I have 12.04 as a primary work machine, used every day for everything.

Negatives:

1) Hardware support – still not quite there. nVidia Optimus doesn’t work properly, I can’t use external monitors and reboot unless I disable it.

2) Decent power mangement had to be installed and configured by me, it wasn’t there out of the box.

3) First installation suffered mystery crashes and freezes, possibly due to attempting to fix point 1 – eventually had to reinstall

4) A few niggly things lacking like for example, if you put a machine into standby it doesn’t then hibernate a few hours later, like Windows does. This is a handy feature for work reasons

5) Sliverlight (which powers several online video players including but not limited to the Eurosport one) – forget it. The dodgy copies didn’t work

6) Mouse wouldn’t stay paired until I buggered about with it.

7) I miss MS Office, a bit.

Positives:

1) LUKS encryption is a billion times better than PGP whole disk. Indirectly, this means hibernation is usable unlike with Windows + PGP

2) Ubuntu software centre – thought it was a gimmick but it’s brillant to just think ‘hmm I need X’, type it into a box and a minute later it’s up and running.

3) After the reinstall, it’s stable and starts up pretty quickly. Although oddly takes a bit longer to shut down than Windows.

4) Having a choice of desktop environments is fun.

5) Overall, the bundled desktop wallpaper is better. Windows has some real artistic highlights but the photographic ones aren’t as good.

6) Disk usage is a lot more sensible.

7) Overall it’s snappier in use despite a few waits for the first running of some things.

9) Google Earth just will not work

Isn’t 12.04 kind of out of date? I wonder whether some of your issues might be solved with a more modern version.

LTS innit?

Yeah, the LTS version has been updated so give a newer LTS version a go.

On the silverlight point, it’s a pain, the company I work for is a linux platform but uses a Silverlight UI that we can’t manage from linux machines 🙁

Don’t forget you can run a VM if you really need MS Office.

I am using 14 04 for personal use, only problem is I cant get the latest flash player.

Current LTS is 14.04 – if molgrips has only been using less than a year he didn’t even start with the most up to date LTS version!

Aye 12 was the latest version when I played around with it a few years ago! Might have another look now its up a few versions actually.

Isn’t 12.04 kind of out of date?

Yeah – we have to have a corporate build put on top of standard Ubuntu, and of course only LTS was supported and approved. 14.04 has only just come out so our build hasn’t been done yet.

I have however installed 14.04 in a VM and was very annoyed to find that you can no longer move the close/maximise/minimise buttons from the right of windows to the left. Grr!

However, the nVidia issue still isn’t fixed in 14.04 as the official nVidia drivers don’t support it on Linux, only Windows.

Don’t forget you can run a VM if you really need MS Office.

Yeah I plan to use my Windows license for a general purpose VM that I’ll run in unity mode (by which I mean the VMWare mode, not the Unity desktop), and I share my work documents folder amongst all my VMs so should be best of both worlds. Come to think of it if I really want Google Earth I can do the same for that 🙂

Id used 12.04 for ages without some of the issues you describe…odd.

Now back on a Mac so I’ll leave now.

Which issues did you not have? Seems like there are plenty of random issues – lots of people having issues I don’t have.

Why not just run Windows?

Office works
Google earth works
Silverlight works
Power management works
Graphics drivers work
Etc etc

I’ve been buggering about with Linux variants for the last 25 years, and every now and again I try and run it as my main desktop, then quickly remember why I gave up with it the last time.

Why not just run Windows?

Got fed up of:

– crashing on sleep
– taking 10 mins to stop thrashing the disk after supposedly booting up
– (and this is the biggie) being almost unable to use hibernate, as required by security policy, due to it taking 10 mins to hibernate and about 30 to wake up – this is due to PGP whole disk encryption being really slow.

But yes, it’s a close-run thing. If it weren’t for the hibernate issue I’d quite possibly have re-installed Windows instead of re-installing Ubuntu after the crap-out.

If it’s taking pgp 10 mins to hibernate then either its bust or your machine is ancient.

I would shove an ssd in it and put windows back on.

Still running 12.04 lts on my server and its been rock solid for years. Really isnt anything i can think of that has been an issue or that i need it to do better, which also means that I dont really need to upgrage to 14.04, but probably will at some point after a clone.
i was using xubuntu on old laptop until it died and now on new laptop soley using win 8.1, performs well with i7 cpu so no real need to chuck xubuntu on it. win8 certainly good in some ways but is also a backwards step for productivity, to do anything seems to take more steps so will have to dual boot this at some point.
on another note..Damn french kicking some ass tonight..

Just put an SSD in windows (Samsung doddle software) and refreshed the installation (upgrade W7 to W7), it’s quick.

No issues

If it’s taking pgp 10 mins to hibernate then either its bust or your machine is ancient.

Nope, it’s a well known issue with that version of PGP whole disk encryption and hibernation. This is a work machine remember so I don’t get to choose what versions I use.

I would shove an ssd in it and put windows back on.

SSD would not make the hibernation any quicker (possbly slower), and I’m not spending £100 odd of my own money on a work machine.

I’m going to stick with it, and probably upgrade to 14.04 when they get it sorted out. Oh yeah, and the policy specifies PGP must be applied to the whole disk for windows, but Linux just specifies LUKS must be used, which means I can have dual boot with a Windows partition with any software I like on it. Like games.