Episode: 2579
Title: HPR2579: Ubuntu 18.04 Mate
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2579/hpr2579.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:00:11

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This is an HBR episode 2,579 entitled Ubuntu 18.048 and is part of the series Hardware Upgrade.
It is hosted by Tony H1,212 and is about 10 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is, this is a short show on installing the latest Ubuntu 18.048 onto the laptop and desktop PC.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support universal access to all knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
Good day to all Hack and Public Radio listeners. Sorry it's been a while since I recorded the show, but as they say, life's got in the way of the last few months.
I've spent quite a bit of time away from home.
Anyway, back to the show. I'm going to talk about the new release of Ubuntu, particularly Ubuntu Mate 18.048.
I've given it a try and I thought you might be interested.
When I was away on one of those trips, my laptop running Mint 18.3 with the Mate desktop based on Ubuntu 16.048 long-term support decided that it wouldn't boot for me.
It was no longer recognising the account and created a route to password.
I couldn't sign in as route to fix the issue which was probably a corrupted configuration file in the user's folder.
As that happened a couple of days earlier, the Ubuntu release had happened and I'd managed to download the ISO of Ubuntu Mate or Mate if you want to call it.
I'd burnt it to a pen drive just to give it a try.
I actually had a live disk that I could stick onto the laptop and boot into which I did Julie and I backed up all the data that was on the machine.
Mainly browser settings and emails because with it being a laptop that I take on journeys and stuff, I don't tend to have an awful lot of data on it that is of any importance or permanently stored on it.
This didn't really take long and I was ready to reinstall the OS onto the laptop.
We're just in case a missile-important data on the current hard drive.
I had to spare SSD with me and yes, I'm getting enough to carry a spare SSD or two in the back.
So I dug one of these out and installed it into the laptop which by the way is a Dell Latitude e6540 with an i5 dual-core mobile chip with hyper threading.
It's currently running four gig of RAM but can run up to 16 into the two slots it has.
Anyway, I booted up the live disk that I created with the recent Ubuntu release.
The first option you get is a screen asking whether you want to install or if you want to just try out the OS.
So I just opted straight away for install and this starts you off on the install procedure.
For those not familiar with Linux or Ubuntu, the install is a joy to use. Very friendly to new users and as this was a first install to this particular SSD, the only option I had was a full install which I chose.
I then asked if I wanted to use the default partitioning setup for the drives which also installs the boot loader automatically without any further need for integration or you get the option to do a custom partition arrangement.
But as the defaults perfectly adequate, I went for this.
During this process you also get the option to choose a minimum or full installation.
The minimum installation gets you a running PC which has the basic utilities that leaves you to do the bulk of installing the software you want to do later.
It only saves about 500gb of install data so it's not a massive difference between the install from minimal to full but if you don't want a lot of stuff you're not going to use you might want to do that and install later.
But I use quite a bit of the stuff that the full installation gives you so I chose to do this.
Prior to actually starting the install it gives you one final chance with a warning that all the current data on the desk will be wiped.
As I was happy I clicked proceed and at this point the install starts and you get taken through setting up your PC configuration for language keyboard and user account but the installs going on in the background while you're typing all that in.
So by the time I completed the setup process the install was half complete and the whole process took less than 15 minutes.
So after the install is complete you get a message to reboot the PC and you get the boot media which I did and on first boot you will either get presented with the login screen if you chose to use your password to access it or it will go straight to desktop depending on the choice you made.
Once you're at the desktop for the first time you presented with a wallpaper with the Ubuntu mate logo and two panels.
There's one at the top and one at the bottom of the screen.
The one at the top for me is the one that I would traditionally have at the bottom of the screen as the menu etc and the area showing what applications you've got.
So to start off with I delete the second panel and transfer the top panel down to the bottom and put a few more things on it including the advanced mate menu and a couple of other notification apps such as Network, Clock and Calendar.
But obviously this is a personal preference which you go with what you find comfortable.
So the next step after connecting to the local Wi-Fi was to install any updates which despite the release only been a few days old at the time.
There were a few but this didn't take long and in less than an hour which included the backing up and swapping out the SSD.
I had a fully working laptop running Ubuntu 1804 mate desktop.
So there are a few bits of software not included by defaulting Ubuntu which I do use regularly, one of which is Synaptic.
So I opened the terminal and did a pseudo-apt install Synaptic and later I had the package manager on the PC.
You may ask why but software bootie doesn't seem to have all the software available in the repositories and I don't always know the appropriate name of software I'm looking for.
So I use using the terminal all the time isn't always an option. So Synaptic's a tool I use quite a bit.
The next software that got installed was Audacity as you use this for editing audio and sometimes extracting the audio stream from videos off the internet.
Most importantly for HPR listeners it's what I use to record and edit my HPR shows.
So back to Ubuntu mate 1804. I've been running it for a month or so now on the laptop and about three weeks on the main box at home which after I got home from the trip I decided I'd give it a go.
And as you would expect from a long-term support it released this one supported for five years until 2023. It's very solid and stable.
I did have a glitch transferring my emails into Thunderbird on my main box. It worked flawlessly on the laptop so I ended up having to reinstall from scratch and on the second install the Thunderbird setup went perfectly.
I think it was down to the where I set up Thunderbird in the first place which kind of mocked things up.
So it wasn't anything to do with the OS. All's fine now and I didn't lose anything in the process.
For me coming from Mint there are a couple of utilities that Mint developers have implemented that are not available in Ubuntu but nothing that I can't work around.
Saying that if there's any Ubuntu developers out there. The Mint USB drive for Master and USB boot disk creator utilities are nice and simple to use but not available in the Ubuntu repositories.
So maybe that's something that could be added.
Obviously it's only a limited time to get used to the US. So so far it doesn't seem too bad. Coming back to the mother ship so to speak from several years of using Mint Mate virtually since its inception but as a record this there's been nothing that has made me feel I need to rush and reinstall Mint.
So I'll continue with Ubuntu Mate 1804 at least until the new Mint 19 based on this Ubuntu release comes out.
So I'll update you sometime in the future about how things have gone and that's me for this episode of Hacker Public Radio.
Bye for now.
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