session started up straight away without running into any problems using the Haswell HD Graphics 5000. The first problem run into though was the Broadcom 802.11ac WiFi adapter not working... The problem comes down to the firmware for the BCM4360 not being present on the Ubuntu image. Fortunately, it's an easily correctable problem (both last year and now) by installing the bcmwl-kernel-source package from the Ubuntu archive. As soon as that was installed, the wireless network was working flawlessly, while until then I was using a USB wired network adapter due to the MacBook Air's lack of Ethernet. There were no other immediate issues and I was moving on to installing the Xfce version of the Ubuntu "Trusty Tahr" on this Apple hardware.
HiDPI
In continuation of my OS X Is No Longer On My Main System, But I Already Have Regrets article from earlier in the week, I have now found more comfort in using Unity 7 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS for the ASUS Zenbook Haswell ultrabook, but the HiDPI experience with Ubuntu's Unity is still far from perfect.
Mir and Unity
While the Mir display server isn't being relied upon by the desktop in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, it is being used right now by Ubuntu Touch and Canonical developers are still working on its development in a steadfast manner for deployment in a future Ubuntu Linux release. Here's some of the latest commits to Mir.
At this week's virtual Ubuntu Developer Summit besides saying Mir will be the default on the Ubuntu desktop by 16.04 LTS and also saying systemd will be used when it's hardened (again by the 16.04 LTS time-frame) Mark had some other interesting comments.
It has been almost exactly one year since Canonical announced Mir, a replacement for the X window system. Mir was originally planned to become the default system in the Ubuntu desktop for the 13.10 (October 2013) or 14.04 (April 2014) releases, but it was delayed due to compatibility problems in multi-monitor setups. Those problems were with XMir, an X11 compatibility layer that ensures that Mir can work with existing applications built for X.
It has been almost exactly one year since Canonical announced Mir, a replacement for the X window system. Mir was originally planned to become the default system in the Ubuntu desktop for the 13.10 (October 2013) or 14.04 (April 2014) releases, but it was delayed due to compatibility problems in multi-monitor setups. Those problems were with XMir, an X11 compatibility layer that ensures that Mir can work with existing applications built for X.
The demo showcases, Mir’s capabilities as display protocol. Qt Meta-Object Language (QML) applications are used in the demo. QML is mainly used for mobile applications where touch input, fluid animations and user experience are crucial. Qt scene graph renderer is used the display compositor for Mir in the demo.
Canonical developer Daniel d'Andrada has posted a new video showing off Unity 8 as a Mir compositor.
Wil Wheaton
Not put off by his encounter with Unity, Wil goes on to mention that he opted to run the lightweight XFCE desktop on his Chromebook. Not his favourite, but one whose speed he appreciates and that evokes a nostalgia within him.
Misc.
Ubuntu One is my go-to cloud storage system. It’s a cross-platform (Linux, Mac, Android, IOS, Windows), easy to use, robust tool that anyone can use as their cloud storage. But, even the best systems can stutter or fail to work.
Developers have been porting Ubuntu and other operating systems to run on tablets and TV boxes with Rockchip RK3188 quad-core chips since mid-2013. The RK3188 chip is one of the fastest ARM Cortex-A9 processors around, and Ubuntu is surprisingly snappy on devices with the processor… but up until now there’s been no Linux support for hardware-accelerate graphics.
For some, the first thing that comes in mind when asked this question is "Linux is an operating system." This is not necessarily false, but it isn't completely true either. Linux per se is only the kernel of the operating system, the core part of it. A Linux-based operating system comprises the Linux kernel, the GNU tools and utilities (like the Bash shell, the GCC compiler or the file manipulation tools), and, on top of these, entire desktop environments (like KDE, GNOME or Xfce), along with other applications (like a music player or an image editor) and games. That being said, it is safe to call Linux an operating system when referring to it as Linux as a whole, with everything that accompanies it.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- GNU/Linux Still up (statCounter Says to 6%) in Bosnia And Herzegovina
- Let's see where it is at year's end
- Making Layout Changes
- Feedback can be sent to us
- Behind an Economy of Fake 'Worths' and Fictional 'Valuations' or 'Market Caps'
- They normalise white-collar crime and say "everyone is doing it!"
- Links 18/01/2026: "South Africa is Running Out of Software Developers", Companies Spooked to Find Slop is a Major Liability
- Links for the day
- Place Your Bets: Who Will Die First? Microsoft or IBM?
- Not even joking; make a guess
- Restoring Professional Pride in the Tech Sector
- Rejecting slop isn't being a Luddite
- Slop Bubble "Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble"
- Edward Zitron Says It like it is
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 17, 2026
- IRC logs for Saturday, January 17, 2026
- Microsoft Lunduke Keeps Distracting From the Real Problems With Rust
- Microsoft Lunduke is stigmatising critics
-
- IBM Turning Up the 'RTO' (Stress) and 'PIP' (Fear) Heat on Workers, Rebellion May be Brewing
- Sometimes it feels like today's executives at IBM view IBM workers as a liability
- Links 18/01/2026: Indonesia Against Comedy, Media-Hostile (Censors Comedians) Convicted Felon in White House Defecting to Opponents of NATO
- Links for the day
- Eventually the Joke (and Financial Fraud) is on Microsoft, Stigmatised for Slop
- Is Microsoft trying to commit suicide?
- GNU/Linux Leaps to All-time Highs in Virgin Islands
- it seems to have started around the "end of 10"
- 'Cancel Culture' Doesn't Work (in the Long Run)
- Despite all the attacks, I'm enjoying life, I'm keeping productive, and our audience continues to grow
- Making and Keeping the Sites Accessible
- Sometimes less does mean "more" (or "MOAR")
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part IV - How Europe's Largest Patent Office Recruited Drug Addicts, Antisemites, and People Who Absolutely Cannot Do the Job (But Know the 'Right' People)
- To better overlap industrial actions we might delay/postpone/pause this series for a bit
- Benefiting by Adding Presence in Geminispace
- As the Web gets worse, not limited to bloat as a factor, people seek alternatives
- Google News Recently Started Syndicating Another Slopfarm, Linuxiac
- Even if Google is aware that there is slop there, it's hard to believe that Google will mind
- Software Patents and USMCA (or NAFTA)
- We recently pondered going back to issuing 2-3 articles per day about patents and common issues with them
- IBM Sued Over PIPs
- PIPs are "performance improvement plans"
- Sites With "Linux" in Their Name That Are in Effect Slopfarms and Issue Fake Articles
- We try to name some of the prolific culprits
- Gemini Links 18/01/2026: Raising Notifications From Terminal and Environmental Sanity
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- Links 17/01/2026: Internet Blackout Normalised, Russian Attacks Civilians by Causing Massive Blackouts
- Links for the day
- Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm, Calling Them Out Isn't Fixing That
- What a shame. A once-decent site about "Linux" bites the dust.
- Luzern Lion Monument, Albanian Female Whistleblowers: Swiss jurists were cowards
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- The Splinternet is Already Here, Owing to the Militarisation of Technology (Slop, Social Control Media, Back Doors, and More)
- you know what's gonna happen next...
- Stack Ranking Against IBM/Red Hat Staff and a Signal of Mass Layoffs (RAs) Justified by Red Hat and IBM as Poor Performance/Misconduct/Other
- Working in an atmosphere like this sounds like a nightmare
- Gemini Links 17/01/2026: Slow computing and Environment Leak
- Links for the day
- Links 17/01/2026: US Censorship and Violence Crisis, Growing Anger Levels Against Slop Sold as "Intelligence"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's "valuation depends on infrastructure that does not exist."
- Indeed
- The Typical Trajectory: Datamation Began Experimenting With LLM Slop for Fake Articles. Then Datamation Died. (Last Month)
- It's always ending up this way
- Accounts or Devices (e.g. Phones) That Get 'Burnt' Have Many Pitfalls
- Embassies and consulates habitually fail at this
- Avoiding the Spooks (Nobody Watches the Watchers, They're Practically Unaccountable)
- If more people adopt encryption, it'll be easier for us to deal with whistleblowers
- Protecting Whistleblowers Requires Technical Knowledge/Skills
- even the highest media judges aren't aware of how to protect sources
- At Least 5 Women Quit Brett Wilson LLP in Recent Months. It's the Firm That Attacked My Wife and I on Behalf of Americans (One of Them Strangled Women).
- It seems like good news that the women escape this workplace
- Slop About Slop and Slop About "Linux"
- In short, avoid slopfarms
- Report/Benchmark Says 'Vibe Coding' Results in Security Holes
- There are risks they don't like talking about
- EPO Abuses Covered in Spanish
- Knowing what we know (and heard/saw), the sinister silence of the media is perceived by some to be complicity of the lower order.
- Richard Stallman Encourages "ICE Out For Good" Protests, His Opponents Do Not (Passive and Uncaring About Human Rights)
- He has done a lot philosophically, politically, and so on
- Record Traffic in Geminispace or Over Gemini Protocol
- it's never too late to join
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part III - Europe's Second-Largest Organisation on Strike, Protests, Other Industrial Actions to Come Impacting Over 95% of the Workforce
- The EPO's management is highly evasive, weak, and vulnerable
- Claim That IBM Marked 15% of its Workforce for Potential Layoffs
- No wonder we keep hearing from Red Hat people who say they hate IBM
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, January 16, 2026
- IRC logs for Friday, January 16, 2026
- Great Reset at IBM, the Company That Pulps Red Hat
- In 2026 many workers are RTO'ed, PIP'ed, and at Red Hat many have effectively 'left the company' and now start afresh as "IBM" staff
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part II - Breakout of Discontent This Winter in Europe's Second-Largest Organisation
- So far we've caused a lot of panic and stress inside Team Campinos
- The "Alicante Mafia" - Part I - An Introduction to the Mafia Governing the EPO
- Are some people 'evacuating' themselves to save face?
- J.H.M. Ray Dassen & Debian, Red Hat, GNOME unexplained deaths
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- At Microsoft, "Firing People is a "Cheat Code" to Pump the Stock Short-term But They Are Literally Destroying the Company's Soul Long-term."
- They frame layoffs as a "success story"
- Gemini Links 16/01/2026: "Porting My Main Website Over to Gemini" and Seeed Studio DevBoard
- Links for the day
- IBM Stacked and Ranked Badly, Maladministration Dooms the Company
- Now they stack people up for PIPs and layoffs ("RAs")
- Google News Poisons Its Own Index With More Slopfarms (Including "filmogaz")
- Naming and shaming lazy slobs who rip off other people using LLMs can work, eventually
- Links 16/01/2026: UK Royal Family's "Legal Team Accused of Dishonesty, Fraud and Misconduct", OSI Still Controlled by Microsoft (the OSI's Spokesperson is on Microsoft's Payroll, Not Interim Executive Director, Deborah Bryant)
- Links for the day
- Writing About Corruption
- Fraud is everywhere
- The B in IBM is Brown-nosing and Buzzwords (or Both)
- International Buzzwords Machines
- Naming Culprits in Switzerland
- Switzerland is highly secretive about white-collar crime
- IBM's 'Scientific-Sounding' Tech-Porn Won't Help IBM Survive (or Be Bailed Out)
- Who's next in the pipeline?
- IBM Was Never the Good Guy
- its original products were used for large-scale surveillance, not scientific endeavours
- The Bluewashing is Making Red Hat Extinct (They All Become "IBM", Little by Little)
- IBM does not care what's legal
- Slopfarms Push Fake News About Microsoft Shutdown, 30,000+ Microsoft Layoffs Last Year Spun as Only "15,000"
- The Web is seriously ill
- Countries Take Action Against Social Control Media and 'Smart' 'Phones', Not Slop (Plagiarised Information Synthesis Systems or P.I.S.S.)
- None of this is unprecedented except the scale and speed of sharing
- Sanitised Plagiarism as "AI" (How Oligarchy Plots to Use Slop to Hide or Distract From Its Abuses, or Cause People Not to Trust Anything They See/Read Online)
- This isn't innovation but repression
- Sites That Expose Corruption Under Attack, Journalism Not Tolerated Anymore (the Super-Rich Abuse Their Wealth and Political Power)
- Sometimes, albeit not always, the harder people try to hide something, the more effective and important it is for the general public
- Recent Layoffs at Red Hat (2026 the Year of Ultimate Bluewashing)
- I found it amusing that Red Hat's CEO has just chosen to wear all blue, as if to make a point
- Links 16/01/2026: Social Control Media Curbs in Australia Underway, MElon Still Profiting by Sexualising Kids 'as a Service'
- Links for the day
- More People Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux"
- We still see many distros and even journalists that say "GNU/Linux"
- LLM Slop on the Web is Waning, But Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm
- I gave Linuxiac a chance to deny this or explain this; Linuxiac did not
- More Signs of Financial Troubles at Microsoft, Europe Puts Microsoft Under Investigation
- The end of the library is part of the cuts
- Team Campinos Talks About SAP Days Before EPO Industrial Actions and a Day Before the "Alicante Mafia" Series (About Team Campinos Doing Cocaine)
- EPO staff that isn't morally feeble will insist on objecting to illegal instructions
- Pedophilia-Enabling Microsoft Co-founder Cuts Staff
- Compensating by sleeping with young girls does not make one younger
- Microsoft Shuts Down Campus Library, Resorts to Storytelling About "AI" to Spin the Seriousness of It
- Microsoft is in pain
- Free Software Foundation (FSF) Back to Advertising the Talks of Richard Stallman
- A pleasant surprise
- Stack(ed) Rankings and Ongoing Layoffs at Red Hat and IBM (Failure to Keep Staff Acquired by IBM)
- IBM is mismanaged and its sole aim is to game the stock market (by faking a lot of things)
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 15, 2026
- IRC logs for Thursday, January 15, 2026
- Gemini Links 16/01/2026: House Flood and Pragmatic Retrocomputing Dogfooding
- Links for the day
