Yet another Hacker News

Ubuntu 26.10 (Stonking Stingray) released

30 points dgavrilov 1 hour ago 31 comments

eu 59 minutes ago | parent

just upgraded an old notebook from 16.04 to 18.04 :) i’m surprised they kept the files up for such a long time.

luipugs 44 minutes ago | parent

...but why?

wongogue 42 minutes ago | parent

The oldest commercially supported release at the moment is 14.04 so of course they will have the files.

antonyh 45 minutes ago | parent

I personally consider Ubuntu an irresponsible choice. They hold back security updates unless you subscribe to Ubuntu Pro with the 'esm-apps'. I'd rather use a distro that doesn't apply a ransom to security updates.

philipallstar 43 minutes ago | parent

How do they compare with Debian for the same updates?

esseph 40 minutes ago | parent

> I personally consider Ubuntu an irresponsible choice

Absolutely. Injecting ads into the desktop and cli, having a package manager that runs as a root service, their decades of poor upgrade testing, etc.

I have never found them to be trustworthy when other, better options exist.

torben-friis 39 minutes ago | parent

Is Ubuntu pro just a paid extension for the LTS?

If so, why pay for that rather than upgrading? Honest question.

esseph 37 minutes ago | parent

May not be able to easily replatform the application running on top of the 5-10yr server or VM.

LTS also only covers core OS components with security updates, not the 30k+ packages available in the repo...

torben-friis 21 minutes ago | parent

Yeah I can see a niche situation where it's helpful, it's just surprising to me that it's a common enough case to make it a business line.

sverhagen 11 minutes ago | parent

Someone may run into some issues upgrading their one server, and decide to power through it. Enterprises create a project plan, have meetings, get QA involved, identify risks, mitigate them, need sign off from the security team, not just on the new Ubuntu version, but they may talk themselves into re-certifying the entire bla-di-blah. For them it makes economic sense (in the short term) to just pay for the support plan that keeps them "compliant" and comfortable on the current version.

And this, among other things, is why I like the agency that small companies should be able to offer you.

stackskipton 21 minutes ago | parent

Sure, but if you are such a situation, then paying for Operating System is probably cheaper than paying engineering time to fix it. Also, most stuff these days could probably be shoved into a container and thus extremely distro/version agnostic.

All applications need maintenance. Either you do it at application level to keep on top of its dependencies or you do it at OS/3rd party level. Either way, someone wants to get paid.

esseph 19 minutes ago | parent

> Sure, but if you are such a situation, then paying for Operating System is probably cheaper than paying engineering time to fix it.

Yes, that is the entire point of what I said.

> most stuff these days could probably be shoved into a container and thus extremely distro/version agnostic

It depends on if it's an in-house app or managed and built by a 3rd party (may void contract). Also depends on the risk of life/monetary loss if something goes sideways.

sekh60 36 minutes ago | parent

I agree, since that move I've migrated everything I had running on Ubuntu to Debian, with the exception of my big blue button VPS whose installation script is really tied to it.

stackskipton 32 minutes ago | parent

What? Ubuntu Non-LTS, which this release is, support window is 9 months of support and LTS is 5 years free + 5 years paid.

That's well spelled out here: https://ubuntu.com/about/release-cycle

You can also just upgrade your LTS and continue to get support for free.

blablabla123 32 minutes ago | parent

Ubuntu is surely controversial but no, security updates aren't paid. ;) Well, unless you need an LTS that cannot be updated for whatever reasons for 10 years. Or for people that need an extra FIPS approval.

liamgm 11 minutes ago | parent

sound like FUD, ubuntu don't hold back security updates for their LTS distro , move to newer LTS one if you wanna secure your system, same goes to Debian or RedHat or Windows , who wanna maintain older Debian 9 security or Windows 7 secuity update.

erelong 32 minutes ago | parent

Used to love Ubuntu but they dropped X11 support so I'm out

(I'm fine with Wayland for those who want it but it still breaks things I've used)

rfield 29 minutes ago | parent

*Gnome dropped X11

Liftyee 8 minutes ago | parent

Agree. My next upgrade from 24.04 will be to Debian.

OroPla 30 minutes ago | parent

I left ubuntu back during the unity desktop days. It was a great desktop for beginners, but not my cup of tea. Since then they put ads in their operating system and embraced these nonsensical snap packages, so I'll never go back to ubuntu.

Instead, I'll probably move everything over to Void next.

calgoo 3 minutes ago | parent

Im on Void Linux and using X11 too. While i do a lot of my config using an LLM these days, i do find the system simple again. No SystemD, no wayland etc (This works. great for me as im on a desktop with a AMD GPU and well supported HW. If i was on a laptop i would use Wayland probably).

jadar 29 minutes ago | parent

stonks?

ilaksh 21 minutes ago | parent

I still remember when I found out about Ubuntu 100 years ago.

It's clear to me that Ubuntu is no longer in fashion. So what is popular these days? From what I heard, I think it's Fedora or Arch (such as Omarchy), but only with some slick UI stuff like Hyprland and Caelestia.

josteink 16 minutes ago | parent

Whatever just works.

Ubuntu used to be the Debian that just worked without tweaking.

Today I find Debian to be the one which’s works without tweaking, and Ubuntu the one where one has to undo/disable lots of Ubuntuisms.

So for me: Server is Debian. Laptop is Arch.

hbn 16 minutes ago | parent

I recently revived my old gaming PC from 2015 and I wanted to install Pop!_OS cause that was the cool new-ish one everyone's been talking about. But I straight up could not get it to install on my hardware (I think my GTX 970 is too old for official support)

I ended up installing Mint and it's Good Enough™

jckahn 12 minutes ago | parent

Why does fashionibility matter? It's an OS, it just needs to work well. Ubuntu still does that.

bayindirh 6 minutes ago | parent

> Ubuntu still does that.

Debatable.

    - Snaps
    - Replacing something battle-tested with something written in Rust, MIT licensed and with 140 CVEs (uutils).
    - Pulling rugs and replacing debs with snapswithout telling it, because "it creates positive pressur e on the snap team and drives the quality higher".
    - Promising to open source Snap store to allow alternative stores and forgetting what they had said.
    - Bullying Debian to push their changes to Debian to offload software maintenance (they wanted to make netplan the default in Debian, for example).

... etc, etc.

bayindirh 9 minutes ago | parent

If it's a server: Debian Stable or Rocky Linux (choose according to taste).

If the person can put in the work and doesn't need bleeding edge software: Debian Stable.

If the person can put in the work, the machine is in a secure environment, not going to serve anything and is a desktop system: Debian Testing.

If the person can't put the work and wants something working: Fedora.

If the person wants to dive deeper: Arch, Gentoo, LFS.

aframemodular 20 minutes ago | parent

Reminds me of the "Stonky Kong" meme

josteink 19 minutes ago | parent

Ubuntu started doing too much weird or non-standard stuff, so i moved all my servers to Debian.

Previous releases was MIR, Upstart, Snapd… This release it’s no X11 and GNU Coreutils replaced by buggy Rust rewrites.

Debian feels more like pure FOSS and in general just better. None of that icky flavour in the back of your mouth.

throw0101c 14 minutes ago | parent

Seems that this release still allows for coreutils (rm, cp, etc) to come from the GNU folks in addition to the Rust-based uutils:

* https://packages.ubuntu.com/stonking/coreutils

See "Ubuntu 26.10 completes transition to Rust-based coreutils" from last month:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49696697