Best Version of Ubuntu: LTS or Current?

[Sentimus]

Hey everyone, I've been wrestling with a desision for a while now, and have been looking over these forums for an answer. I haven't found a thread that quite answers my specific questions, so here goes:

I'm a fairly intermediate-advanced Linux user (who has had a serious case of distro-hopping this past year, with Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Arch, Fedora, Manjaro, Crunchbang…you get the idea), and I've come back to Ubuntu as my distro of choice. But the question still remains, should I use 12.04 LTS or 13.04?

I've been on 13.04 for a few days now, and find it's quite unstable on occasion (system crashes and all that good stuff), and I realize that 12.04 is much more stable. But here's the real question: if I use 12.04 LTS, take advantage of PPAs for all my chosen software, and don't care about improvements to Unity (I use GNOME Shell from the PPA), is 13.04 going to be much faster/better/stronger than 12.04 LTS? Are there some underlying system changes that make 13.04 better for gaming and the like, or would they be about equal in terms of speed, given newer packages from PPAs?

Thanks!

[howefield]

Shrug.

Does it need to be one or the other ?

[pricetech]

This is mostly, if not all, a subjective matter. I stick with the LTS always. That's me.

[oldfred]

I have several 25GB root partitions with different versions of Ubuntu or different configurations. My main working system is 12.04 primarily as my wife complained about too many changes. Prior to 12.04 I was updating every 6 months and still have most of those installs somewhere. But I still have 12.10, 13.04 & 13.10 installed to test differences.

[buzzingrobot]

I found that my 13.04 instability woes ended when I upgraded the default kernel, via a dist-upgrade.

If you are going to continue frequent distro changes, I don't see any advantage going one way or the other. Scratch the itch of the day.

If you are planning to settle down and cohabit with one distribution for a few years, the LTS gets you support for that time, while 13.04 support goes away in several months.

[BigSilly]

Shrug.

Does it need to be one or the other ?

Yeah why not, if one feels one is better than the other.

For me Ubuntu 13.04 is way better than 12.04. Massively so. All sorts of performance issues gone with the newer release for me.

[Sentimus]

Yeah why not, if one feels one is better than the other.

For me Ubuntu 13.04 is way better than 12.04. Massively so. All sorts of performance issues gone with the newer release for me.

But is that due to Unity enhancements or underlying system changes? That's something I'm trying to figure out, if there will be a performance difference, even with the same DE (GNOME 3).

[howefield]

Yeah why not, if one feels one is better than the other.

Perhaps because in this case, the OP doesn't know. It is all subjective opinion and overly broad statements like the following..

For me Ubuntu 13.04 is way better than 12.04. Massively so. All sorts of performance issues gone with the newer release for me.

[craig10x]

But is that due to Unity enhancements or underlying system changes? That's something I'm trying to figure out, if there will be a performance difference, even with the same DE (GNOME 3).

A combination of both (unity enhancements and underlying system changes including newer kernels)...

[ibjsb4]

The current LTS has 5 years of support, I like that. If I want to see whats going on with the latest and greatest version, I just fire it up in VirtualBox