Ubuntu 15.10 review: Wily Werewolf leaves scary experimentation for next year

Fall is usually Canonical’s time for change, but 15.10 is merely the calm before Unity 8.

For many users, Unity 8 is a scarier proposition than some mythical human-wolf hybrid.

Canonical recently released Ubuntu 15.10, nicknamed Wily Werewolf. In the past, an autumn release of Ubuntu Linux like this would have been more experimental, warranting some caution when updating. Such releases weren’t quite update-at-your-own-risk rough, but they were often packed full of new features that were not fully baked. (For example, the now-shuttered Ubuntu One first debuted in 9.10. The Unity desktop became a default in 11.10, and the controversial Amazon search results in the Unity Dash made their debut in 12.10.) Especially compared to the spring .04 releases that tended to be stable (and every two years packaged as Long Term Support releases), autumn was Canonical’s time to experiment. Further Reading

Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you feel about desktop experiments—that’s not the case with Wily Werewolf.

There are new features worth updating for in this release, but, on the whole, this is Canonical refining what it has already created. The organization is essentially getting ready for the next LTS release (Ubuntu 16.04, due toward the end of April 2016), which will also likely be the last LTS release based on Unity 7.

So by this time next year, 16.10 will bring back the experimental new features with an entirely different beast on the desktop. Look for Unity 8, Mir, and other big changes to return in next year’s .10 release, re-establishing the fall as Canonical’s playground.

But talk of Unity 8 and what it means for Ubuntu can wait—we should first appreciate Ubuntu 15.10, which might be the very last of its kind for a little while. This is a stable, welcome update that doesn’t require you to radically change your workflow or habits.

Visually Ubuntu 15.10 looks a lot like previous releases.

While Ubuntu 15.10 is unlikely to win any awards for innovation, the kernel update includes some very useful new features, a couple of UI changes for Unity, and plenty of application updates. All of these make the new release well worth an update.

The most notable UI changes are the scroll bars, which are now pulled straight from GNOME 3. Canonical has abandoned its little disappearing “handle”-style scrollbars in favor of GNOME’s defaults (which have improved considerably since Ubuntu started work on its own version). The change appears to be based more on code maintenance and development effort than any strong aesthetic feelings from Canonical. Writing and maintaining your own scroll bar code may be more work than it’s worth. The visual change is minor and solves quite a few bugs in Canonical’s home-grown scroll bars, making it a win for users as well as the programmers once tasked with maintaining the old code base.

The old Ubuntu-created scroll bar is on the left, the new upstream version from GNOME on the right.

Abandoning the homegrown scroll bars might also mean that Unity is able to integrate upstream GNOME updates faster than it has been lately. With this release, most of the GNOME suite of tools that powers much of Unity have finally been updated to 3.16, though a few holdouts like text-editor GEdit remain at much older versions.

Aside from the scroll bars, there aren’t many visual changes to this release. Unity itself gets a slight version bump with some bug fixes and a couple of new features, including a new option to drag icons out of the Dash launcher and onto your desktop. If you were really missing the ability to clutter your desktop with something other than files, well, now you can throw some application launchers in there for good measure.

Other notable bug fixes in Unity address an annoying problem with full-screen menu bars and the ability to access locally integrated menus—that is, menus within the window rather than in the top bar—on unfocused windows.

While those are welcome fixes, most of what’s interesting in this release is not directly from Canonical. The most exciting thing in Ubuntu 15.10 is probably the updated kernel, which is now based on the upstream Linux Kernel 4.2.

The 4.2 line brings support for recent Radeon GPUs and some new encryption options for ext4 disks. There’s also support for Intel’s new Broxton chips, which just might be finding their way into an Ubuntu Mobile device at some point. 15.10 marks the first time that the new live kernel patching has been available in Ubuntu, and this release adds a new kernel for the Raspberry Pi 2 as well.

Linux game aficionados will be happy to hear that this release ships with support for the new Steam controller.

Developers get some love in this release, too, with updates for Python and Ubuntu Make, Ubuntu’s impressive suite of developer tools. If you’re looking for a quick way to get, for example, a basic Android development environment setup, you’d be hard pressed to beat Ubuntu Make’s simple umake android command.

Anyone doing tech support from an Ubuntu machine will be happy to hear that Virtualbox has been updated with the latest version, which offers guest additions for Windows 10. The rest of Ubuntu’s standard application suite has been updated as well, including the latest version of Firefox, Thunderbird, Chromium, and more. Even LibreOffice has been upgraded to version 5, a major update for LibreOffice users.

In testing, Ubuntu 15.10 has been rock solid. But that said, I had some trouble installing 15.10 via Chrubuntu on a new Dell 13 Chromebook primarily related to trackpad drivers. Chrubuntu is a bit of a hack, though it’s probably not fair to hold it against Ubuntu. 15.10 has otherwise been very stable and wonderful to use on all the devices I’ve tested it on.

This is especially true on my old Eeepc, where Ubuntu offers something that gets very little press—UI scaling. Typically HiDPI screens get all the attention, and, indeed, Unity looks great in high res, but Ubuntu also has some great scaling in the opposite direction. Using the slider under Settings >> displays, it’s possible to downsize the entire UI, which gains you some precious real estate on smaller screens. It doesn’t work everywhere (Firefox is my most-used exception), but it does make it easy to reclaim a few pixels on small screens.

Ubuntu 15.10 Flavors

When most people refer to Ubuntu, they mean the Unity desktop version, but there are half a dozen other official Ubuntu “flavors” using just about every popular desktop available for Linux.

The release of Wily Werewolf brings updates for all of them, but perhaps none is as big or impressive as Kubuntu 15.10. Kubuntu has always been one of the nicer KDE-based distros, but this release is particularly impressive. With Kubuntu 15.04 earlier this year, Kubuntu made the leap to Plasma 5, the next generation of KDE. At the start, things were rough around the edges. Kubuntu 15.10 adds an impressive list of bug fixes and some UI polish that make it one of the best KDE desktops available right now (the other standout being openSUSE Leap). This update features Plasma 5.4 and KDE Applications 15.08, which means the latest set of stock KDE apps and underlying tools you can get in a KDE distro.

Kubuntu 15.10 with the new Breeze KDE theme.

The new Breeze desktop with its flat, colorful, high-contrast look is what KDE refers to as a modernized interface, and it has “reduced visual clutter throughout the workspace.” (For more details on what’s new in Plasma 5, see Ars’ earlier review.)

Unfortunately Kubuntu 15.10 comes along with the news that the lead developer of Kubuntu is leaving the project. The good news is that he’ll still be actively involved in KDE, but the bad news is that the troubling accusations he made about Canonical’s misuse of donations is the reason for his departure. Canonical has reportedly launched an internal audit to figure out what, if anything, went wrong.

The other notable update among the various Ubuntu flavors is an Ubuntu MATE release intended for the Raspberry Pi 2. The lightweight MATE desktop is a natural fit for the Pi, and the new tailored release makes it much easier to get it installed and up and running on your Raspberry Pi 2.

Despite a healthy list of new features in Unity and quite a bit of change in some of the other flavors, many (including me) feel a certain sense of disappointment with 15.10.

While there’s something to be said for solid updates that don’t rock the boat and let you keep getting work done, that’s really what LTS releases were designed for. If you prize stability, stick with 14.04 (or use Debian stable). It would be nice to see Ubuntu’s x.10 releases return to something a bit edgier and more experimental.

That said, you actually can get something very experimental in this release. In fact, it’s so experimental that it isn’t quite ready for even a .10 release, and you’ll need to install it yourself—Ubuntu running Unity 8.

Yes, this is the very thing that has made Ubuntu a tad boring lately—seemingly all development effort has been focused on Ubuntu Mobile and the new Unity 8 desktop. While this setup is actually relatively easy to install now, it’s still very buggy. That’s why the latest Unity iteration is available as an LXC container, which helps keep it fully isolated from your production machine. Enlarge/

Unity 8 as a login option. This is likely the approach Canonical will take, at least for the first few releases—Unity 8 as a separate login option.

I took it for a spin and, well, here’s the thing about Unity 8: it’s buggy and unstable, but it’s getting really close. Today, it’s possible to experience what Canonical has in mind for the future, and it actually looks pretty great.

The really exciting part of Unity 8, though, isn’t on the desktop but on Ubuntu Mobile and Canonical’s vision of “convergence.” Convergence, for Canonical, means the mobile device becomes a full desktop PC (*with the addition of a larger-screen monitor). To make this possible, Canonical has developed Unity 8, which will bring the same underlying code base to both the desktop and mobile versions of the OS.

The most impressive Unity 8 demo I’ve seen comes from Canonical engineers who have posted a couple of video demos of GIMP running on an Ubuntu Mobile device.

The point isn’t that GIMP is on your phone; that’s more of a novelty since the interface would be unusably small and, in the end, pointless beyond the “hey look at that” factor. The point is that you plug your phone into a monitor, and, all of a sudden, you have the full power of GIMP running on a device that fits in your pocket (and reverts to a mobile OS when you unplug it from the monitor). It sounds good, and, now, for the first time, it actually looks believable.

What you can currently see in the desktop version is the opposite portion of Canonical’s convergence. Mobile applications scale up to run on the desktop device, and some new visual splashes like the 3D app switcher and flatter visual look are showcased in the video below.

It won’t be for everyone, but if you’re underwhelmed by iOS’ and Android’s attempts to provide a desktop-quality experience with the applications you already use, Ubuntu Mobile is looking like it might finally deliver the goods.

Ubuntu Mobile is also the reason you have boring .10 releases like Wily Werewolf. Canonical is getting its ducks in a row for Unity 8. There will no doubt be growing pains involved with the transition, but a day will come soon when the minor, perhaps unremarkable, releases like 15.10 are a thing of long-lost memories.

If you want a desktop that’s reliable, solid, but also pushing things forward—which is to say, if you want the experience Unity has been providing for the last three or even four releases—you will likely want to get the 16.04 LTS release coming next April. It will probably be the last Unity 7 release. But if you want to live on the edge, Unity 8 will be, if not the default, at least only a login screen away come this time next year.

In the meantime, enjoy your quiet days of Ubuntu 15.10. The days of such calm releases are limited.