Notes on upgrade from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04

I know that the standard policy in Ubuntu is to offer the upgrade from an old LTS to a new one when the new LTS reaches .1, i.e., 16.04.1, but well…

I upgraded my 14.04 in several machines, and I can signal these almost show-stopper problems (workaround exists for all of them, though):

• on a wide range of machines with intel graphics, you have a bad tearing of the screen, fixable by installing Yakkety kernels;
• on several machines, suspend freeze the system;
• in some flavors (xubuntu, mate) the cursor disappears after a lock (fixed by switchng to and back a virtual console);
• Bluetooth audio sink with high quality (A2DP) stops working at least for some hardware;
• The VNC server (a.k.a. “share your screen”) has been broken along the way, and now you need to manually start vino-server to have it working (and of course, disabling encryption ) (no comments).

So yes, you have to be ready for a bit of bumpy switch. On the other hand, I like 16.04; the system feels snappier than 14.04, and libreoffice 5 is a big step forward.

Probably unrelated (i.e., not caused by the upgrade, but…):

• Matlab R2016a not starting: the trick from ataideneto at Arch forums fixed it;