I will downgrade to 16.04., the dist-upgrade to 17.10 was a mistake, resulting in problems with startx and newer kernels so I have to use 4.10.
In my experience dist-upgrade are long and messy :)Usually I create a partition on disk; install a fresh (K)ubuntu on that partition; move data / config from old partition to new; delete (or backup) old partition.
I have both kubuntu 17.04 and 17.10 and dmd works fine. Andrea