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Ubuntu

Ubuntu Makes Public Desktop Metrics (ubuntu.com) 132

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Canonical introduced Ubuntu Hardware/Software Survey in Ubuntu 18.04 and has since been collecting data (it is optional, and users' consent is taken; Ubuntu says 67 percent users opted in to the survey). Now for the first time, it is revealing the stats, shedding light on how Ubuntu users like things around. The takeaways from the result: Installation Duration: The average install of Ubuntu Desktop takes 18 minutes. Some machines out there can install a full desktop in less than 8 minutes!
Installer Options: Another interesting fact is that the newly introduced Minimum Install option is being used by a little over 15% of our users. This is a brand new option but is already attracting a considerable fanbase.
CPU Count: A single CPU is most common, and this is not very surprising. We haven't broken this down to cores but is something we will look in to.
Disk Partitioning Schemes: Most people choose to wipe their disks and reinstall from scratch. The second most common option is a custom partition table.
Display: Full HD (1080p) is the most popular screen resolution, followed by 1366 x 768, a common laptop resolution. HiDPI and 4k are not yet commonplace.
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Ubuntu Makes Public Desktop Metrics More

Ubuntu Makes Public Desktop Metrics

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  • I'd be doing a custom install to have more swap space if it wasn't such a chore to do it manually.

    • I haven't found it to be a chore. There's a nice GUI and everything. I even setup my system to have a separate /home partition so I can switch to any distro I want without touching my data.
    • For me it's the other way around. Why do I need a swap partition? I'd rather use a swapmanager, like swapspace, which only creates a swap file when I need it.

    • I'd be doing a custom install to have more swap space

      Can I ask why? What's the point of extra swap space unless you're running Ubuntu on a potato?

      • Re:Custom install (Score:4, Interesting)

        by r_naked ( 150044 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @12:45PM (#56829484) Homepage

        I'd be doing a custom install to have more swap space

        Can I ask why? What's the point of extra swap space unless you're running Ubuntu on a potato?

        I don't know about the OP, but I like being able to hibernate...

        • My first guess is that OP doesn't need to hibernate his PC because normal sleep is good enough to get the user's computer to the next power outlet (if a laptop) or past a brief power outage (if a desktop on a UPS). In fact, Ubuntu disables hibernate by default in PolicyKit for a couple reasons. One is that hardware support is so spotty. Another is that hibernating with a read-write mounted file system that other systems can write in the meantime can cause data corruption. This could be removable media or a

        • I don't know about the OP, but I like being able to hibernate...

          Yeah which would be achieved by the default. No need for any custom install there.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by r_naked ( 150044 )

            I don't know about the OP, but I like being able to hibernate...

            Yeah which would be achieved by the default. No need for any custom install there.

            So 16gigs is going to hibernate on a 900meg swap partition? Now THAT is some compression.

            A fresh, default install of 18.04 gives me a 900meg swap partition.

            • So 16gigs is going to hibernate on a 900meg swap partition? Now THAT is some compression.

              Maybe you should file a bug report. The default Ubuntu full disk partition scheme creates a swap partition identical to the amount of RAM.

  • See subject: It's FINALLY gotten to where I prefer it over Windows (@ least 10, 7 I still like) due to excellence in dev tools (FreePascal + Lazarus IDE 1.82 = awesome) which is REALLY all I need.

    I have one of those system noted that installed FAST (little longer than they said for me, maybe 20 minutes or so iirc) by using MINIMAL installation choice (installing other things via DISCOVER later (really nice GUI front))!

    I tried Linux in 94 (Slackware 1.02) - lousy hardware support/weak in software available (

  • Monitors (Score:3)

    by Thelasko ( 1196535 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @12:11PM (#56829268) Journal
    My monitor is about 12 years old. I've thought about buying a new 4k monitor, just because mine is old. This data really surprised me. I figured most people would have 4k monitors by now. (especially with all of the advertising Apple is doing about their Retina displays)

    Why is that? Reading some reviews online, a few people said 4k was unusable as a computer monitor because all of the icons became impossibly small. Is that true?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jmintha ( 56956 )

      I'm running kubuntu on my 4k 15" laptop. Most everything scales pretty well. Desktop/icons are fine, dialogs are good. You get the odd application that doesn't which can make some thing really tiny, but nothing I use regularily has a problem.

    • Re:Monitors (Score:5, Informative)

      by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @12:19PM (#56829332)

      No, only shitty OS don't adjust for DPI. The main thing about 4K is that it's expensive. Everyone already has a 'flat screen'. I see it happen a lot that they buy a brand new computer but skimp on the display because they have one already. I'd also rather have a 1080p at 120Hz than a 4K at 30Hz which a lot of budget displays (and the HDMI connection itself) is limited to that. You need DisplayPort to drive a proper 4K@60 or 120.

      • Untrue! Proper video cards and HDMI 2.0 will run 4k@60.

      • You need DisplayPort to drive a proper 4K@60 or 120.

        Hasn't DP been a default on pretty much every device for the past 5 years anyway, and if you're using a potato then why attach a 4K screen?

        Also HDMI 2.0 can do 4K@60Hz and and 2.1 can do 4K@120Hz. And for Display Port you need at least DP 1.3 which was released AFTER HDMI 2.0. So basically if your video card is less than 5 years old you're good to go.

    • 4k support in Linux is very poor, unless you want to have everything be very tiny. There are some ways to get most of your system look quite nicely. But as soon as you add a second monitor without the high resolution everything falls apart. I'm currently running my shiny 4k screen at 1920x1080 because I have a second monitor at work that only goes that high. Wayland will hopefully make everything better.
    • Only if the OS or software don't support high DPI displays. Last year I was using Ubuntu in a VM on a Microsoft Surface Book (3000x2000 13" display) and everything worked fine. Debian? Not so much. Could be fixed by now though. I'm definitely ready for 8K to start becoming mainstream :P I do find it interesting that they didn't collect information on physical and logical cores. I don't really understand the value of only collecting information on number of populated sockets. I'm generally in the more infor

    • Re:Monitors (Score:4, Informative)

      by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @12:24PM (#56829360) Homepage Journal

      I'm running Bionic on a Dell XPS 13 with a 3200x1800 screen.

      It's WAAAY to small, so I have my resolution set to standard HD (1920x1080).

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        To make things readable, there are at least two options:

        1) scaling through xrandr, for ex:
        xrandr --output Virtual1 --scale 0.7x0.7 --fb 3840x2160
        Depending on your desktop environment (KDE, gnome, etc) you can do that with a mouse click in the display settings

        2) scaling the fonts, windows decorations, icons, etc. separately.
        This also depends on your desktop environment. With KDE, you can do that in systems settings: fonts, icons, application style - widget style -> window decorations -> border size, ap

    • 4k monitors really aren't that common. We have a Java app that customers run, and it simply doesn't work on 4k. The Java 8 runtime declared itself to be "DPI-aware" but didn't really supported it for AWT and Swing. Out of over a thousands customers using it (don't know how many individual users, but I would guess about 1,500), only one has a 4k monitor so far.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Like the MP3 vs uncompressed debacle:

      The vast majority of people just can't tell the difference at any reasonable working distance.

      There's little point paying out for a 4K monitor.

      The software dpi etc. settings can be overcome by scaling the interface on any modern OS, but you're still filling four times as many pixels - which hits performance of the graphics - no matter what.

      I had a 17" laptop on my lap. I literally can't see a pixel even in the most basic of sans serif fonts. It's almost impossible to f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by amorsen ( 7485 )

        A typical A4 PDF fullscreen in full HD on a 15" laptop screen is unreadable. The same A4 PDF on a 15" 2880 x 1800 laptop is very readable. Since laptops are widescreen anyway, you can even fit two A4 PDF pages side by side. I have no opinion on whether 4K is any better than 2880 x 1800, but full HD is bloody annoying. I am on a full HD laptop right now. Text is both jagged and blurry at the same time. I could disable subpixel rendering to make it purely jagged, but that just makes it even less readable.

    • I recently upgraded to a 4K display since my employer was willing to provide me with one. I figured I would mostly just appreciate that it was a physically larger screen than I had had before. I also figured I would get most apps to scale such that they would take up the same space and look the same.

      I had a few surprises.

      Not surprising is that some apps just don't scale. I've had problems with tk-based apps in particular. But I expected problems with xterm, vncviewer, and other apps that all worked perf

    • My monitor is pretty old as well, I'm not giving up that 16:10 ratio.

    • Why is that? Reading some reviews online, a few people said 4k was unusable as a computer monitor because all of the icons became impossibly small. Is that true?

      If you're still running Windows XP, or Ubuntu 6.04 then yes it is true.

    • Re:Monitors - it's not about DPI (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No, pretty much everything - even GNOME - handles the higher DPI at least moderately well.

      The problem is that you need to DRIVE all those pixels, and LCDs are garbage at anything other than native resolution. For gamers, who are usually the primary adopters of any tech, even gimmick ones like 4K, that means an extra $300-$800 to have your games not look like @$$, and even then you're going to have to sacrifice certain VQ options to keep a decent framerate.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      I bought a 22" 1080p HD monitor in the end of 2014 because my old 5:4 19" LCD monitor was having power issues. Same for HDTV since I didn't want to move the heavy Sharp 20" CRT TV to the new nest. Same for many other things. I just don't bother buying the (lat/new)est stuff anymore due to their high costs, bugginess, incompatibilities, etc. I'm old now. :(

  • How do they know the number of users if consent is required? If they said "don't participate", and Canonical KNOWS this, that means data was sent back to them regardless of consent!

    • My first guess is that Canonical has some way of estimating the number of users who consent to security updates from its repository but do not consent to the Hardware/Software Survey.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      1. they know how many installs, even if they get no other data from them.

      2. they know how many of those that opt-in to the survey.

      3. math.

  • 18 minute install... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 22, 2018 @12:40PM (#56829452)

    Win10 takes 18 minutes to check updates, installing those updates requires your bosses approval for a 3 week time off from work, a preacher, a chiropractor, and some green vomit cleaner.

  • Custom Partition Table to the Rescue (Score:4, Interesting)

    by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Friday June 22, 2018 @02:31PM (#56830126)
    I recently had to reinstall Ubuntu on several machines because of corruption on ext4 partitions due to a power failure. In all cases, it booted to a screen indicating that fsck had to be run manually and then the machine wouldn't boot after running fsck or it would boot but critical apps would crash on startup. I learned my lesson and now ext4 is completely dead to me. When I rebuilt the machines, I used xfs instead since I've been running that on all of my other machines for almost 15 years and have never had stability issues regardless of how many times the machines unexpectedly lost power. Pro tip: if your machine uses UEFI and you want to install Ubuntu with a root partition of xfs, Ubuntu will allow you to do that but it won't boot after installation - you need to create a separate partition for /boot which uses one of the ext variants and then an xfs partition for /.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Whether you can UEFI boot directly from XFS seems to depend on your motherboard's UEFI rather than your partition setup. My Asus desktop can do it but my HP laptops cannot when using the same Ubuntu version.

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