Comparing Ubuntu 14.04 and 18.04 involves evaluating their features, stability, and compatibility with software.
Comparing Ubuntu 14.04 and 18.04 involves evaluating their features, stability, and compatibility with software.
I’ll start by noting that this comes from someone new to Linux. I’m trying to get Linux for my university studies and am installing it onto a partition of my laptop’s SSD and a separate SSD I found for my desktop. My laptop is an XPS 13 9343, which is pretty old now, and I haven’t found driver support for Ubuntu 14.04 yet. For my desktop—4790k, Asus z97 Pro, GTX 980—I’m not sure about compatibility but think it should work. My main concern is whether I should install 14.04 on both systems to avoid problems or just update to 18.04 for the desktop. Thanks for your help!
The 18.04 version performs much better; check out https://www.linuxmint.com for a beginner-friendly guide.
The top choice is 18.04 on both platforms. Since most Linux users rely on kernel updates, compatibility issues are rare unless your system was built for an older version. It’s usually safe to upgrade to the latest release. Running 14.x on one machine and 18.x on another would cause confusion because Ubuntu 17 moved away from Unity after introducing a custom desktop called Unity, and later switched to Gnome. While both desktops have minimal overlap, using two different interfaces at once can be disorienting.
The XPS 13 9343 was built with Linux support in mind. You won’t face any problems using the newest Ubuntu release.