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Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus!
Ubuntu 17.04, code named Zesty Zapus; Zesty, is an adjective for ‘great enthusiasm and energy’, while Zapus, is the genus name of a North-American mouse that is said to be the only mammal on Earth that has up to 18 teeth in total.
Zesty Zapus
Ubuntu 17.04 or Zesty Zapus final release is available from April 13, 2017 and let’s see what’s new in Zesty Zapus!
Updated Kernel
Ubuntu 17.04 Alpha 2 was released on the 26th of January and all the opt-in flavors are powered by an updated kernel, version 4.9.5.
The final Zesty Zapus includes the Linux kernel 4.10, which is known to enhance the performance of Intel Kaby Lake and AMD Ryzen systems.
Driverless Printing
We all know that printers are not that friendly with Linux. Vivaldi Snapshot 1.3.537.5 Brings Improved Proprietary Media Support on Zesty Zapus.
Ubuntu 17.04 is bringing the support for IPP Everywhere. It’s a new protocol that allows personal computers and mobile devices to find and print to networked and USB printers without using vendor-specific software.
Most of the printers sold these days already support IPP protocol. This means that you don’t need to install drivers for printer from XYZ manufacturer. You can search for it on the network and use it for printing.
Unity 8
Ubuntu users have been hearing a lot about Unity 8 for the last couple of years but so far Unity 8 is nowhere to be seen officially. Of course, there are ways you can run Unity 8 in Ubuntu releases already but the fact is that you should use them only if you are Linux-savvy.
Zesty Zapus does bring this experimental build of Unity 8. Though Unity 7 will still be the default desktop environment, you can select between Unity 7 and Unity 8 at the login screen.
Unity 8
Note: Unity 8 won’t be the default desktop on Ubuntu 17.04 or 17.10 or 18.04. Ubuntu Unity is dead and GNOME will be the default desktop environment starting Ubuntu 18.04.
Swap File Instead of Swap Partition
Canonical’s Dimitri John Ledkov announced that Ubuntu 17.04 will use Swap files by default on non-LVM installs.
He explains that, quite simply, the need for a separate swap partition that’s (at least) twice the RAM size “makes little sense” on systems where memory isn’t limited.
For a common, general, machine most of the time this swap will not be used at all. Or if said swap space is in use but is of inappropriate size, changing it in-place in retrospect is painful.
Ubuntu17.04 Zesty Zapus will use swap files by default. Sizing of swap files is different to the swap partitions and typically use no more than 5% of free disk space (or 2048MB of RAM), which is another potential benefit.
The change does not apply to those who install Ubuntu using the LVM (Logical Volume Manager) option.
What’s important here is that some form of swap is maintained, it doesn’t matter how the swap is implemented. Anyone who’s ever used or set-up a ‘no swap’ system only to then run out of memory will know it’s not a pretty experience!
More Snaps
Canonical’s Will Cooke said that “by 18.04 everything will be Snaps and Unity 8 all the way down” and Engineering director Kevin Gunn, added that, “Canonical has an aggressive internal goal to try to get a usable all-snaps based image for Unity 8 out by 17.04”. So, although Snaps wouldn’t be replacing apt anytime soon.
32-bit PowerPC Support is Dropped
You might not have realized but Ubuntu till now used to support the aging 32-bit PowerPC architecture. As Debian has decided to drop this support, naturally Ubuntu followed the suit and has decided to drop the support for 32-bit PowerPC too, starting from Ubuntu 17.04.
ubuntu 17.04
As you may have already noticed that most of these updates discussed above are found in Desktop version. So, in general, a common question automatically comes up, ‘isn’t there any changes for the new Ubuntu 17.04 server version?’ Well, of course Ubuntu released many updates for the Ubuntu 17.04 server version as well. Ubuntu Server 17.04 also comes with these following updates,
Qemu 2.8
Qemu has been updated to the 2.8 release.
Libvirt 2.5
Libvirt has been updated to version 2.5. For administrators worth to consider is that depending on the system setup and huge page size availability the specification of a page size for huge pages in a guest xml can now be mandatory.
LXD 2.12
LXD, now at version 2.12, introduces support for GPU passthrough, including NVidia CUDA. A new storage API has also been added, allowing for the creation of multiple storage pools which can then be used to host containers or independent storage volumes. And a number of new images have been added, including support for Ubuntu Core 16.
DPDK
Ubuntu 17.04 includes the latest release of DPDK, 16.11.1.
As a tech preview DPDK is now also available for ppc64el. This includes the latest improvements made in version 16.11.1 in general, but also further improvements to enable the i40e PMD and vfio-pci scanning on spapr platforms.
OpenStack Ocata
Ubuntu 17.04 includes the latest OpenStack release. OpenStack Ocata is also provided via the Ubuntu Cloud Archive for OpenStack Ocata for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS users.
Cloud-Init
Cloud-init has been updated to be stricter when identifying the cloud platform that it is running on and searching for data sources.
Why You Might Want to Upgrade
One nice thing for home users is the availability of driverless printing. Driverless printing will allow users to install just about any modern IPP Everywhere or Apple AirPrint-compatible printer via USB or network without installing a printer-specific driver. This is a big plus to folks who don’t like going through the rigmarole of finding and setting up print drivers for CUPS.
Other updates to the 17.04 release include an upgrade to LibreOffice 5.3, and a week view in the calendar. Standard-issue desktop apps will also migrate to Gnome 3.24, with the exceptions to Terminal, Evolution (email client), the Nautilus file manager, and Software (app store).
If you want to roll with an updated kernel in 16.04 like the 4.10 kernel that was recently released, you can use the Linux-mainline PPA to get newer kernel packages. If you choose to go this route, do so with care and be sure to keep the kernel updated because Ubuntu doesn’t officially support kernels from the mainline PPA. Things can and will break by using an unsupported kernel.
Asif Raihan April 23rd, 2017
Posted In: Debian, Linux, New products, News, Open Source, Operating Systems, ubuntu
Tags: linux, New products, News, Open Source, OS, ubuntu
Specs for first Intel 3D XPoint SSD: so-so transfer speed, awesome random I/O | Ars Technica
UPDATE 3/25/17 JJW:
The M.2 Optane won’t be readily available until later this year or likely 2018 – but it’s a good space to watch, as in our experience the internal interconnect technology and architecture will surely improve, to catch up with the underlying 3D X-Point silicon technology.
j
joe February 10th, 2017
Posted In: Open Source, Technology
Tags: Open Source, Technology
Docker says: “Available for both Windows and Mac” – WTF?
Docker, Please – “Available for both Windows and Mac” Are you kidding?
This reminds me of the legendary line from the Blues Brothers movie:
“We got BOTH kinds of music – Country AND Western!”
Sheesh.
Lame – it’s all based on Linux! And Open Source!
Docker runs natively on Linux – the only way to get it to run on Windows and/or Mac, is to run it inside a VM (Virtual Machine), running Linux. Ahem.
So apparently that’s what this does, although you couldn’t tell by the name, the marketing blurb, nor the description.
DOCKER TOOLBOX
The Docker Toolbox is an installer to quickly and easily install and setup a Docker environment on your computer.
Available for both Windows and Mac, the Toolbox installs Docker Client, Machine, Compose and Kitematic.
Source: Docker Toolbox | Docker
Sigh.
j
joe October 9th, 2016
Posted In: Linux, Open Source, Technology, Uncategorized
Tags: linux, Open Source, Technology
Heads-Up for Half Petabyte Cloud-Ready Storage Servers
eRacks/NAS50 Half Petabytes of Data Storage Server / Cloud Storage
We were extremely excited to announce the forthcoming release of 500 Terabyte (half Petabyte) storage space upgrade on our flagship product eRacks/NAS50 cloud data storage servers last week. The new model, to be released shortly, will incorporate 50 HGST 10 Terabyte HelioSeal™ hard drives. While the new model is not released yet, we are accepting pre-orders from customers. The current capacity, now available, of the eRacks/NAS50 is 400Terabytes in total, with currently-available 8Terabyte drives. The Azure devops security for data protection purposes as that must be a priority.
The new unit is rackmount and holds 50 removable drive bays. The 9U unit is suitable for any cloud storage application as well as NAS/Local LAN, since cloud services are really used now a days, you can learn how connecting to clouds directly can help businesses from this link. eRacks/NAS50™ is also a great solution for media libraries and other applications which require massive amounts of data storage capacity, you just have to make you are also backed up by the best data management services. Visit https://blog.couchbase.com/fuzzy-matching/ and get more information!
Our new servers are truly a remarkable Petascale solution. The HGST 10 Terabyte HelioSeal™ drives that come with eRacks/NAS50 use two technologies that greatly add to the value that this server carries with it, including other server services from sites as https://www.servermania.com/kb/articles/what-are-the-requirements-for-ubuntu-server/ for ubuntu projects.
The first is referred to as the HelioSeal™ technology. The HGST hard drives using this technology replace the air inside of the drive with helium. This would make the drive much lighter as well as allowing the disks to be much thinner. Due to the helium inside, the thinness of disks will not cause any disruptive turbulence effects. This will allow us to have more disks inside each drive which in turn means more data space. Additionally, helium drives have much lower power consumption, as much as 27%, making our NAS50 models truly a green product.
The new drives in the eRacks/NAS50 servers also make use of a technology called SMR. That is short for Shingled Magnetic Recording. This technology by itself adds another 25 to 100 percent storage capacity to HGST hard drives.
We are proud of our new eRacks/NAS50 and are ready to take pre-orders. We are prepared to customize the unit per your instructions with all Open-Source software necessary so your order will reach you completely pre-installed.
Please contact us for pre-orders or any questions you may have.
eRacks Open Source Systems
Phone: (714) 758-5423
Fax: (631) 392-9842
http://www.eRacks.com
eMail: info@eracks.com
Ron September 12th, 2015
Posted In: NAS50, New products, News, Open Source, servers, Upgrades
Tags: 500TB-class, 8TB, Archive Drives, Cloud Computing, Cloud Storage Server, HDD, HelioSeal. HGST, Hybrid Cloud, Internet, linux, NAS50, Open Source, Private Cloud, Rackmount, seagate, SMR, Storage Server
eRacks NAS36 Servers Store More Data At Lower Cost
eRacks Systems NAS36 8TB Seagate Archive Drive upgrade
We can’t help it with our innovations. Our NAS36 servers offered almost 200 Terabytes of data space already. That is considered quite high for a mid-range data storage server. But we just decided to jump even higher and exchange the standard 6-terabyte disks into 8-terabyte ones. That mean our NAS36 model storage servers are now able to hold 288 terabytes of data in total.
The new NAS36 model with higher data capacity brings even more value to our customers not just because of the storage space it provides but also for its price. Yes, we have decided to slash the prices down below $25,000. That is going to bring considerable saving to our customers. [UPDATE Sep 2015: current price for maxed-out 288TB config with Seagate Archive 8TB drives is just under $22,000]
We are proud to announce this latest upgrade as we continue to provide petascale data storage servers at affordable prices.
We remain dedicated to open-source systems. We also remain committed to delivering pre-installed, pre-configured systems to our customers.
The NAS36 servers are rack-mount servers. We designed the 4U unit specially to hold large number of drives in a very limited space. That leaves ample amount of space for other necessary accessories inside your data center rack.
The 36 drives in the unit are all Seagate Archive Drives, mounted on a single backplane and controlled by a RAID controller. The unit holds 24 drives in front and 12 in the back making the unit case quite compact.
eRacks Systems is a leading provider of high-capacity, petascale data storage server solutions to companies and enterprises requiring massive amounts of storage data.
Our servers are suitable for application and web security on the cloud as well as Near-Line Storage. They are also configurable for NAS (Network Attached Storage) applications.
For a great storage solution at a considerable low price, contact us. We are available through email, phone and our website.
Ron August 19th, 2015
Posted In: NAS36, New products, Open Source, servers, Upgrades
Tags: 288TB-class, 8TB, Archive Drives, Cloud Computing, Cloud Storage Server, HDD, Hybrid Cloud, Internet, linux, NAS36, Open Source, Private Cloud, Rackmount, seagate, Storage Server