I've been doing my dev work on Ubuntu 16.04 for years now and I love it. How are people who have updated to the latest version liking it? Would you recommend upgrading?
If you are considering a switch, do give Fedora a shot. I moved after a decade of Ubuntu.<p>All the technologies that won out (systemd, gnome, Wayland,etc) were created at Fedora. So the level of integration is unparalleled.<p>Ubuntu still seems to be fighting it's choices.
Here's what I do, I shrink a partition on my HDD (or have it already partitioned so theres space for several OS partitions,<p>Then I install the latest and greatest on the free space or a much older distro partition, leaving my current work distro safe on its own partition,<p>Next I copy over as much of the contents my current home folder as I can. Now, I can truly "taste" the new distro and if it isn't a good transition I just go back to my current favorite. I've found I probably install a new favorite distro twice, first time is to check it out, mess with stuff decide if its an improvement or not, and ensure everything still works. Then re-install the second time, now knowing what I like from the new one and just install with the packages/settings that work.<p>Any time I get stuck or have some unexpected difficulty I still have the previous favorite distro to boot back to in an emergency.
For what it's worth, I had moved to 18.04 from 16.04 and regret it.
Booting takes longer, and I have an NVidia 1070 but NVidia XServer Settings has stopped working and if I try to run it it hangs the systems where the only option is to hard boot.
18.04 is stable. Feel free to go ahead and grab a copy. PPA's are also up to speed.<p>If you want to hop on board a rolling release, firmware-buster-DI-alpha3-amd64-DVD-1.iso will give you a fully working debian testing install with closed source drivers.<p>(Weekly builds are known to fail from time to time)<p>Then, pair that with a sources.list generator: <a href="https://debgen.simplylinux.ch/" rel="nofollow">https://debgen.simplylinux.ch/</a><p>And one more ingredient: if you use gnome 3, you may have to copy a file to get gnome extension installation via chrome working. Copy the contents of /etc/chromium/native-messaging-hosts/ to /etc/opt/chrome/native-messaging-hosts/.<p>A bit off topic: for gnome 3 extensions, this has been indispensable: <a href="https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/723/pixel-saver/" rel="nofollow">https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/723/pixel-saver/</a><p>For tiling window managers, I recommend i3: <a href="https://i3wm.org/" rel="nofollow">https://i3wm.org/</a>
Would not recommend upgrading. I tried it out in a VM, and it's not that it's bad. It's just how solid 16.04 is. It's a joy to work in that environment, and if I'm going to upgrade my OS when things are so smooth, it better be to have a better experience.
I bought a Dell Inspiron laptop in early 2017. After upgrading from 17.10 to 18.04, the ACPI became all messed up. Manually running "pm-suspend" (suspend to RAM) puts the machine into an unusable state. Of course the problem isn't when this happens manually but when it happens automatically, and the problems are the same. Running "pm-hibernate" fails as well.<p>I'm sure if I spent more time looking at it I could fix it, or at least work around it. I won't go into all the details of what I've looked at so far in this post. But how many hours do I want to devote to this?<p>There are also other unpleasant things like this in 18.04, like - <a href="https://askubuntu.com/a/1028857" rel="nofollow">https://askubuntu.com/a/1028857</a> . Starting in 18.04, right clicking on a touchpad is turned off by default, in order to be more "Mac-like" (if Ubuntu wants to be more Mac-like, they should get power management working, not shifting me from three Unix mouse buttons to two and now to one).<p>I should also add I have been burned in the past by upgrading to Ubuntu on the week the new release comes out ( <a href="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1674838" rel="nofollow">https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1674838</a> ), so now I usually wait about six weeks for the major bugs to get squashed before upgrading to the new release (in the past, when I had more time, I would do the opposite - I would put Ubuntu beta into a KVM virtual instance, or even a partition on my machine, ferret out bugs, and report them, maybe send patches etc.)
Personally I like to keep it simple, stupid and light which is xfce for me.<p>If I need a desktop, I always configure the system to use xfce which means 16.04 and 18.04's desktop GUI are the same.<p>It also means that the vm with GUI under Mac/Windows has the same GUI and also very light. I can configure 512M -2G RAM per VM and they works just fine.
I'm a 16.04 user, too, and I've been running 18.04 in a VM for a few weeks. Basically seems ok to me, but, I do have some gripes. Not deal-breakers, just dislikes:<p>* When copying a file in the gui, a progress window doesn't pop-up for the operation. Took me a little while to realize there is now a little icon on the window's titlebar that shows a pie-chart style of progress. Until I look for that icon, it feels like I don't know if the copy even started.
* The "start menu?"/launcher thing blows up into a big, full-screen, icon menu. Seems mentally jarring to have all of my current work overlaid by the launcher.
* And, my biggest gripe is the least consequential, but, I want my wobbly windows and 3D desktop cube back! There, I admitted it. I used them and liked it :)
Works wonderfully, especially with the updated packages and performance enhancements. If you need something from 16.04 or 14.04 there is always VMWare with the Virtualization Extensions enabled which allowed me to still use KVM and older packages when testing backwards compatibility.
Using it, I mostly like. The new kernel supports my newer laptop hardware better. It "feels" like it runs smoother, fwiw.<p>Upgrading was bad. For my local machine, when it first came out trying to run the upgrade script would lock my system, and force me to hard reboot. I tried several fixes, but ended up just doing an install from CD over the old system.<p>For my web server, not copying 1 file to a new location before running the upgrade script caused me to destroy the whole system. I restored from backup. After researching about that file, I was able to do the upgrade with only a few broken packages needing my attention.
I managed to revive a 2010 Macbook Pro that had an issue with the logic-board/GPU. Ubuntu 18.04 works flawlessly on it. Although Gnome is a little heavy, so my i3 setup with some XFCE settings works very well.
For a work machine my advice is to make sure the tools you depend on work well on 18.04. Docker for example didn't have a stable version in their repos until June 22nd. Other tools like MySQL Workbench and the Redis equivalent (who's name escapes me) do not have 18.04 compatible versions.<p>Otherwise, Kubuntu 18.04 has been very stable for me for several months.
I would recommend it. I've used it at home for a bit, I only recently switched away from it on my workstation to Antergos.<p>I still feel that 16.04 was a bit more traditional, and I liked that a lot. If you're happy with 16.04, I'd reccomend sticking. I won't be upgrading my machine at work for a long while, which is still 16.04.
I had moved to Ubuntu 18.04 from Xubuntu 16.04 and I like it. Everything is stable. Also I installed it on my parents' laptop, which had Windows before, and they got used to it quickly.
Still, I never used Ubuntu 16.04 so I cannot compare with it, but I didn't like Unity UI.
I'm still a unity fan for various personal reasons, so my machine still runs 16.04 for now. But my wife's newest laptop got a fresh 18.04 install and I can report that amd proprietary drivers seem to be a lot easier to install without devastating hiccups in 18.04.
I would suggest Fedora if your going to use gnome it has far better consistency in my opinion. Ubuntu have switched to installing default apps like system monitor and some others using snap. There's some inconsistencies if you use other GTK themes besides the default.
I wish I didn't. My experience was so bad I'm actually back on Windows for the first time since 12.04 and might stay here.<p>It was an X/driver issue and it took me a few hours to fix to just get X to load. Meanwhile, Windows worked fine as I furiously Googled the issue.
I'd recommend doing a fresh install on another partition if you can and see how it goes. 95% of Ubuntu installs work like butter but there's always a bit of risk getting all the video drivers and suspend and resume working right.<p>Use it for a few weeks and decide.
If you are reasonable comfortable in Linux and a developer, I'd strongly recommend Arch with i3 window manager. Pacman is fantastic. The initial setup is a bit of a pain, but it's so much smoother and more stable from that point forward.
I prefer Debian testing + KDE for desktop needs including gaming. Rolling distros are in general more up to date especially with Mesa and kernel updates. Unless you configure extra repositories, stable or LTS distros will fall behind a lot.
I have a laptop and two external monitors on 18.04. I had to ditch gnome for unity to return workspaces to a good place.<p>You can chose unity at login over the new default gnome which I thought was a nice touch by the Ubuntu developers.
I've tested Linux Mint 19 (based on Ubuntu 18.04) on a spare laptop and it seems to be working well for my use case. I'll be upgrading my main machine soon. I prefer Mint Cinnamon's UI to Ubuntu's.
My husband had Windows installed on our only desktop at home and recently I installed Ubuntu 18.04 to do development. I hated it on Windows 10.<p>It's not as great as developing on my 2015 Macbook Pro but its acceptable.
I recommend waiting a good while before upgrading (like 6 to 12 months).<p>Or at least do some extensive testing with your hardware on a separate disk.<p>I did some testing and faced hard freezes and bugs (looked like Nvidia PCIE issues).
I think running a long term support distro is silly for non critical devices.<p>I personally use Debian Testing, maybe take this chance to try it? I've never had a stability issue across the 4 different devices I use.
I've been using 16.04 since release and loved it. It was my first Linux daily driver after dumping Windows due to dislike of the way MS has handled Windows 10.<p>I just bought a new drive, so took the opportunity to install 18.04 to see how it goes. I'm using a Latitude E7450 with a 1920x1080 touchscreen. I'm not a developer, I'm primarily a network engineer, so I spent a lot of time in terminal windows configuring routers/switches,etc... YMMV.<p>I hate it. Most of my hates are around the gui, likely due to the switch from Wayland/Unity. I can no longer alt-tab between open windows with one hand when you have multiple windows of the same program open. Selecting which window you want requires either using the mouse, or using the arrow keys(with right hand).<p>The "launcher" -- not sure what it's actually called, the equivalent of the Windows Start menu, reminds me of the jarring experience that the original Windows 8 was. It goes into full-screen task selection mode, instead of a partial window overlay like 16.04 did.<p>Somehow I keep grabbing the icons on the left side('favorited' programs), and then the cursor won't let them go. I wind up spamming enough buttons and keys that eventually it drops it, but a simple click doesn't do it.<p>Sometimes the mouse quits registering clicks. As if the OS thinks there something on top of what I'm clicking on. I click on a tab in Chrome, and nothing happens. Usually a few alt-tabs to switch active programs will clear it up.<p>If you touch the screen, most of the time an onscreen keyboard will pop up, and you have to move the mouse to make it go away. I understand why, but I don't use the touchscreen that way and it just gets in my way.<p>1920x1080 on a 14" screen it just a little too small for me to comfortably read the text at a normal distance. I used the DPI scaling in 16.04 to compensate. But the scaling in 18.04 doesn't work the same way. I changed the fonts around and sort-of got something workable, but it's not as graceful as it was in 16.04.<p>The alt-space window that drops down the minimize/maximize options doesn't accept keyboard commands. A common key sequence for me is alt-space, x (for maximize window) -- this doesn't work in 18.04<p>That's my annoyances so far that I can think of after using it for 2-3 weeks.<p>Things that I like? Multiple tabs in the terminal window. But I could probably get that in 16.04 too.<p>The network manager is better and more intuitive. I've actually caught myself using it a couple of times. 16.04's manager does nothing but fight with me constantly.<p>There was an annoying issue with Chrome on 16.04 that occasionally in full-screen video mode, the UI would lock up and I would have to kill -9 chrome to get it back. This hasn't happened yet in 18.04. Not sure if a chrome or Wayland issue.<p>The relocation of the gui window close/min/max elements doesn't bother me, either layout works for me.<p>I can't think of any other things that jumped out at me about 18.04, good or bad.
I would avoid Ubuntu. They take carry a LOT of patches that are not upstreamed (for whatever reason) and they have a long history of ignoring community trends and being extremely divisive for no good reason.