
Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop? - alexanderdmitri
I&#x27;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?
======
sandGorgon
If you are considering a switch, do give Fedora a shot. I moved after a decade
of Ubuntu.

All the technologies that won out (systemd, gnome, Wayland,etc) were created
at Fedora. So the level of integration is unparalleled.

Ubuntu still seems to be fighting it's choices.

~~~
subsection1h
You should inform the developers of i3, KDE Plasma, etc. that they can retire
now that GNOME has "won out".

~~~
sandGorgon
I don't think I said that Gnome has won out (and neither should it).

I was making a comparison between two Gnome based distros. In case you were
not aware, Ubuntu is now Gnome.

~~~
JdeBP
Actually, that's _exactly_ what you said.

~~~
sandGorgon
i can see why you would think that based on the language, but it was very
contextual.

it was fedora vs ubuntu - gnome, wayland and systemd had their equivalents in
ubuntu (unity, mir and upstart) which lost the battle. Ubuntu then adopted the
winners. I meant that specifically - not a general comment across Linux

------
LarryMade2
Here's what I do, I shrink a partition on my HDD (or have it already
partitioned so theres space for several OS partitions,

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,

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.

Any time I get stuck or have some unexpected difficulty I still have the
previous favorite distro to boot back to in an emergency.

~~~
Ologn
I do this too. Actually I have a web page about various caveats when doing it
(
[http://vartmp.com/tech/multibooting.html](http://vartmp.com/tech/multibooting.html)
).

And of course, you can always use KVM's to take a look at distros as well.

------
yumraj
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.

~~~
s25
The issue is the new linux kernel used by 18.04. Nvidia drivers break. In fact
if you install debian, that waits before upgrading the last kernel, you do not
have any problems.

------
git-pull
18.04 is stable. Feel free to go ahead and grab a copy. PPA's are also up to
speed.

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.

(Weekly builds are known to fail from time to time)

Then, pair that with a sources.list generator:
[https://debgen.simplylinux.ch/](https://debgen.simplylinux.ch/)

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/.

A bit off topic: for gnome 3 extensions, this has been indispensable:
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/723/pixel-
saver/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/723/pixel-saver/)

For tiling window managers, I recommend i3:
[https://i3wm.org/](https://i3wm.org/)

------
nstart
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.

------
sk5t
Tried 18.04 for an afternoon, it effected a wide variety of system freezes on
my ancient i7 920 + GTX570, so, back to rock-solid Debian 9.

------
Ologn
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.

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?

There are also other unpleasant things like this in 18.04, like -
[https://askubuntu.com/a/1028857](https://askubuntu.com/a/1028857) . 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).

I should also add I have been burned in the past by upgrading to Ubuntu on the
week the new release comes out (
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1674838](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1674838)
), 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.)

------
srcmap
Personally I like to keep it simple, stupid and light which is xfce for me.

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.

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.

~~~
bittercynic
I'm in the same boat, and settled on LXDE after trying XFCE. Either one seems
to work great even on cheap or old hardware, and there are way fewer surprises
that more featureful desktop environments.

------
tvmalsv
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:

* 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 :)

~~~
majewsky
FYI: That's not formatted like you planned. You'll need to put blank lines
between your list items.

------
techjuice
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.

~~~
maccam94
If you just need an older Linux distro on Linux, use Docker or LXC. Containers
allow you to easily share files and there's no performance overhead or messing
around with virtual hard drives.

------
peelle
Using it, I mostly like. The new kernel supports my newer laptop hardware
better. It "feels" like it runs smoother, fwiw.

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.

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.

~~~
Pistos2
And that file was... ?

------
throwaway8879
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.

~~~
copperx
I also have a 2010 MBP with a logic board problem. How did you manage to
revive it?

~~~
throwaway8879
I just installed Xubuntu on it. I suppose it uses the integrated GPU by
default? As far as I can tell, it was the switching between GPUs that was
causing the machine to crash on macOS. I recall having installed gfxCardStatus
on it to stop the switching, but it wasn't super-reliable.

Anyway, it works pretty well now for some dev work and light browsing. Hope
you manage to fix yours!

------
dabber
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.

Otherwise, Kubuntu 18.04 has been very stable for me for several months.

------
androidgirl
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.

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.

------
mabynogy
It's always the time for an Ubuntu user to switch to Debian. You won't even
notice the difference.

------
sdfin
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.

------
jzemeocala
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.

------
suspectdoubloon
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.

------
rcdmd
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.

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.

~~~
rufugee
Windows and Linux are not apples to apples. One you pay for and one you don't.

~~~
rcdmd
Could you expand on this? Of course they're different. 18.04 isn't worth the
upgrade yet in my opinion.

------
kjeetgill
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.

Use it for a few weeks and decide.

------
tictacttoe
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.

~~~
subsection1h
How is Arch "more stable" than Ubuntu LTS?

How is maintaining an Arch installation "so much smoother"? The user must
carefully review a PKGBUILD every time any installed AUR package needs to be
updated[1], which will happen frequently because the user will need many AUR
packages to make up for the fact that there are only 10,200 Arch packages[2],
much less than Ubuntu's 81,563 packages[3].

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/3yiq4s/is_the_au...](https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/3yiq4s/is_the_aur_safe_to_use/cydr9ss/)

[2] [https://www.archlinux.org/packages/](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/)

[3]
[https://packages.ubuntu.com/cosmic/allpackages?format=txt.gz](https://packages.ubuntu.com/cosmic/allpackages?format=txt.gz)

~~~
dahdum
I ran Arch for a couple years and agree with OP that it "feels" smoother and
more stable. The documentation is fantastic, like FreeBSD, and you end up with
a streamlined system you understand well if you go through the manual process.

I moved back to Ubuntu only so I could use the same ansible scripts locally as
prod.

------
shmerl
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.

------
p0d
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.

You can chose unity at login over the new default gnome which I thought was a
nice touch by the Ubuntu developers.

------
facorreia
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.

------
tracer4201
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.

It's not as great as developing on my 2015 Macbook Pro but its acceptable.

------
borplk
I recommend waiting a good while before upgrading (like 6 to 12 months).

Or at least do some extensive testing with your hardware on a separate disk.

I did some testing and faced hard freezes and bugs (looked like Nvidia PCIE
issues).

------
tfolbrecht
I think running a long term support distro is silly for non critical devices.

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.

~~~
subsection1h
How is it silly? I've used Debian Stable and Ubuntu LTS on desktops for many
years. I've always had the latest versions of all the apps I use thanks to
backports, repos managed by upstream developers (e.g., PPAs) and occasionally
installing software from source. (Disclosure: I don't use GNOME, KDE or any
other DE, which can be problematic to keep updated.)

Also, many upstream developers who provide packages for Debian and Ubuntu
(e.g., PostgreSQL[1][2] and Spotify[3]) only test their software on Debian
Stable and Ubuntu LTS.

Lastly, Debian Testing has the worst security update speed and should not be
preferred if security is a concern.[4]

[1]
[https://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/debian/](https://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/debian/)

[2]
[https://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/ubuntu/](https://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/ubuntu/)

[3]
[https://www.spotify.com/us/download/linux/](https://www.spotify.com/us/download/linux/)

[4]
[https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianTesting)

~~~
tfolbrecht
I'm under the impression OP is asking about a distro for their laptop or
desktop.

My question to you is, why use an old kernel + packages when you could have
newish ones with a reasonable degree of trust? Is avoiding the extremely rare
bug worth it?

re:PPAs I prefer my machines packages to be downloaded from trusted sources.
The distro developer package vetting and accountability adds value.

------
dboreham
I think so, since a few packages I use recently turned out to be too old (vs
the current mainstream) in the stock repos. E.g. Go, Docker.

------
rrggrr
Ubuntu Budgie has been a rock for me. Utterly stable. Very useable.

------
if_by_whisky
Upgraded my laptop two weeks ago. Smooth sailing so far.

------
sathackr
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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

That's my annoyances so far that I can think of after using it for 2-3 weeks.

Things that I like? Multiple tabs in the terminal window. But I could probably
get that in 16.04 too.

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.

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.

The relocation of the gui window close/min/max elements doesn't bother me,
either layout works for me.

I can't think of any other things that jumped out at me about 18.04, good or
bad.

~~~
keyle
Wow. Some of the bug reports here sound pretty obvious. I wonder if your touch
screen is the reason why so many issues are occuring... That or Wayland/Ubuntu
isn't right at all.

~~~
sathackr
I don't know if I would call all of them bugs.

The non-registering clicks thing, yes.

The rest...are likely just preference issues, difference in features, and
intended behavior. Such as the lack of keyboard shortcuts in the alt-space
menu.

Most can probably be dealt with in one way or another. It's just going to be
time consuming to go dig and find out how to make the OS stay out of my way.
I'll likely be going back to 16.04 soon until 18.04 gets a little more baked.

It looks like I can get Wayland with 18.04[1], so I may try that first.

[1] [https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029436/enable-fractional-
sc...](https://askubuntu.com/questions/1029436/enable-fractional-scaling-for-
ubuntu-18-04)

------
craftyguy
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.

~~~
Yhippa
Have any recommendations?

~~~
copperx
Googler's workstations use Debian Testing (customized). It might be a good
start.

