Lots of unsubstantiated anecdotes.

Ubuntu 16.04 and newer have a feature to auto detect if there is no hardware acceleration and can work with that. If you want fast fast, you can force to work without the nice effects.

IIRC, 16.10 has low-resource usage mode that cuts down on the visual effects.

If you're seeing that kind of artifacting in Unity, you should consider reporting it as it's a bug with details about your graphics hardware. Personally, the only times I have issues are when exiting games, but that's complicated by the fact that my laptop has a 4K screen. Still, everybody's machine is different, and what works fine on one configuration can be buggy on another.

You need not use Unity. Things are much better with Openbox; the usual problems of compiz and friends eating all the available RAM pretty much goes away.

I didn't get that sort of problems with compiz, but I'm on a 16 GB laptop so maybe I didn't notice.

I agree with not needing Unity. I'm on Gnome flashback and 16.04 finally let me get about the same DE I had with 10.04. It's Gnome 3 but it looks like the Gnome 2 desktop, with only one panel to the bottom and the compiz cube. I use the 3D rotation effect to remember which side I came from. A 2D slide doesn't hint me enough and I get lost in the virtual desktops. I don't use the cube for anything else. All considered, I'm happy with 16.04 and I'm staying here at least until 18.04.

  All considered, I'm happy with 16.04 and I'm staying here at
  least until 18.04.
	

Having moved from 14.04 to 15.x, I cannot agree more.

However, many packages aren't updated in the LTS releases which prompt one to move over to the intermediate releases. I wish Canonical were more agile about updating compilers and such on LTS versions.

You can find a PPA (apt repository) for almost any app or tool these days. I find that just adding a few of these for specific cases to a LTS release gives you the best of both worlds.

My current ones: git, Google chrome, flux, node, nylas, spotify, tarsnap, blender

I was referring mainly to compilers and system libraries; stuff like gcc, glibc, ...

I went from 12.04 to 16.04. I skipped 14.04 because of the DE which I couldn't bend to my will. I remember that I had similar problems in the last months on 12.04, with some new versions of some programs unavailable on 12.04. I guess that I could have installed them in a 14.04 docker container (would the kernel version have been ok?) Maybe you can do the same for a compiler. I don't know if it would be convenient. I'm more into scripting languages and I use gcc directly only every other year or more, so no big deal for me.

Current Kubuntu with Plasma is anything but lightweight.

There's really lightweight alternatives like Lubuntu and Xubuntu. You can give them a spin in a VM. If Linux for you mostly means a browser window and a few terminals, they'll do fine.

That undersells Xubuntu which is a full DE and very similar to GNOME 2, if you just want a classic stays out the way desktop then Xububtu is excellent.

Common! Stop these old black legend about KDE being heavy weight! I saw it running soft and fast even without 2d/3d acceleration!

To be fair, in comparison to most other DEs, it is still rather heavyweight. Definitely more heavyweight than LXDE and Xfce, and Unity is pretty well-optimised at this point, too.

But yeah, for what KDE is capable off, especially in comparison to GNOME or the Windows-world, it's actually incredibly lightweight.

I run it on a 4 year old mid-range laptop with 4 GB of RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and as long as my system isn't under heavy load, it's buttery smooth, even with many of the bells and whistles enabled.

> I run it on a 4 year old mid-range laptop with 4 GB of RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and as long as my system isn't under heavy load, it's buttery smooth, even with many of the bells and whistles enabled.

It is a desktop environment, not a 3D game. It should ALWAYS be buttery smooth. You can run a desktop environment on a 20 year old machine.

I used to run Kubuntu (with KDE 4) on an old Yakumo laptop, with 384 megs of RAM and a 600 MHz Celeron. Ran very smoothly. Coudn't have more than 2 apps open at a time, though. (And even that was sometimes pushing it.)

I don't know what they do, but Kubuntu does seem to be a bit heavy compared to Plasma 5 on other distributions. I seem to recall KDE devs calling out Kubuntu for its poor KDE integration.

Tell me, why do I need TWO kwallet daemons?

Why do I need to disable a filesystem indexer by default that slows the system to a crawl?

> Why do I need to disable a filesystem indexer by default that slows the system to a crawl?

As far as I'm aware, that's considered a thing of the past. I haven't seen it recommended for any recent version anywhere and at least for me, it runs perfectly fine without disabling it.

I also only have one kwallet daemon running right now.

That's on Plasma 5.8.

I think Ubuntu 16.04 is on Plasma 5.7 or older. (That's where I experienced this).

My rule of thumb: don't use Kubuntu, use some other KDE distro ( used to be mandrake/mandriva, now possible OpenSuse or Arch or something, I don't follow it too closely ATM.)

Unity/compiz uses more RAM than Mate/metacity. I switched my laptop with 4GB RAM over for this reason.

I had exact problem you have described with black screen. It is gone with latest software update.

I'm really looking forward for it. Thanks.

you are almost certainly using some laptop with optimus graphics, given your symptoms. On a standard PC, and I have tried dozens of permutations, the upside of Unity 7 being so "old hat" is that it is absolutely 100% rock solid.