Installing Bionic Beaver

I’m not going to tell you how to install the latest stable release of Ubuntu’s Linux desktop. For that, just go to Ubuntu and follow the appropriate instructions. I recommend using a bootable USB stick, and how you manage that depends on exactly what computer you are going to make it on. All three major operating systems have their own way of doing it. A quick google search will find simple instructions. The general pattern is to download the “DVD image” onto your hard drive, put a large enough USB stick that contains nothing of value into the slot, open the correct program, and tell it to put the DVD image on that stick in bootable form.

I do have this advice. If you ultimately want a certain desktop (such as XFCE or Mate or KDE or whatever), use the Ubuntu “flavor” for that desktop, things will go more smoothly. For this particular iteration, I decided to install the main Ubuntu desktop, and I’m going to try Gnome 3 for a while and see if I end up liking it.

Ubuntu 18.04 walks away from 32 bit support, and ditches Unity. The default desktop is Gnome, but this is the modern Gnome that is not that different from Unity. I generally prefer a Gnome 2.0 style desktop, so I usually use Mate (pronounced Matt ay).

Post Installation

Most of these suggestions are pretty standard for any install of any Linux system. Also, you can ignore much of this. Continue reading After you install Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver →