Note that the 18.04 LTS will have the older version of Budgie and not the latest; the latest version is available with 19.04, but won't be available for LTS until 20.04 - though I am sure there's ways of getting it installed if you really wanted to.
I switched to Budgie Ubuntu 18.04 LTS after my super-long-in-the-tooth-modified-to-hell-and-back Ubuntu 14.04 LTS install face-planted after I tried to install a new version of the NVidia proprietary driver using a very hacked and patched together gcc setup (something I did for an online MOOC where I needed a greater version of C++ than 14.04 supported - not the smartest thing I ever did, but it worked well for a while, and long enough to complete the MOOC).
My 14.04 install started with a Minimal version, then I built it up from there to a look-and-workalike Crunchbang (#!) system. This was done just after #! ceased being supported (after I had played with it and liked it), but before the community picked up the pieces (ultimately resulting in Bunsen Labs distro).
It worked well, but after it finally fell over, I decided I wanted to go a different route on a new install - and Budgie Linux with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is where I ended up. I couldn't be happier; it allows me a desktop experience that I swear is very close to what I have on the MBP I use at my employer, but I have customized my own way (though I did grab a set of SVGs for a better looking trashcan for Plank). I also had to write a new wallpaper switcher (in python) as I didn't like anything as well that exists. Minor things, though. Overall, it's a great desktop - gives me some freedom to play, but is still beautiful and highly functional.
One thing I'll never do again, though, is install anything that isn't "standalone" in /home or a "deb" package (or something like AppImages); anything that must be compiled from source will either be made into a package to install, or I'll put it on a VM (that's what ultimately led to my old system falling over - too much crap in too many places without any kind of tracking, etc - my fault, ultimately).
I've been running Ubuntu on my Latitude 6650 since new a couple years back. Unfortunately due to my company moving to Office365 fully, its no longer viable for a daily driver - mostly due to no support for Teams (except for a crappy broken web interface), Outlook & OneDrive.
Always had Windows available in Virtualbox, but its definitely slower & had endless audio issues with conferencing (you don't want to be the guy who always has sound problems)
Now switched to Windows 10 on a dual boot - which is much easier on the fan, laptop not running nearly as hot as switching between the GPU & onboard graphics is seamless. Despite decades of Linux experience (servers & desktop) I could never get Prime working properly to switch to onboard graphics when needed...wasted days of my life on this.
Despite this Ubuntu 19.04 has big improvements in driver support & if it wasn't for Office, I would have gladly stayed on Linux.
Now its Kali in Virtualbox for me which is almost as good as running natively.
Windows has better toolbar management, mouseovers & switching between apps. Also since Ubuntu moved back to Gnome, switching between Virtualbox VMs has been buggy (display driver issues no doubt)
Linux has a better file browsers (windows explorer hasn't changed in a decade, no tabs & looks terrible) & much better terminal options.
I'll miss Linux as my daily OS, but I guess MS has its grip tightly on most organizations balls these days.
> Windows has better toolbar management, mouseovers & switching between apps. Also since Ubuntu moved back to Gnome, switching between Virtualbox VMs has been buggy (display driver issues no doubt)
I find both Mac and Windows' window managers much less pleasant than one of the many tiling window managers on Linux, since they automate away a ton of manual window management. That being said, I invested an unreasonable amount of time into configuring xmonad to behave in the way I want to, and the default window manager on, say, Ubuntu, is indeed pretty bad compared to Windows / Mac.
Amethyst, an xmonad-clone for Mac, works well enough, but still has bugs and is nowhere near as configurable as tiling WMs on Linux.
If you want a desktop experience that comes close to MacOS on Ubuntu, give Budgie Desktop a try; it's developed for Solus:
https://github.com/solus-project/budgie-desktop
...but is available for Ubuntu - you can install it separately, or as it's own distro:
https://ubuntubudgie.org/
Note that the 18.04 LTS will have the older version of Budgie and not the latest; the latest version is available with 19.04, but won't be available for LTS until 20.04 - though I am sure there's ways of getting it installed if you really wanted to.
I switched to Budgie Ubuntu 18.04 LTS after my super-long-in-the-tooth-modified-to-hell-and-back Ubuntu 14.04 LTS install face-planted after I tried to install a new version of the NVidia proprietary driver using a very hacked and patched together gcc setup (something I did for an online MOOC where I needed a greater version of C++ than 14.04 supported - not the smartest thing I ever did, but it worked well for a while, and long enough to complete the MOOC).
My 14.04 install started with a Minimal version, then I built it up from there to a look-and-workalike Crunchbang (#!) system. This was done just after #! ceased being supported (after I had played with it and liked it), but before the community picked up the pieces (ultimately resulting in Bunsen Labs distro).
It worked well, but after it finally fell over, I decided I wanted to go a different route on a new install - and Budgie Linux with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is where I ended up. I couldn't be happier; it allows me a desktop experience that I swear is very close to what I have on the MBP I use at my employer, but I have customized my own way (though I did grab a set of SVGs for a better looking trashcan for Plank). I also had to write a new wallpaper switcher (in python) as I didn't like anything as well that exists. Minor things, though. Overall, it's a great desktop - gives me some freedom to play, but is still beautiful and highly functional.
One thing I'll never do again, though, is install anything that isn't "standalone" in /home or a "deb" package (or something like AppImages); anything that must be compiled from source will either be made into a package to install, or I'll put it on a VM (that's what ultimately led to my old system falling over - too much crap in too many places without any kind of tracking, etc - my fault, ultimately).