Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine Review pt. 1 - Impressions, Features, Snaps & Gnome 3.34

In this video, I'm commenting on the new features and integration of snaps in Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan Ermine. In part 2, we'll dig into some facts and figures with ZFS and Gnome 3.34 performance so stay tuned.
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[InfinitelyGalactic]

I have a lot of thoughts on Ubuntu 19.10 so I'm going to cover general stuff in this video and then do a 2nd take with comparisons and more nitty gritty detail soon. In the meantime, enjoy the first impressions, and look forward to Xubuntu, MATE, Kubuntu, and Budgie making an appearance soon! Also, let me know about your thoughts re: snaps becoming more pervasive. Peace!

[nottenouun]

Thank you for going into those details about snap. Seeing that canonical is willing to replace an uncontrollable self-updating snap in place of a stable deb package, I've decided that 18.04 will be my last ubuntu.

Canonical has decided to go the same direction as Microsoft by withholding control over updates from users. It's a direction many, including myself, are not willing to follow.

So long canonical, and thanks for all the fish.

Side note: I know I shouldn't feel sad or betrayed, but I can't help it. I've been with ubuntu since 6.06. I've lived through the insane ubuntu craze of the late 2000s. I remember how people genuinely took up the "humanity to others" banner. Everyone was trying to give back to the community in any way they could. People were writing drivers, drawing artwork, helping out in the forums, translating software and documentation, spreading ubuntu to others by passing along official CDs, and much more. At one point, people were drawing ubuntu manga! (ubunchu! should have been made into a show, but I digress.) All good things must come to an end I suppose :-(

[gerald]

The two snaps, calculator and system monitor are very slow to launch. I’ve swapped both of them out for apt package. There’s a noticeable difference in time to launch. The apt version is much faster. Once I can’t tell any difference between one package and another, then the packaging method wouldn’t matter to me.

[thebusinessfirm]

Nice review, mate. Keep up the excellent videos. Steve.

[BruceBigby]

GNOME''s performance has been improving steadily since at least Fedora 26. Most performance boosts were dramatic, except for the jump between F29 and F30, which was more modest by comparison. I hear that the performance gain from F30 to F31, or GNOME 3.32 to 3.34, is also very noticeable.

[fubaralakbar]

If that Snap business isn't removed by the time 21.04 rolls out, I'm switching to either Fedora or Manjaro.

[jefferyrlc]

I have a strong dislike for snap. Blindly trusting developers to make sure their stuff is bug free and free of malware and not having the distribution verifying the package is absolutely atrocious. The fact that snap itself is proprietary doesn't endear me to it. I prefer to use flatpak or appimage.

[linuxstreamer]

when i used Pop!_OS for the first time i fell in love and got used to GNOME now i only use distro's with GNOME as a desktop environment

[mrjh]

Solid coverage here. Looking forward to your thoughts on Ubuntu Budgie.

[bertnijhof]

I use ZFS mainly for my Virtualbox VMs. The advantage is that the VM is largely running from the memory cache (L1ARC). My VMs run easily for more than 90% from memory cache instead of disk. That results in instantaneous response times and reboot times between 6 seconds (XFCE) and 12 seconds (Gnome) for all Linux OSes

[joesalyers]

You can circumvent the snap/apt issue by typing "sudo apt remove snapd -y" then install from apt "debian" but you will not have access to any snap packages unless you reinstall snap with "sudo apt install snapd"

[bvz]

Ha! The very first review for Blue Mail in the app store you show gives it a single star with the review saying it does not launch in 19.10. So much for that, eh?


But seriously, I am interested in this release. I am currently on Manjaro and really like it, but the thought of a more stable system that is not constantly updating does have its appeal. Either this or CentOS since most of my 3D software seems to target that world a bit more.


Nice review! Thanks.

[nate]

If snap infested apt makes its way into Pop OS. I'm moving to manjaro.

[dstinnettmusic]

Not having to relearn my muscle memory to install via terminal is a godsend.

[RodrigoGraca]

you talked a lot about snaps but I dont think you said what they are and only quickly mentioned the alternatives, I'd appreciate a video on them and the pros/cons and why they are fighting.

[marcusaureliusf]

5:23 Oh Gnome! When will we be able to read the rest of LibreOffice Dr..., LibreOffice Im... and LibreOffice W...? Is it too much to ask for a tooltip without installing any extensions?

[carlossoutullo]

I like the concept of snap, flatpak etc. but snaps are ugly and slow at the moment. The OS feels fast until you open a snap...

[chef]

Nice video, if you fancy a challenge, you could take a look at some Tiling Window Managers such as DWM or i3. There's a distro called "Morpheus Linux" that I'd love to get your opinion on as well.

[sripradpotukuchi]

How did you record the screen? I mean which software do you use? Being a casual user, I would definitely use 19.10.

[shanedavenport]

Snaps are horrible. It takes twice as long to launch a snap as it does to launch a normal program. It is evident that Ubuntu knows this because they have removed the System Monitor snap and replaced it with the standard installed version in 19.10. The major complaint about the System Monitor snap was that it took so long to load, well it's not a snap in 19.10. According to you though a large portion of the programs installed in 19.10 will be snaps, making our systems slow.