Upgrade to Ubuntu 18.04 LINUX 4.15.0

Every two years a major version of the open-source operating-system Ubuntu LINUX gets released. This time it was 18.04, where 18 refers to 2018, and 04 to April.

If you are considering to upgrade your Ubuntu, this Blog may contain some useful informations for you. It can be done with the graphical "Software Updater" tool. They recommend to install all updates before upgrading.

Caveat

Applications that you installed using the "Software" tool of Ubuntu will be replaced by the newest version without confirmation. So you may lose beloved applications you wouldn't have liked to be upgraded.

I had an old version of the OpenShot video editor that was fast and simple, and I didn't like the newest one which is slow and complex. Moreover it is not fully backwards-compatible, e.g. the video titles' layout is broken.

There was no way back to the old version. The necessary Python libraries are not available any more, and even if they were, they might conflict with the new ones. I will keep on trying, but until now I could not install OpenShot 1.4.3.

Surprise

I am not sure if this was a positive or negative surprise:

• Gnome desktop is back!

The desktop environment is no more Unity. Consequences are as follows.

1. Desktop icons are deprecated. Gnome decided so. Your old icons still will be there, but without image. If you double-click one, a dialog will ask you to trust it, and then it will work again, and also get back its image. But that is a workaround provided by Ubuntu!


2. So where to put the quick-starters for our applications? Drag- and dropping a desktop icon into the left-side toolbar failed. Searching the web for adding application launchers to the toolbar failed.
   Update: it is possible! Copy the .desktop file from $HOME/Desktop to $HOME/.local/share/applications and its icon to $HOME/.local/share/icons, then open "Find Applications" (dash), search for it, and drag it into the left-side toolbar.


3. The "X" button ("Close Window") in the title-bar of windows is on right side again. Yes you can (configure it). Or you sit head-shaking before your Gnome like me (was it left, was it right? :-)


4. File-chooser "OK" button is in title-bar on top right side, "Cancel" on left, actually ergonomic. Here you have to shake your head vertically:-)


5. The "Find Applications" button on left-side toolbar travelled from top (Unity) to bottom (Gnome). Another vertical head shake, but not a "Yes":-)


6. The desktop-bar on top doesn't contain any more the full-screen window title-bar, like it was with Unity. Although confusing for beginners, this saved space on small laptop screens, and I appreciated it.


7. You can't terminate the screen-saver by a simple mouse-click any more, you need to drag & drop from bottom to top now, like they do on mobiles, or you use the keyboard (ENTER, SPACE, this didn't change).

It seems to be possible to get back Unity, have a look at this page.

Shutter "Edit" Button Disabled?

The screenshot utility Shutter is quite popular, because it provides some basic markup drawing functionality on the screenshot, circles, arrows etc. But on 18.04 the "Edit" button is disabled. Here is a page that explains how you can get it back. You must install three additional libraries: libgoocanvas-common, libgoocanvas3, libgoo-canvas-perl, and then purge Shutter with sudo killall shutter.

Beeping Backspace

Sorry for this personal attitude, but I don't like beeping keyboards. Here is how to get rid of the sound that the BACKSPACE key makes in case it can't delete anything. Turn OFF the "Alert Volume" on tab "Sound Effects":

You find the "Settings" application in top-right system-menu, click the "tools" button.

"Suspend" Button Missing

There is no "Suspend" button any more in the system-menu. "Power Off" will shut down the computer completely. But hibernation is not related to the Gnome desktop. The web says, Ubuntu dropped hibernation in 2012. So why did the 16.04 "Suspend" then work?

A closer investigation showed that 18.04 supports hibernation via the computer's power-button (the physical ON/OFF switch). When you configure in "Settings" - "Power" the option "When the Power Button is pressed" to "Suspend", pressing the computer's power-button will hibernate it. Another press on the power-button will wake it up again.

Mind that holding down the button too long will turn off the computer the hard way, without shutdown!

Get Date in Top Bar

Launch following command in a terminal-window:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-show-date true

Quickly Connecting to Remote File Systems

Here is the new way how to connect to your FTP server using Nautilus file browser. Click "Other Locations" on left side to see this "Connect to Server" input field:

It supports a lot of protocols like FTP, SFTP, NFS, SMB, DAV (HTTP).

New Progress Indication

Copying files in Nautilus file explorer shows a new kind of progress bar. You need to click onto the pie-chart button in top-toolbar to see it, see screenshot below. No other response shows up when starting to copy!

Resume

Lost a full day upgrading. Lost my old OpenShot.

But graphics of 18.04 is definitely better than 16.04. The desktop became simpler. The underlying LINUX is said to be much safer. So don't always insist on your old habits, move forward, it's not so bad!