EDIT: Did some reading and I see it looks like just the desktop is dying, not Ubuntu itself. Which is good to hear. Although what are they meaning with this talk of cloud stuff? I am 100% completely and totally opposed to any form of “Cloud”. So if they will be moving to that, then count me out. This is why I am leaving windows and refuse to move past windows 7.
As you might tell, I am a bit out of the loop on all of this, by a few years lol.
Still, what distro would you recommend going forward?
ToyKeeper, I feel for you. I was in a similar situation many, many years ago. For me it was quite devastating. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do next and I felt mad at the people that were responsible for it. But eventually I landed a new job and after awhile, learned it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I really liked the new environment, my new job duties, new coworkers and boss. Good luck to you on your new adventure!
What, you mean just because I’ve been doing free software since Linux was born?
I think you may have just answered your own question.
“I need something like Windows. I’d use Mint, but it’s too much like Windows.”
Really though, I’d suggest something based on Debian (including Mint) due to its nice architecture, and then pick whatever interface you like. You don’t have to change distros to change interfaces. I’m guessing one of the Mint flavors probably would be a decent fit though, and it’s worth trying them to decide which one tastes best.
Also, to be fair, Fedora has come a long way and it’s pretty nice now too.
The cloud is totally unrelated to the desktop. Cloud stuff is all about new tech for servers. Sure, there are desktop apps which use cloud services, but the cloud itself is a way to abstract out the fiddly hardware-related details of running internet services.
Canonical isn’t exactly moving to the cloud… it more or less created the cloud, and totally dominates the entire field of cloud infrastructure. Last I checked, it has ~70% of that market. Chances are, if you’ve ever used any cloud service, it was running on Ubuntu. And you’ve probably used a lot more cloud services than you might expect, considering how much of the internet runs that way now.
So, there you have it. You’re using “the cloud” right now, just by using BLF. And BLF’s cloud provider apparently likes the moon almost as much as I do.
Ah, my out-of-the-loopness is showing. Good information, that makes a lot more sense. I have only given computer tech a curious glance for the past decade or so, after the prior 15 years spent living computers I realized that it was eating a rather large hole in my wallet and my work changed so I no longer had to deal with them daily. So I built a end all, be all PC to last me 5 years and told myself not to even look at what happened in that time.
I am still using that PC to this day actually and it is only now starting to show it’s age, the only upgrades since I built it have been tossing some extra ram I found in it and upgrading to an SSD when my 10k HDD died. I recently benchmarked it against an I5 machine I was working on and it actually beat it in most things except ram speed.
I am gonna play around with some Live versions today to see what they act like. Although I guess I will try the Ubuntu-gnome as that appears to be what the official release will be in the future. Never tried gnome before.
My only real issue with Mint is that it is pretty far down the fork tree, I tend to prefer staying closer to the trunk when possible. Which is where the debate for Ubuntu comes into play for me.
Have the Mint devs ever got printers working like they do under Ubuntu? I’ve tried Mint several times over the years. I really wanted it to live up to the claim of being Ubuntu - better. There have been some minor issues that I was able to overlook and even some major ones that I worked through. But printing never worked. First, it was difficult to even get a printer installed. Then, it was impossible (for me) to get it shared in my network, found and installed by my other computers. In Ubuntu, I could plug in a printer and it would be found and installed on that computer, and also shared, and found on the network, and installed on each of my other computers, all automatically.
Not sure about printers… I’ve been avoiding them ever since I worked in a print shop back in the dark ages. I find them to be deceptively evil, filthy things, requiring constant maintenance and fuel, and I’d rather drop by Kinko’s on the rare occasion I need something on paper.
Speaking of printing, I wonder if Till made it through the layoffs… Printing on Ubuntu works because of him. Incredibly nice guy, probably somewhere on the autism spectrum, and you really wouldn’t believe how much he cares about printing. His dedication is off the charts. He pretty much holds the Linux printing story together all by himself.
Yikes, sorry to hear you were affected by the shakeup ToyKeeper. But you have incredible creativity and technical talent, so I’m sure you’ll find something else. Just make sure it has a decent corporate culture, and that it lets you be creative and gives you enough freedom to enjoy doing your job in the way you feel is best.
Regarding Unity, I grew to like it quite a lot when I was using Ubuntu, but I just didn’t like the fact that it was extremely difficult/impossible to port to other Linux distros due to their forking of old Gnome technologies. And in general I didn’t like the way Ubuntu was forging its own path and not working more with the OSS ecosystem. So since then I’ve been using a set of spins that I created based on openSUSE. I’m really happy with the underlying openSUSE base system, both Leap (fixed releases) and Tumbleweed (rolling). They’re extremely stable and reliable, and allow upgrading without unexpected hassles. Even BLF is running on openSUSE Leap. I just don’t like openSUSE’s installation media and default configuration for desktop / workstation usage, which is why I created some custom spins to set up the base system for myself and others without the tedious initial configuration changes that are normally needed.
Now, scanners, on the other hand… I have a 13-year-old USB scanner which has been rock solid the whole time. It was cheap, the scan quality is great, and has never given me the slightest problem. The only issue is that it’s a bit slow for scanning lots of stuff… so I recently also got an automatic document scanner. Drop in a stack of paper, press a button, and 15 seconds later it leaves a PDF on dropbox. It’s slogging through an entire filing cabinet now.
:person_facepalming: I have a lexmark all-in-one doorstop thanks to lack of support as a printer/scanner/etc by linux or anything more recent than vista.
I noticed BLF was running on SUSE, but I had no idea it was your own custom distro flavor. That’s pretty awesome.
I did hardware enablement for SLES for a while, but haven’t touched SUSE or any of its relatives since 2010. It was a nice system, different, but variety is good. It brings back memories. It’s an interesting day when a manager stops by to drop $1.5M of RAM on your desk and tells you to find all the bugs related to having multiple terabytes of RAM in one computer. Ready, set, break stuff!
BLF is running on openSUSE Leap 42.1 proper (soon to be upgraded to 42.2), installed from the official installation media via VNC onto the virtual hard disk. I like the official installer to set up a LEMP server, but not at all for a desktop / workstation configuration. So my custom spins are for an out-of-the-box sane configuration for a nice Cinnamon, Gnome, Plasma, XFCE, Budgie, Mate, or LXQt desktop.
Don’t know where you live but the job market here in the San Francisco Bay Area is good for developers, especially those with java skills. Typical salaries for experienced developers are in the $150k range and depending on company annual bonuses can be in the 4 digit range. One can also go the contractor route, which I’m doing, where the rate is $100 - $200 per hour depending on skill set and experience.
Living expenses are of course higher here than in most other places.
Dang, TK. That’s terrible news. I really do hope you find something amazing when you’re ready for a new adventure.
I’ve been using Ubuntu since the very first release. Having dialup back then, I really appreciated the ShipIt service (they’d mail you installation CDs). I like the direction they’ve led the Linux community. I really don’t miss checking for dependencies, building everything from source, etc. It’s nice when it just works and there’s a huge community behind you when it doesn’t.
No offense intended, but I’ll say I’ve never been a huge fan of Unity. Just not my cup of tea. I’ve stuck to MATE or similar flavors. The phone/tablet idea was interesting; I had tried it on my Nexus 4 when it was first released. But since then I’ve heard so little about it in the tech community that I forgot it was still being worked on. Then again, I’ve started a family since those days so my time spent on tech stuff has taken a (s)hit. As much as I hate to see anything killed off, I hope this provides a good resurgence for Ubuntu Desktop. The Distrowatch rankings have been bad these past few years :weary:
Heheh happy with our multi thing
Bought a new one when cartridges of previous were empty and a ciss store had that one listed as not reliable with ciss.
Scored and empty ciss on AliExpress for $14 and 600mlblack and 3*300ml color on Amazon for ~€20
We don’t print much but when it is 80-100 pages with pics
Why do I think of Office Space all of a sudden
Nope. If I want to get into top-secret research labs, I have to do it the sneaky way.
Incidentally, answering both of those questions… I made a chiptune yesterday. It turns out that the Atmel MCUs aren’t just good for making pulses of light… they’re also good at making pulses of sound. So I got an atmega328p with knobs (nipples, even), flashed it with avrdude, then tried it out by making a quick song. I call it “The Slip”:
On a related note, the guy in the thumbnail is showing off my new dance move, also called “The Slip”.
BTW, if you’re curious, this is what flashable 8-bit nipples look like:
