Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
This article covers my ongoing experience (so far) with Ubuntu 18.04.
A bit of background; in the past I have used Windows ending with Vista, when I thought ‘why learn Windows 10 when one could use Linux?’. My first encounter was Ubuntu 14.04 but most of my experience has been as a user of Ubuntu 16.04.
After trying to review Ubuntu 18.04 from a USB stick as there was no DVD/CD device on my laptop, I could not automatically return to using 16.04 or upgrade to 18.04, but that is another story. So I waited until I could afford to purchase a new computer with Ubuntu 18.04 already installed.
Back to the new laptop and Ubuntu 18.04, the next round. See FCM#155 for round one.
After the new computer had installed Ubuntu 18.04 with new users, including one Standard user account, that I use on a day-to-day basis without Administration Writes so that I could not inadvertently issue disastrous commands.
On my old machine I had a number of Desktop Shortcuts so that the side ‘Dock’ bar didn’t get too crowded. To my surprise not all of the applications that I have used under 16.04 would work / attach to the Desktop of 18.04.
To get (copy) the application icons to the Desktop directory / folder I used the same process that I used with both 14.04 & 16.04. The first two times the process worked just like I had used in 16.04 but when I tried to copy other icons they failed to attach or work on the Desktop, so it was back to the web.
After a number of investigations I found a web page instructing one to first open GNOME-Tweaks and under the DeskTop heading switch on ‘Show Icons’. After opening GNOME-Tweaks I found that ‘Show Icons’ was already set, so re-tried to set up the icons within the Desktop. Some of them would copy to the Desktop directory / folder but could not be seen on the desktop itself, others wouldn’t copy at all. So the short term work around was to reduce the ‘Dock’ pixel size so that more icons can be listed.
Trying to get LibreOffice-Startcentrer on to the DeskTop I found another web page that worked through two ways of achieving what I wanted. One option was to find the path to the icon dot.png file and update the desktop dot.desktop file. After finding the path and checking the dot.desktop file all entries were to what was discussed on one web page; but it still didn’t work. The other option I have yet to gain enough confidence in to try it out.
Another anomaly on the ‘Top Bar’ is with regards to the WiFi icon which is usually a quarter quadrant with a number of bars, more bars the stronger the signal. I found that sometimes there is a ‘?’ shown instead of the quarter quadrant. The web informs us that the ‘?’ indicates that the computer is connected to the WiFi but the WiFi is not connected to the web; but I have been viewing, reading & downloading information from the web when the ‘?’ is displayed.
The default Title bar Buttons are now placed on the top right of each window. I have tried to embrace the new layout, but after installing GMONE Tweaks I found that there is an option to transfer the buttons to the top left of the window, which is what I am used to.
During my introduction to 18.04 I have used the ‘Software Updater’ frequently and I think that Ubuntu has all the available updates. BUT I still get a number of ‘System program problem detected’ boxes being displayed and I always click on the [Report problem…] button, but I don’t think that the reports were being sent.
Under the ‘Setting’ / ‘Privacy’ / ‘Problem Reporting’ option I have now changed it from Never to Manual, so I do hope that the reports will now be recorded and sent. After looking on the web I found that the reports are stored in / var / crash directory. After an unsuccessful trawl of the web to try and find what can open and display a .crash file, I did find a reference that stated that the .crash file has a ‘dump of the kernel’.
Another observation is that the Software Updater application in 16.04 allows the GUI part of the process to be expanded but in 18.04 the GUI part allows the outside box to be increased in size but the display area does not change.
My laptop has a built in mouse pad so I do not have any Bluetooth devices to use with the laptop on a frequent basis, but Bluetooth is on from power up, so I had to switch it off every time I used the computer. Again after reviewing the web I found a number of recommendations, one being to edit the etc/bluetooth/main.conf file, but this did not work on my Dell machine. There are other options but again I have yet to gain confidence in trying these changes .
The above has taken a lot of time and effort and I have not yet installed all the applications that I use on my older Ubuntu 16.04 machine. I do hope that I get used to the new Ubuntu 18.04 or do I wait until Ubuntu 20.04 is available and use my old working Ubuntu 16.04 on a day to day basis.