Any practical difference between 18.04 & 20.04

[jcdenton1995]

Hello everyone,

So I'm currently running Ubuntu 18.04 on my laptop, but I am putting together my first PC soon and was planning to install Ubuntu 20.04.

Are there any huge practical differences in setting it up? Obviously I know PPA's for certain software will be different, but are the packages available for 18.04 by and large the same as 20.04? and I'm assuming built in shell commands / available binaries are the same, things mostly stored in the same place in the directory tree etc?

I'm just free-styling here but if anyone can think of anything I should be aware of please do speak up!

[sudodus]

I suggest that you test Ubuntu 20.04 LTS in your current computer. There are two options, that are both rather easy

- The standard test method is to create a live USB drive, and run Ubuntu live from that computer (do not install it now). A variant of the live system is the persistent live system. You can create a live system with many tools. You can create persistent live systems with mkusb in Ubuntu and with Rufus in Windows.

- Another test method is to clone from a compressed image file of an installed Ubuntu 20.04 LTS system into a USB drive with at least 16 GB. This can be done with many extraction tools + cloning tools, but maybe easiest with mkusb. The advantage with this method is that you are running a system in the same way as if it were installed into the internal drive (somewhat slower because the USB drive is probably slower than an internal drive, but otherwise the same).

[kurt18947]

If you're planning on a Ryzen APU system, I would recommend 20.04. Ryzen APUs are CPUs with integrated graphics, you can tell them by the G (graphics) suffix. An example is Ryzen 3 3200G. I installed a new 18.04 (20.04 was not yet out) system with the previous generation Ryzen APU and the graphics subsystem was NOT happy. A newer kernel helped but when I installed 20.04 with newer graphics components it was finally happy.

[atomicblondy]

also you can run on virtual machine

[jcdenton1995]

Thanks, I've just this minute finished poking around 20.04 on this laptop (using a live USB) and it seems to run just fine. Amazingly it even felt faster than my proper 18.04 install, but maybe that was the newness feeling of it coupled with the retro futuristic Fossa desktop (I'm not going to pretend I knew what a Fossa was before now).

I get the feeling that fundamentally it's not changed much, or rather I get the feeling that a new user like me wouldn't get deep enough for any changes to matter, but I guess I'll find out...

[jcdenton1995]

Thanks, I have got a Ryzen 3400G as a stand in until I get a proper GPU so good to know. Funnily enough this laptop I'm using has an old AMD APU (not a Ryzen though) and 20.04 did look much more polished in a strange way, but as I said above that may just be the feeling of newness it has to me at the moment.

I'm going to leave my laptop running 18.04, just so my new computer feels exciting and futuristic in comparison!

[jcdenton1995]

also you can run on virtual machine

Thank you, I would definitley try this method if I wasn't afraid my humble laptop would either melt or explode under the sheer strain!

[uninvolved]

Amazingly it even felt faster than my proper 18.04 install ...

Once booted, it probably was faster. The live instance is running from RAM and not loading anything from your hard drive. So, once the OS (and apps that you opened) are in RAM, they'll run faster than they would if they were loading from disk.

I often run a live instance with persistence. Once booted and things are loaded, it's pretty speedy - and I have gobs of RAM that enable me to load most anything I want into memory.

[monkeybrain20122]

Once booted, it probably was faster. The live instance is running from RAM and not loading anything from your hard drive. So, once the OS (and apps that you opened) are in RAM, they'll run faster than they would if they were loading from disk.

It is faster for me. Both real install on hard drive, same machine. Also less buggy comparing to 18.04 on release date. So if anyone is installing Ubuntu at this point I recommend going straight to 20.04 and forget about 18.04 unless there is some special software that must be run on 18.04 or older (16.04)

[grahammechanical]

According to this article 20.04 might not only "seem" faster it might actually be faster.

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/05/...l-faster-20-04

Changes between 18.04 and 20.04

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2020/04/...in-focal-fossa

Regards