20.04 is due out in a few days. I hope it's good. 18.04 has been total crap for me. The lock screen randomly won't authenticate, and I am forced to reboot. My USB dock suddenly started randomly disconnecting and reconnecting, after it worked fine for months.

The "Save/Open" button in the file dialog boxes is in the title bar, which is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. Dialog boxes get tied to windows, so when I try to move the dialog out of the way to see my work, it drags the whole damn window. (Some of this is mentioned in the TFA.) I think a lot of these decisions were Gnome-driven, but still... stick with 16.04.

I think Xubuntu is a good alternative. XFCE doesn't have as much eye candy, but it certainly surprises me far less and usually is very pleasant to work with.

I used Xubuntu for a number of years and it's a great lightweight environment overall. The main problems that I experienced with it are that it's handling of hot-plugging multiple displays (especially in between sleep states) has always been poor and crashy.

And I like the cohesiveness and integration of GNOME, although I had to do a hell of a lot of customization to mold it into something I could tolerate.

I've also noticed that XFCE's handling of hotplug monitors leaves much to be desired, and it also cheerfully ignores my preference of not suspending when I close the laptop lid (so I can use only the external monitor and an external keyboard when I have it plugged into my TV). Close the lid under XFCE and "BEEP!" it goes into suspend mode instead of doing nothing.

Fortunately, Cinnamon is just an apt-get away, handles both monitor hotplugging and closing the laptop lid sanely, and works the way I expect a desktop to work. I've settled on Xubuntu+Cinnamon as my go-to when setting up a desktop or laptop.

Can you elaborate on Xubuntu+Cinnamon? That sounds interesting.

I also just noticed that there's an Ubuntu Cinnamon which might be right up my alley as well.

The setup I did was to just install Xubuntu, then:

apt install cinnamon

Once installed, I logged out, and then picked Cinnamon from the session selection menu (the little gear near the upper right corner). It comes right up, though it won't pick up your preferences from XFCE.

I hadn't realized there was now a Cinnamon spin - is that still in testing? It's not on Ubuntu's list of flavors.

I'm on 19.10, and I'm quite disappointed. Exposing all windows as thumbnails is a big regression compared to Unity. It feels heavyweight, and just doesn't work anymore for window navigation. Pressing the app icon on the side bar brings up small, equal-sized window previews on top of each other without spatial information. Consequently I have now tens of open terminal session and browser windows. Global menu is gone, wasting precious vertical space. Or it would, if apps such as Firefox didn't change to use stupid hamburger menus. The place where the global menu used to be is now used for displaying the time, which is absurd. What's not gone is the chopped display of the focussed app's name on the left. I frequently make errors on window decorations (might be me used to Unity, but it's still the case after two months). Search isn't as useful as it used to be, but has a pompous animation. Apps are beginning to use snaps, which I have no use for - all I want is a driver for running the same old programs I used to run the last twenty years. It's not that there's been a boom of new desktop apps for Linux lately.

Installation was rock-solid, though. Only had to install synaptics over libinput (libinput causing physical pain for me because I had to press the touchpad hard all the time, and because lack of kinetic scroll).

Seriously considering alternatives.

I was on the same boat and decided to install KDE Plasma. Very very happy with the result, the UI dark theme is very beautiful and all shortcuts and UI elements work the way "old" UIs did (unlike freaking Ubuntu 18 and 19 which changed everything for 0 reason).

https://kde.org/plasma-desktop

It was quite easy to install and everything worked out-of-the-box. I just customized some widgets, the dark theme, icon colors and now it looks amazing. Best Linux desktop I've used so far.

I've been on the brink of installing KDE many times over the years. What held me back was that screenshots always displayed bulky window decorations which I have no use for on a 13/14" notebook. Also, for space efficiency, I want global menus period. I think Ubuntu pre-18 with Unity got a lot of things right - a lean UI getting out of your way and yielding space to actual apps. I can do without the collection of desktop apps for either Gnome or KDE - on Gnome the file manager is particular anemic, on KDE it seems too Windows-y for my taste. And I don't use Gnome's mail app or video player but rather "best-of-breed" apps like Thunderbird and VLC anyway. So I guess I'll be looking at lightweight DEs/non-"DE"s going forward (but I'll give KDE a try for sure).

It's sad because gnome worked very well for me so far, and I've actually seen Ubuntu becoming the mainstream choice for freelance dev teams at many places over the last couple of years. I do feel guilty to criticize other people's hard work given for free to me without constructive criticism but as far as I'm concerned gnome shoots for a future and audience of desktop users that just isn't there when IMHO the goal should be to preserve what precious free desktop apps we have and not making app development any more difficult or gnome-centric.

You can create a Unity-like look and feel in KDE Plasma 5 relatively easily[1]. Although the look and feel is only part of the experience, KDE Plasma 5 is very customizable that I'm sure it could be adapt fit to most workflow.

Despite its bad reputation in early days, KDE Plasma 5 nowadays is very lightweight. As in, the resource usage is pretty much on par with Xfce.

[1]: https://userbase.kde.org/Plasma/How_to_create_a_Unity-like_l...

Just to make it clear: after I posted this , I did some research and it turns out I am using KDE Cinnamon actually... I installed KDE, and now I have options when in the login page to select which "session" I want: Ubuntu, Unity, Plasma, Cinnamon, Wayland... I have Cinnamon by default, and it is indeed my favourite... Plasma seems very cool, but too different from what I am used to... I might play with it later when I have more time though.

Do not upgrade.

Switch.

A lot of Ubuntu software is now (Version 19.xx) only available with "snaps". They make some sense for IoT machinery (the user does not control updates, so they are deploy and forget) but I do not want to loose control.

Final straw for me. I am test driving Arch now....

Did you install Arch from scratch or are you using Manjaro, etc? I love Arch but I've never installed from scratch. It's on a my bucket list. I'm currently using Endeavour OS, which is easy-install Arch Linux with way less bloat than Manjaro. It's awesome. I'll never install a *buntu type system again.

Ha ha.

From scratch I think. My aptitude is no use with pacman

I highly recommend trying out other flavours of Ubuntu: Xubuntu (XFCE), Lubuntu (LXDE), Kubuntu (KDE), Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Budgie. Next week all should get 20.04 LTS release.

I don’t understand why you need different distributions for different DEs.

The only distro I’ve used past teenage is Ubuntu. I alternate stints of maybe 2 years with Windows, 2 years with Ubuntu. First thing I do after installing the most recent LTS Ubuntu is “apt install spectrwm”.

Spectrwm is not even particularly good — everyone tells me to use xmonad instead — but I know how to get it in usable shape in about half an hour. This after many moons of exclusively using Windows.

They are not different distributions but more like a different edition or "spin" of Ubuntu. They just install a different set of packages.

For KDE you're better off with KDE Neon. Still based on Ubuntu, but that's the official KDE distro if you can speak of one.

No, or at least I haven't found one. I was recently forced to upgrade from 14.04 and tried the default configuration in 18.04 (clean install) for a while before I gave up and installed Unity -- which, thankfully, is in the package manager. That at least got me back to the point where I could configure things critical to my workflow like having a 3x3 workspace switcher. The system has fought me every step of the way though -- especially with things like global hotkeys which have about half a dozen different places they can be configured and it's completely inconsistent what works where.

I've literally spent weeks trying to get back to the level of usability I had on my 14.04 setup -- compiling old/patched versions of software from source because the "improved" versions removed features I depend on or otherwise fucked up the interface (I cannot understand why anyone thought removing typeahead from Nautilus was a good idea!), trying every damned thing I can think of to debug the global hotkey problems (still can't get IME switching to work right reliably... it works for a while after I fiddle with it then just stops working and I have no clue why), and just generally having a bad time.

I've always considered Debian to be the sane, vanilla Ubuntu :-)