Why don't Ubuntu or it derivatives advertise the upcoming release of Wily Werewolf

[finny388]

I've never understood this. Why is there no "coming soon" hype on the front page of ubuntu.com, kubuntu.org or xubuntu.org etc?

Wily comes out in 7 days. Isn't it natural to get people excited, talk about the new features, etc?

Anyone have thoughts on why this is?

[claydoh]

No, I never thought about it, not in a while.

I used to do the release announcements for each release, as well as for the alphas and betas, etc

Outside of LTS, why party up an interim release every 6 months?

I literally could have used the same exact blurb each time, and just adjust the KDE version, the Libreoffice version blah blah, unless there was something unique to Kubuntu. The pre-release announcements used to get much more attention in the so-called linux media, which I think helped. Heck, there would be a number of full on reviews of each one of the dev releases.. I don't know which is the chicken or the egg, but perhaps the world had become jaded top all the hype, or has the lack of promotion lessened the desire to cover it as much as it used to?

Another thought, specific to Kubuntu
We hype up 15.04
15.04 is, for many people ......crap. We have hyped something that really isn't meant for everyone (and it was a mistake to not significantly note this in any of our announcements), and many users install it because of the hype

15.10 will be much less crap, but there still will be moaning and groaning about it being something that should not have been put out, where the heck is my KDE 4, I want it back! Why promote this so much, just yet?

16.04 would be the one to hype, for us.


Just my thoughts, not explanations or reasons.

[Qqmike]

I think we oughta keep Kubuntu a secret ...

[oshunluvr]

Me personally; I'm never all that excited about the next release. Always too many issues and updates in the first several weeks. I did install Wily to bare metal last week and it seems quicker, but I'll wait until November before I attempt to switch over.

[artbar]

We hype up 15.04
15.04 is, for many people ......crap. We have hyped something that really isn't meant for everyone (and it was a mistake to not significantly note this in any of our announcements), and many users install it because of the hype

15.10 will be much less crap, but there still will be moaning and groaning about it being something that should not have been put out, where the heck is my KDE 4, I want it back! Why promote this so much, just yet?

I share your position on this too. I think it was enough said during this summer and autumn - several announcements on KDE, KDE Frameworks, Plasma 5 and so on. All this will be included into 1510, thus there is not much to say something really new - essentially 15.10 is huge bugfix of 15.04, but with some candies

[wartnose]

...
We hype up 15.04
15.04 is, for many people ......crap. ...

What's wrong with 15.04. I was on Windows and I got tired of the constant battle between spyware and updates, scrapped windows, got new hardware, loaded 15.04 and I was in awe of how well it works until you told me it's crap.

[claydoh]

Crap is relative - I had a good time with it. However, some people see plasma5 as a big enough change from kde4 that it kind of freaks them out, and is missing options and features from there as well.

Our of the box, 15.04 is a bit plasma crashy until one updates to plasma5.3. More features and options return as you get to 5.4 , whenever that hits.

Sent from my LG G4

[NoWorries]

Our of the box, 15.04 is a bit plasma crashy until one updates to plasma5.3. More features and options return as you get to 5.4 , whenever that hits.

I certainly agree with your comments on 15.04. Wily now has Plasma 5.4.2. There are still a couple of problems with it, which I can sort of live with. I just haven't got round to complaining about them.

[Fintan]

I remember the change over days from KDE3 to KDE4. This nothing compared to the stuff that went on then. I like plasma 5 in 15.10, although there are issues there are less than in 15.04. I still have to shut down FF every hour or so, because otherwise my fan goes nuts and I can boil an egg on my key board, but I hope this will get better.

[artbar]

What's wrong with 15.04. I was on Windows and I got tired of the constant battle between spyware and updates, scrapped windows, got new hardware, loaded 15.04 and I was in awe of how well it works until you told me it's crap.

About the "wrong" - in my experience it was constant crashes of 15.04 due to overheat on pretty standard HW . That was only fixed by installing 14.04 LTS.

[Rich Oliver]

We hype up 15.04
15.04 is, for many people ......crap. We have hyped something that really isn't meant for everyone (and it was a mistake to not significantly note this in any of our announcements), and many users install it because of the hype

15.10 will be much less crap, but there still will be moaning and groaning about it being something that should not have been put out, where the heck is my KDE 4, I want it back! Why promote this so much, just yet?

16.04 would be the one to hype, for us.

Does that mean there will definitely be a 16.04? I got the impression that was in doubt a while back. If so any thoughts on what the display server will be?

Ubuntu final seems to be out but not Kubuntu final when I wrote this post.

[oshunluvr]

Here's the thing: Plasma 4 is available in 14.04 - an LTS release. If you're having trouble with or don't want to deal with the growing pains of Plasma 5, you can use plasma 4 until 2019.

@Here, I have a few small issues still remaining with Plasma 5 - most of which are related to outside developers that haven't updated their apps to the QT version used in Plasma 5. As of this morning, I was reboot-to-desktop in 85 seconds. This includes a double grub menu with 3-second delays for each and me typing in my password to log in. Over the last month I have gone from a daily Plasma desktop crash (and auto restart with no obvious ill effects) to almost total stability - likely due to what seems like a daily kernel update.

I have installed 15.10 to bare metal and find it seemingly quicker, but I haven't done everything to it yet that I do to my daily-driver. I tend to keep my previous install as a backup and install the latest along side and transition slowly rather than attempting the do-release-upgrade path.

As far as 16.04? Who knows at this point. Open Source is a fast moving target and with all the squabbling over Wayland vs. Mir and talk of Ubuntu leaving the PC market for portable devices instead, I think it's premature to even think about it much.

If I were King: I would have a KDE/QT5 based rolling distro that uses Debian packaging and Wayland but had the amount of software available that Ubuntu does. I have been thinking about trying KaOS lately but it doesn't offer all the apps I want yet - I think.

[GreyGeek]

Crap is relative -

That's for sure. One person's wonderful version is another's piece of crap. A LOT depends on the hardware a release is installed on and the expertise of the person doing the installing and running. And,I've used more than one distro that was wonderful on one version and terrible on the next -- on the same box.

Previously I reported that Arch's KDE Plasma 5 was well done, stable and fast. I reported it as running as fast as a guest OS as my 140.04 LTS does on bare metal. Tonight I installed 15.10. It installed smoothly and ran well. Not nearly as fast as Arch but good enough... until I started putzing around with the three proprietary drivers (kernel, x86 VB dkms, intel firmware). On a reboot I got a black screen of death. No keyboard or video activity. No way to bust in or boot up as root to reverse stuff. I deleted it.

IMHO, If one wants a smooth as possible version experience the best option is to stick with the Long Term Release. That's why I am staying with 14.04, probably until its EOL, or something really exciting comes out.

[steve7233]

So far I am not impressed with Wily. I used muon updater to upgrade from Vivid hoping the new release would stop the plasmoid crashes and the display configuration weirdness. Unfortunately it got hung up. I waited several hours but it remained frozen. I suspect it has to do with another plasmoid crash that occurred right before it got hung up. Snowhog suggested a fix but it didn't work because dpkg said the process was locked. or some such. see my post in 15.10 pre-installation. Hopefully if I ever get it working it will help. Since I can't get 15.10 to work then I remain unimpressed. Maybe oshunluvr is right to be slow to upgrade.

[NickStone]

If I were King: I would have a KDE/QT5 based rolling distro that uses Debian packaging ...

Never heard of siduction?