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Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark!
Ubuntu 17.10, code named Artful Aardvark; I guess you already know that Artful means full of art or skill. And Aardvark is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. Colloquially, it is called African Ant Eater.
Nowadays Ubuntu become the world’s most popular desktop Linux operating system, and with its latest short-term support release, it’s clear Canonical want to keep a firm grip on the title.
‘Artful Aardvark’ (Ubuntu 17.10)
As release with Artful Aardvark (Ubuntu 17.10) in October 19, 2017 Canonical continues Ubuntu’s proud tradition of integrating the latest and greatest open source technology into a high-quality, easy-to-use Linux distribution. Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark marks an all-new chapter in Ubuntu’s already rich history. As always, the team has been hard at work through this cycle, introducing new features and fixing bugs.
Ubuntu 17.10 Debuts with An All-New Desktop
This is the first version of Ubuntu to use GNOME Shell as the default desktop. ‘The HUD, global menu, and other Unity features are no longer included’. By choosing to drop Unity most of Ubuntu’s home-grown usability efforts also fall by the wayside.
Ubuntu 17.10 Desktop
In Unity’s place comes a bespoke version of GNOME Shell that is ‘customized’ to resemble something that’s superficially close to the Unity desktop layout. The Ubuntu 17.10 desktop uses a two-panel layout: a full-height vertical dock sits on the left-hand side of the screen, while a ‘top bar’ is stripped across the top.
The top bar plays host a new type of app menu, a calendar applet/message tray, app indicators, and a unified status menu for managing network, volume, Bluetooth and user sessions.
Ubuntu Dock
The new Ubuntu Dock is both a task manager and an application launcher. It shows icons for open and running software windows as well as ‘pinned’ launchers for user’s favorite apps.
Ubuntu Dock
The dock is also global; it displays icons/applications from all workspaces regardless of which one user is actually viewing.
Both the Ubuntu Dock and the top bar are semi-transparent, which adds nice visual presence. When a window touches either element the “dynamic transparency” feature kicks in to render both dock and top bar darker, making panel label contents more legible in the foreground.
Activities & Workspaces
The main “desktop” area remains a usable space on which user can place icons, folders and files.
Though there’s no longer a true global app menu, but the majority of apps place a small menu in the top bar bearing the name of the app in focus. These app menus contain a solitary ‘quit’ button at the least, or a full complement of options at most.
Activities & Workspaces
Workspaces are a common feature found on most modern desktop operating systems including Windows 10, so it’s a good thing that Ubuntu hasn’t ditched them. User can easily move windows between workspaces by clicking on a window and moving it on over the workspace.
Applications Overview
In Ubuntu 17.10 Applications are listed alphabetically, ordered into scrollable pages. User can launch an application by clicking on it, selecting it with keyboard arrow keys and pressing enter, or by touching it.
Applications Overview
After years of ‘footnote’ releases that brought only minor tweaks, the ‘Artful Aardvark’ brings all-out with change, ready to usher in the new era. Under the hood, there have been updates to many core packages, including a new 4.13-based kernel, glibc 2.26, gcc 7.2, and much more in Ubuntu Desktop. Let’s have a brief list view on some of those updates.
- On supported systems, Wayland is now the default display server. The older display server is still available: just choose Ubuntu on Xorg from the cog on the log in screen.
- GDM has replaced LightDM as the default display manager. The login screen now uses virtual terminal 1 instead of virtual terminal 7.
- Printer configuration is now done in the Settings app: Choose Devices and then Printers. The tool uses the same algorithms for identifying printers and choosing drivers as the formerly used system-config-printer, and makes full use of driverless printing to support as many printers as possible.
- The default on screen keyboard is GNOME’s Caribou instead of Onboard.
- Calendar now supports recurring events.
- LibreOffice has been updated to 5.4.
- Python 2 is no longer installed by default. Python 3 has been updated to 3.6.
- The ‘Rhythm box’ music player now uses the alternate user interface created by Ubuntu Budgie developer David Mohamed.
- The Ubuntu GNOME flavor has been discontinued. If a user is using Ubuntu GNOME, he will be upgraded to Ubuntu.
Note: Install gnome-session and choose GNOME from the cog on the login screen if user would like to try a more upstream version of GNOME. If any user’ d like to also install more core apps, he’d install the vanilla-gnome-desktop met package.
Not only the Ubuntu 17.10 Desktop but also, there are significant changes into the Ubuntu 17.10 Server version too. For the Ubuntu Server 17.10, the OS Version for the printing server has been increased to announce Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2 ID mapping checks added to the testparm(1) tool. There are some ID mapping backends too, which are not allowed to be used for the default backend. Winbind will no longer start if an invalid backend is configured as the default backend. The others are as follows,
Ubuntu 17.10 Server
Qemu 2.10
Qemu has been updated to the 2.10 release. Since the last version was 2.8.
Among many other changes there is one that might need follow on activity by the user/admin: Image locking is added and enabled by default. This generally makes execution much safer, but can break some old use cases that now explicitly have to opt-in to ignore/share the locks by tools and subcommands using the –force-share option or the share-rw dqev property.
Libvirt 3.6
Libvirt has been updated to version 3.6.
LXD 2.18
LXD was updated to version 2.18. Some of the top new features of LXD 2.18 are:
- Native Ceph RBD support.
- Support for cloud instance types.
- Pre-seeding of the “lxd init” questions through yaml.
- New client library.
- Improved storage handling (volume resize, auto re-mapping on attach, …).
- A lot of small improvements to the client tool.
DPDK 17.05.2
Ubuntu 17.10 includes the latest release of DPDK that has stable updates: 17.05.2. This made it possible to integrate Open vSwitch 2.8.
Open vSwitch 2.8
Open vSwitch has been updated to 2.8. Though user need to specify dpdk devices via dpdk-devargs.
New BIND9 KSK
The DNS server BIND9 was updated to include the new Key Signing Key (KSK) that was published on July 11, 2017. Starting on October 11, 2017, that key will sign the root zone key, which in turn is used to sign the actual root zones.
Cloud-Init
The cloud-init version was updated to 17.1. Notable new features for cloud-init are as follows,
- Python 3.6 support.
- Ec2 support for IPv6 instance configuration.
- Expedited boot time through cloud-id optimization.
- Support for netplan yaml in cloud-init.
- Add cloud-init subcommands collect-logs, analyze and schema for developers.
- Apport integration from cloud-init via ‘ubuntu-bug cloud-init’.
- Significant unit test and integration test coverage improvements.
Curtin
The Curtin version is updated to ‘0.1.0~bzr519-0ubuntu1’. New features are:
- Network configuration passthrough for ubuntu and centos.
- More resilient UEFI/grub interaction.
- Better support for mdadm arrays.
- Ubuntu Core 16 Support.
- Improved bcache support.
Samba
Samba is updated to version 4.6.7. Important changes in the 4.6.x series are:
- Multi-process Net logon support.
- New options for controlling TCP ports used for RPC services.
- AD LDAP and replication performance improvements.
- DNS improvements.
There are many other changes too. We recommend that all users read the release notes, which document caveats, workarounds for known issues, as well as more in-depth Release Notes.
Users of Ubuntu 17.04 will be offered an automatic upgrade to 17.10. As always, upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge.
Remember, here at eRacks, we offer pre-installed Ubuntu 17.10 Artful Aardvark with our new systems either directly from the OS dropdown, or by custom quote.
Asif Raihan October 25th, 2017
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Yakkety Yak!
Don’t talk back – !
..But the latest Ubuntu 16.10 is now available on all ‘eRaks’ Systems – 🙂
j
joe November 1st, 2016
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Mint 18 is here!
Linux Mint 18 is now available!
Based on Ubuntu 16.04, which was made available in April, this release of Mint is based on the LTS release of Ubuntu, rather than following the twice-yearly updates – and will have only incremental changes and updates over the next 2 years – thus being more stable and predictable, and avoiding any potential instabilities introduced by the biannual Ubuntu upgrades.
So Mint 18 should now be available in all the eRacks product dropdowns – if you don’t see it on the model you want, please contact us and we’ll fix it or give you a custom quote with Mint 18.
As always, contact us at info@eracks.com for any inquiries or questions regarding the Mint 18 release, or any of our products, and what release we recommend for you and your unique needs.
j
admin August 3rd, 2016
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Linux Mint 17.3
With the recent release of Mint 17.3, eRacks now offers this new operating system on servers, desktops, and laptops. Just select it from the drop-down menu when customizing your computer.
Aaron January 5th, 2016
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Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf now available
Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf is now available on all eRacks systems.
Ubuntu 14.04 is also still available, as it is a Long Term Release (LTS) with a longer support window.
As always, if you want a different release, or even a beta, alpha or “Daily build” release, we’ll be happy to accommodate – just place it in the “Notes” field when you place your order or request a quote.
j
joe November 2nd, 2015
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Mint 17 Now Available
The latest Linux Mint release, Mint 17 “Qiana”, is now available on most or all eRacks systems.
Either the Cinnamon or Mate editions, or KDE, XFCE, Debian (LMDE) are also available.
Most or all of our dropdown OS choices have been updated, but if you don’t see what you’re looking for, please ask us by email: http://eracks.com/contact_us and we will add it or give you a custom live quote.
UPDATE June 30th, 2014: All Mint17 installations are now V2.
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2662
admin June 18th, 2014
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Ubuntu 14.04 Now Available
Ubuntu 14.04 is now available. 
Fremont, CA (PRWEB) April 24, 2014
This latest Ubuntu 14.04 release is now available on most or all eRacks systems.
eRacks today announced the latest release of a new operating system – Ubuntu 14.04 which is now in the OS dropdowns on most or all the systems.
Most or all of our dropdown Operating System choices have been updated, but if you don’t see what you’re looking for, please ask us by Email: info at eracks.com OR http://eracks.com/contact_us and we will respond promptly.
Regards,
Dennis
eRacks
Dennis April 24th, 2014
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Mint 16 Now Available
Mint 16 is now available – “Petra”.
Fremont, CA (PRWEB) December 23, 2013
This latest Linux Mint release is now available on most or all eRacks systems.
eRacks today announced the latest release of a new operating system-Linux Mint 17 “Qiana” which is now in the OS dropdowns on all the systems
Either the Cinnamon or Mate editions, or KDE, XFCE, Debian (LMDE) are also available.
Most or all of our dropdown Operating System choices have been updated, but if you don’t see what you’re looking for, please ask us by email: http://eracks.com/contact_us and we will add it or give you a custom live quote.
Regards
Dennis
eRacks
Dennis December 24th, 2013
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UEFI and the eRacks/ZENBOOK13
Minty Zenbook
I am typing this on a nifty new eRacks/ZENBOOK13, with Linux Mint15 installed.
This is a slightly newer rev of the very pretty Asus Zenbook line, with twin 128GB SSD modules installed in a small carrier which screws into the standard 2.5″ HD space (it could also be replaced or upgraded with one of our standard HD/SSD choices, here: http://eracks.com/products/laptops/ZENBOOK13/)
This post will walk you through what we had to do for the installation, with the details.
Installation Cookbook
- Boot to an Ubuntu 13.04 install disk. (13.10 should work, or Ubuntustudio works too, that’s what I used). For some reason, the Mint installer doesn’t install the default EFI boot choice properly, so you have to start with Ubuntu, then replace it with Mint. Read on.
- Using gparted (fdisk could work, too), delete the partition tables on /dev/sda and /dev/sdb, and replace the GPT-based partition tables with with msdos-type partition tables.
- Install Ubuntu on the 1st of the two SSDs. Don’t worry about the 2nd disk (_yet_). Be sure to check the “Install with LVM” box after you select the default “Erase and install…”.
- Reboot into Ubuntu, and note the partitions cerated.
- Boot into a Mint 15 Install disk.
- Install Mint15 into the same partition structure – in other words, do NOT select the default “erase and install…” , but rather the “Something else” choice, and tell it to put the root partition on the same partition you noted in step 4.
- Install rEFInd (http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/) from a rEFInd install disk, that you downloaded and burned from there. (I used v0.74). Be sure to install it in the /boot/efi partition (typically /dev/sda2) created earlier. The reason to install rEFInd, is it’s an invaluable tool to use to boot from any EFI-capable location on your computer, and will be used later on. I put mine in EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi
- Be sure to also copy shell64.efi into /boot/efi/EFI/tools/, so rEFInd can find it, and show you the EFI Shell choice & icon.
- Boot from rEFInd.
- Choose the EFI shell.
- Using the bcfg command, (help -v bcfg is your friend!), list the boot choices, and verify that “ubuntu” is there.
- Add “mint” as a boot choice, pointing to EFI\linuxmint\grub64.efi – mimic the way the “ubuntu” boot choice is done.
- Reboot into the boot menu (hold Esc down during the Asus logo) and verify that “mint” and “rEFInd” are there.
- Test them both out – rEFInd should also give other interesting choices you can try out.
- You should be able to launch Mint from either the “Mint” choice in the Asus boot (holding Esc), or from the Mint choice in rEFInd.
- Optionally, you can add the 2nd SSD (mentioned in step 3) to the main volume using LVM, to use the full 256GB.
That’s it!
Wrap and Beverage
I must say, this is a BEAUTIFUL machine – I want one myself!
Between the FullHD display, and being roughly the same thickness and sizeas the magazines I often carry into any given bar / restaurant here in Los Gatos, this is a joy compared to my regular 1920×1080 Asus laptop..
…And it beats the heck out of a tablet..
…And the battery life seems great, it barely made a dent in the hour or so I spent surfing with it while drinking my beverage of choice at one of the local establishments here.
…And did I mention it’s screaming fast, with the i7 CPU and 10GB RAM?!
Bon Appetit,
j
joe October 20th, 2013
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The Quest for a good Ubuntu netbook
We’ve had a long and arduous search for a usable resolution (at least 1366×768) portable netbook, that will run Ubuntu smoothly, and we’re pleased to report our findings! The MSI U230-040US netbook fulfills all our requirements without so much as a hiccup.
Most netbooks have a 1024 x 600 pixel display. This fails miserably with some applications that are designed for higher resolution, like Eclipse, for example. Working with Eclipse can be annoying enough, but in a lower resolution display, important fields in certain windows are unusable and almost completely hidden.
Portability is important and this system weighs in at 3.3 pounds. It’s got a good solid feel to it, and the display bends back to an angle of about 135 degrees. The keys are next to each other, not spaced out like the Sony Vaio. The netbook’s measurements are 11.71″(L) x 7.49″(D) x 0.55~1.22″(H).
This system passed all our tests and is available, as a complete dual boot system from eRacks, called the eRacks/CUMULUS. We’ve got Ubuntu and Windows 7 on this one.
The built-in Webcam is 1.3MP and works with Cheese Webcam Booth, both photo and video. There is a 4-in-1 Card Reader (XD/SD/MMC/MS), and three USB2.0 connections. Bluetooth is working without any special configurations.
I’ve set the processor for 800MHz at OnDemand. The other settings are Conservative, Performance, and Powersave with a higher 1.6GHz is available.
All-in-all this system gets top marks for usability and portability.
britta October 5th, 2010
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