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?
Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
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Re: Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
#2Works 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.
Re: Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
#3I'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.
Re: Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
#4Here'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.
Re: Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
#518.04 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/
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/
For tiling window managers, I recommend i3: https://i3wm.org/
Re: Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
#6Tried 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.
Re: Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
#7For 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.
Re: Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
#8[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
#9Works 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.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Is it a good time to switch to Ubuntu 18.04 desktop?
#10I 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.