This. I was hanging on to Ubuntu 16.04 until a month ago just to keep Unity. After finally upgrading to 18.04, I spent a week on Gnome 3 and it was quite a frustrating experience.
Found Ubuntu Mate and am loving it! MATE Tweak gives you so many options to make the UI work like Unity, even better in some ways. The only thing I missed were application shortcuts, but now the fancy dock works just as well for me.
France and Germany have had very different energy strategies for ages.
Germany still has significant domestic coal reserves.
France pretty much ran out of coal decades ago and therefore invested heavily in nuclear technology and access to uranium ore (mostly in Africa), they are #2 in uranium consumption worldwide.
(Next moon landing I hope the mission lays down an enormous silver blanket that can be seen by amateur astronomers and ordinary people are encouraged to come out and look through a 'scope for themselves!)
OT, the old moon landing joke comes to mind:
Astronaut: “Houston, we have a problem.”
Houston: “What?”
Astronaut: “The Russians painted the moon red!”
Houston: “Well, do you guys have white paint with you?”
Astronaut: “Yes. Why?”
Houston: “Write Coca-Cola on it.”
I had a lecturer in a class on infrastructure policy at (German) university who was an ICT exec and always said that the first rule of the business was "Wer gräbt, verliert." (you dig, you lose).
I've been using different models from the X-Series with Ubuntu since 08.04 and am currently looking at the T450s (14", but still an Ultrabook and light enough for me).
The X1 Carbon (latest.. 4th? gen) is my daily laptop since release and I can't wait to get rid of it. In anything other than low light/perfect lighting the screen is unbearably dull, speakers are appalling (though in ubuntu you can override to > 100% volume). Keyboard is pretty unsatisfying to use also.
I got it because i wanted a 14" laptop and it was the only one on the market. Screen size is perfect (15" is a bit big for travelling & carry on luggage)
I was surprised how light the T-Series models have become, hadn't looked at them in years and only remembered the heavy clunky units that made me go for the X-Series.
The current model T460s is also interesting, quite a bit more performance than its predecessor, albeit in a different price bracket.
I'm mostly going for the 450 because there's tons of decent refurb available and I'm frugal that way ;-)
Just be sure that you're comfortable with the trackpoint on the 450... They swapped the buttons for a touch sensitive area at the top of the trackpad. The physical buttons have made a welcome return on the T460 range, but if that doesn't bother you, enjoy a great machine.
Same here, except I have a different experience. Maybe it's because I upgraded from a 2010 Macbook Air, but I like the screen a lot. The speakers suck, I agree, but I rarely use external speakers when I'm in laptop mode. I really like that it runs Ubuntu almost perfectly, and that it has 16GB or RAM. I do wish the video card was more powerful, but it drives a 4k monitor (as well as its own display) quite well. It's stupid lightweight, too. Makes my 2010 Air feel like cast iron.
Found Ubuntu Mate and am loving it! MATE Tweak gives you so many options to make the UI work like Unity, even better in some ways. The only thing I missed were application shortcuts, but now the fancy dock works just as well for me.