This 1st part will seem unrelated to what is discussed here, but stick around as I assure you that it IS related in the manner I aim at here.
Recently we were forced by the need for high priced repairs to trade our '06 car 'up' against the cost of an '11 model ready to just drive away as it sat.
Sure, the newer car is very nice in certain ways - while also having added tech oriented stuff that is simply nonsensical (IMO).
The fully automatic rear view mirror with the flickering & ever changing compass display ??
Re-dik-oh-rous.
Doing away with the engine temp gauge in favour of blue/red idiot lights ??
Sheer idiocy.
Replacing the typical tailgate lever with an all-electric mechanism ??
Absurd, at BEST. (And no way to open it with a key anymore...meh.)
And worst of all:
Keys that MUST come from the dealer & cost ~$300 EACH for replacement !!
Good grief.
So - relating all that with the journey into 20.04 (which is already 'old news', I know...) :
This stuff only became obvious to me during my efforts to upgrade my partner's PC to 20.04 - and getting desired functions to work for her.
The most absurd one was getting LAN Messenger - which is easy as pie on 18.04.x - but for 20.04 is a total no-go.
Fortunately its 32 bit portable made for that 'other' OS works just fine.
A personal gripe for me is WINE Launcher Creator, which allows one to make .desktop entries for WINE apps in a full & delightfully easy manner.
HAHAHAHAHAHA !!
Joke's on me. No way Jose, not even by donating some body parts in payment - this app totally hits the wall though it is made for specifically Linux.
And why is that you ask=> just because it needs python-qt4.
Yes - I know exactly how to make those entries 100% manually - and they work fine so long as having the funny spring icon is OK - vs. that great app that does the whole thing in a secone WITH adding the nice icon of the user's choosing included.
Presto - done.
Can I get the icons out of the .EXE files easily ??
Sure - by using yet ANOTHER 32 bit windows app.
And the list of things for which there are active Synaptic entries in 18.04.x BUT which do not exist at all under 20.04.x is really too lengthy to remember - but there are just too many like that.
Now...
Adding in what I've seen just recently about the (non-LTS) 21.04 release, I remain truly & totally delighted to be staying with good, old version 18 !!!
I see no reasonable advantage in embracing the notion that 'newer is better', and can see what keeps a great many PC users AWAY from 'upgrading' their beloved XP - and I cannot find any flaws in their thought processes about that EXCEPT that if they switched to a good Linux distro they would have superb browser choices available to them.
That is all that comes to mind for me right now - just my 2.5 cents on this whole idea.
The amount of time spent working at getting good solutions for that PC & OS version was excessive IMO.
Of course I expect many, many folks would consider my 'philosophy' as expressed here to be far below them.
I'm good with that.