I’ve performed the most “unspectacular” upgrade on my main PC running Ubuntu MATE 17.10 to Ubuntu MATE 18.04 on Friday evening. I’ve used the PC up to the moment the upgrade finished and I’ve been asked to “Reboot Now”.
After restarting I continued where I left off. As if nothing did happen 
, except for having a new version of the OS, new versions of programs. And this is the way it should work!
No issue with the “Redmond” layout after the upgrade, it’s there as it was before showing all my (start) program icons on the left side, “system tray” (notification area) on the right side.
See the specs of my main PC: Share your System Specs -- Super List
Why on earth would someone talk about these things in this thread ? Please keep on reading, you will get the point…
All my PCs are “amd64” with 16 GB of RAM, Intel Core i5 (2nd, 4th, 6th and 7th generation), one has an nVidia GTX750 Ti graphic card, WLAN and SSDs.
For the other 2 PCs running Ubuntu MATE (18.04 now) I’ve performed a fresh install of Ubuntu MATE 18.04. I use them as test PCs, PCs running “lower priority tasks”, PCs to “grab and use” when the main PC is busy doing some “heavy duty tasks” (Eclipse, compiling, Jenkins releases / tests, Handbrake conversions from ts to mp4, etc.).
On none of the 3 PCs did I encounter an issue by now, running Ubuntu MATE 18.04 (after fixing my “Hibernate / Resume from hibernation” issue - see Hibernate / Resume from hibernation - Ubuntu (MATE) 18.04).
Everything is working as usual and expected.
Well, I admit, not using Ubuntu MATE on my notebooks. Not that I do not want to use it. No, but I have some programs that are not available for Linux (e.g. DVB Viewer for watching DVB-T2 free-to-air TV, TS Doctor for cutting recorded TV shows and I admit, I play Microsoft Solitaire Collection, etc.). And because there was no way to make “Hibernate / Resume from hibernate” working on these notebooks using Linux by now (I’ve tried other non-Debian / non-Ubuntu distros on the notebooks – it did not work). But, as usual, I will give it a try with Ubuntu MATE 18.04.
I may be a very lucky person taking into account the posts here spotting out issues or complaining. But am I really such a “special / lucky” case? Do you really think so?
I do not believe this is the case!
Besides, Ubuntu (any flavor) 16.04 was a total disaster on all my PCs / notebooks (program crashes all the time - SIGSEGV issues). Was very happy when Ubuntu MATE 16.10 was made available and had no major issue since October, 2016.
For all the encountered issues I’ve created bug reports (with different accounts in the past, but with my account since testing Ubuntu 18.04) on Launchpad and submitted apport issue reports. As a web frontend developer I know exactly how important user feeback is required in the process of fixing the issues.
As with any piece of software:
- it may contain bugs
- any bug may cause more or less or no trouble at all- YES, this is true - depends on the way you use the software, the hardware, the software that is installed on your PC, if you’ve upgraded or not the OS, the software, etc.
- bugs are not build-in by developers - there may be some special cases that may have not been taken into account when coding, there may be an undiscovered typo somewhere, there may be a flaw in the algorithm implemented, there may be some incompatibilities with new or old hardware / software, there may be a lot of other things that may cause an issue
- bugs are to be reported with additional (debugging) information - they will be taken very seriously by the developers and will be hopefully fixed as soon as possible
- missing or changed features - most of the time interpreted as “bugs” - it may be possible that the feature you miss or was changed has been considered by others using “their voice” / “involvement” as useless / not important or they proposed a change in the way the feature should work
- not a single developer likes to hear that his / her software is buggy! We’re not doing this on purpose to just annoy our users. We’re just humans and errors happen… we’re not living in an ideal world and even automated tests cannot detect all the issues - BUT, with your help, we can fix the bugs – therefor, provide feedback, describe the issue, provide hardware / software information, and we’re going to have a look, work on it and if possible we’ll provide the fix as soon as possible; it may be that the fix will come at a later time, due to the fact that it is possible that the fix affects lot of other software, there may be other involved that have to be informed and the need to change other affected software, etc.
- you have to be patient; software bugs / new features are evaluated and depending on their effect they will get different priorities; if a bug affects only a few users / special cases / old hardware / specific hardware / hardware not supported anymore or if the new feature is not requested by many users they may receive low priorities (Trivial / Minor) - e.g. my case with “Hibernate / Resume from hibernation” - it looks like only a few users are affected by this issue - most of the users shut down their PC or simply suspend their notebooks
- do not try “adventures” even if you’ve read on the Internet about how “cool” it is do to the one or the other thing – e.g. install an OS on a USB stick or even more add another OS to an USB install – it may be possible, it may work perfectly but it may also be a disaster and harm your own data! Even if it’s possible we do not have to test to the maximum extend and complain afterwards. You may do this in a “safe” (testing) environment and make sure you report the issues and the way to reproduce them
- when installing a new OS / software program, refrain from immediately installing tweaks or themes or make changes that were not intended / not tested by the developers; try to use the software as it was intended; if you encounter issues, report them! You have a lot of time afterwards to tweak your system, step-by-step, making sure you have a backup before starting tweaking and you write down what you’ve done – just to make sure you can revert a faulty / buggy tweak / operation and to be able to report the issue to the involved developers – otherwise none will get a clue on what happened on your PC and what the issues with conflicting software / hardware are, etc.
- if you simply shout out loud or offend people, you will go nowhere – your voice will be heard but it may be possible that people will want to ignore your message; try to keep calm, go for a walk, sleep on it, re-assess your issue and the impact it has on you then post your issue with all the possible details – it will help the developers in fixing the issue and finally you receiving the result with the fixed issue
And as a final thought…
Software / hardware is considered nowadays as something that has to work out-of-the-box. Everybody considers it as “given” and I think this is somehow wrong. Taking also into account the speed everything changes / evolves.
We have a lot of standards to comply with, a lot of “best practices” and a lot of hardware / software. It is enough to say that if your device (hardware & software) uses both standard / hardware / software A AND standard / hardware software Z, but A and Z are just 99.99% compatible, one may encounter issues / bugs at any time.
First, I did not want to join the discussion even if I read every single post here. BUT… I think a clarification about bugs / what to do if you encounter bugs is required.
It’s nothing wrong with the community from my point of view.
This forum reflects nothing else than real life:
- users that are happy
- angry users
- “adventurous” users trying to “live” to the maximum extend
- “loud shouting” users expressing their anger
- users that are willing to help
- others that are not willing to give a dime on the efforts done by others
- users that try to ride their ancient car like a Porsche and wondering about the fabulous crash
- users understanding more or less that security never did and does not exist by default – you have to actively involve in keeping yourself on the safe side without expecting “miracles” -
- users that “blindly” trust others without even knowing them or evaluating the risk the “blind trust” may be
- etc.
We all have to cope somehow and try to “live” together.
Let’s start thinking, contributing in any way possible and try to make Ubuntu MATE the OS and Desktop Environment we want to have installed on our PCs.
Simply, because we love it!
I think it is definitely worth a try