One of the "Lucky"
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| cabreh Nov 03, 2009 6:16 AM EDT |
Wow, I sure feel privileged to be one of the 10% experiencing zero problems! And on seven very different computers including two laptops. About the only hardware item I can think that for sure I don't have is an ATI graphics card. I only have Intel and NVidia graphics to test. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 03, 2009 6:27 AM EDT |
I guess I was lucky too :-) |
| r_a_trip Nov 03, 2009 6:31 AM EDT |
I wasn't so lucky in the Atom + GMA945 arena. Karmic has severe problems with it. I can't get it to work in the LiveCD environment on my mothers nettop with an atom 330 and Intel GMA945. Constant freezes after any slight mouse movement. Strangely enough it seems to work on my netbook (AAO, Atom N270 and GMA945), but that one I upgraded from Jaunty. LiveCD doesn't work here either though. I'd use the alternate disk if I could be sure it would work, but I won't burden my mom with a lot of install futzing and in the end ending up where we started. Jaunty works too well to justify the effort to try and get Karmic running. It's a shame really, because there is a lot to like about the interface refinements. First time I've been hit with a big showstopper on Ubuntu. |
| HoTMetaL Nov 03, 2009 6:36 AM EDT |
Same experience as cabreh here, although I never could get weather and temperature to display in the top panel of 9.10 like in all previous releases. I don't consider that a show-stopper, though. The proprietary b43 binary blob for Broadcom wireless devices seems to have vastly improved. Signal strength is now accurate. I've said it before and here it goes again: never, ever upgrade. Clean installs are the *only* way to go. Also, people run to the forums for help when they're having a problem, so I would take that into account when viewing results of the aforementioned poll. |
| zenarcher Nov 03, 2009 7:35 AM EDT |
I agree. I never upgrade, but always do a clean install. In the long run, I think I save a lot of time and frustration. I've done clean installs on two of my desktop systems and a netbook without any major issues. |
| r_a_trip Nov 03, 2009 7:38 AM EDT |
I've said it before and here it goes again: never, ever upgrade. Clean installs are the *only* way to go. I know, I prefer clean installs myself, but here in lies the rub. The Live-CD doesn't seem to work on GMA945. I could try the alternate CD, but I don't know if that will yield a usable install afterward. The reason I upgraded on my netbook is simply because I could. The machine is my geek toy. Handy for couch surfing and as a travel machine, but it isn't my main system. I reckoned that I could and would do a clean install afterward, when Karmic went gold. Now I'm not so sure if that is a viable route. |
| hkwint Nov 03, 2009 8:06 AM EDT |
Quoting:I've said it before and here it goes again: never, ever upgrade. I don't get it, is the 'update function' that broken? There's only half a year between two versions and you can't even update? Sounds like Windows or BSD to me. With Solaris, MacOS (from what I've heard) and "rolling release Linux distro's" (own experience) this is never a problem. A 'fresh' install (LiveCD) of Kubuntu Karmic had the same 'blank' screen problems on my system, so a fresh install will not always fix the problem. |
| montezuma Nov 03, 2009 8:36 AM EDT |
This problem with the flashing/flickering is nasty. It happens when video drivers are not found or there is a kernel mismatch with the driver. In earlier versions of Ubuntu when that happened you were thrown into a low res graphics environment where you had some chance of fixing things. With the flashing you cannot even log into a virtual terminal because the input is only recognized when the flash is on. To resolve this you have to boot with rescue mode. I wasn't impressed on Launchpad by the video dev who simply stated that this was a kernel mismatch and switched the bug report to "Won't Fix". Not good enough for a distro that claims to be user friendly. Having said all the above I think the problem is relatively uncommon. I have upgraded 5 boxes now and only hit it once. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 03, 2009 9:17 AM EDT |
Quoting:In earlier versions of Ubuntu when that happened you were thrown into a low res graphics environment where you had some chance of fixing things. Not really. I ran into that "Bulletproof X" low-res mode a couple of times. It's horrible. When there's something wrong with your xorg config then the low-res mode keeps restarting itself. Everytime that happens you are ripped away from another virtual terminal to VT7 where Xorg is stuck in a reboot loop. No way to fix the xorg config in another VT. Bulletproof X is only useful for simple errors like "I set 1600x1200 but I swapped my monitor for a 1280x1024 one and now I have no image". |
| montezuma Nov 03, 2009 9:21 AM EDT |
Sander,
I was able to get to a virtual terminal and kill gdm and then install drivers manually. Also it appears that this problem is one of an interaction between gdm and upstart: [url=https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/gdm/ bug/441638]https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/gdm/ bug/4416...[/url] upstart tries to restart gdm instead of letting it die a natural death. |
| tuxchick Nov 03, 2009 10:49 AM EDT |
Never upgrade? Clean install only? That's Windows-think. I have Debian boxes that have gone for years without ever needing a reinstallation, upgrade and dist-upgrade all the way. Though with Ubuntu upgrading to a new release has always been a roll of the dice. |
| cabreh Nov 03, 2009 11:11 AM EDT |
Generally I agree that it's safer to Install than upgrade. Using a separate /home means you lose nothing. But, I did upgrade two different boxes without issues. Both running AMD CPU and NVidia graphics card though. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 03, 2009 11:14 AM EDT |
@montezuma: That bug doesn't appear to be what I suffered from in the past, although the effect is similar. My issues were with older releases. 8.04 and 8.10 specifically. That's when bulletproof X first started appearing. Anyway, I've had no problems with Karmic so far. The only minor point I've experienced so far is with installing a new kernel. I used to have a custom kernel installed (the eeepc kernel from array.org) and set up grub to boot that. When an automatic update installs a new generic kernel it does not update the grub menu.lst to keep booting my custom kernel. Not a big problem for me (the generic kernel works too) but that could be an issue for people with specialised hardware that need the custom kernel to boot. |
| montezuma Nov 03, 2009 11:25 AM EDT |
Sander,
I suspect what has happened is that the underlying issues are still the same i.e. video drivers failing to work properly but the consequences are now different because of upstart taking over the boot process more than before. I found previously that if I killed all X processes and gdm from the virtual terminal then the crappy low res annoyance went away. After installing video drivers manually I just restarted gdm and all was fine. As a general comment, Ubuntu has been automating a lot particularly on the video side and while that is wonderful if everything works as expected it is an absolute disaster if it doesn't (as can occur a lot more than it should) because you can't "get under the hood" and tinker like you used to be able to. I find that a lot of the new systems being put in place by the Ubuntu team are not yet very well documented so it is hard to correct things manually. |
| Steven_Rosenber Nov 03, 2009 12:11 PM EDT |
I've never successfully upgraded an OpenBSD box, and once I found out that "real" OpenBSD geeks always reinstall (and use scripts to customize after the base is set), I realized that I was going the wrong way. But in Ubuntu and Debian, I've done plenty of upgrades. And lately in Ubuntu I've had problems. Going from Hardy to Jaunty (yes, I did Intrepid in the AM, Jaunty in the PM) I had NetworkManager lose control of my wired Ethernet port because I had the audacity to use wireless to do the upgrades. You can feel my pain with Jaunty-to-Karmic on a machine with Intel video on today's newswire. Basically what happened is that the practice of "kernel mode setting" killed X. Nothing I did to xorg.conf would bring it back. Once I figured out that it was the kernel mode setting that did me in, I turned it off in GRUB and then realized that X had improved enough for Intel chips that I didn't need an xorg.conf at all (just like in Hardy). But the kernel mode setting is a complete cluster-@#$% for my particular Intel video chip (82830). Otherwise (yeah, other than my video not working at all until I figured it out), Karmic is performing like the proverbial trouper. And I've heard that it's "easier than in Jaunty" (as opposed to "easier than ever") to bring ctrl-alt-backspace back to kill X. That would've helped me a lot in diagnosing the X issue. |
| Sander_Marechal Nov 03, 2009 12:22 PM EDT |
There's another annoying thing with Ubuntu upgrades: You can't simply update sources.list and then run `aptitude updare && aptitude full-upgrade`. You have to use the (graphical) update manager because it does a couple of extra things. Very annoying. |
| d0nk3y Nov 03, 2009 3:41 PM EDT |
FWIW, my experiences as follows: * Asus EeePC 900 - fresh install of Karmic NBR at around Alpha 6 - never had a problem - still working well, all dist-upgraded to the latest * Home Intel P4EE workstation - dist-upgraded (using command line) Jaunty -> Karmic about a week ago (just before release). No problems at all. * Work C2Q workstation - fresh install of Karmic Kubuntu Beta and dist-upgraded to latest. Sweet as. * Work EeePC 1000HA - dist-upgraded (via gui) after release - Jaunty -> Karmic. Networking wouldn't work (could ping but nothing else seemed to work) - fixed via clean reinstall - now having a problem with Gnome Power Manager blanking the display even when I've told it not too.... |
| number6x Nov 03, 2009 9:18 PM EDT |
I have updated this laptop from 7.10 through 9.04. No problems more than a hiccup. The latest update has quadrupled my boot times. This is about the worst problem I have ever encountered. I only boot once every week or two so it is not a show stopper, but I am working through the logs to see what is going on. You should always turn off third party repositories before a dist-upgrade. Find the adresses of the versions for the new release level. Make sure you have no broken packages. If you have self installed .deb's, make sure you have versions for your new release level. Test the hardware with a live disk before you upgrade. Update the third party repositories one by one and upgrade the software after the main dist-upgrade. Update the self installed .deb's. This has worked for me well for a decade of debian maintenance (with the exception of libc changes in the early 2.x kernel days) |
| tracyanne Nov 03, 2009 10:50 PM EDT |
I Di my first upgrade at about 6 AM on Friday 30th AEST, shortly after the packages were released to the world. It took an hour. My upgrade from Jaunty to Karmic was almost faultless. 6 packages were flagged as corrupted by the package manager, after the upgrade had finished I rebooted and an hour later the Updater reported there were updates, the 6 missing packages were there, they installed fine, and everything works fine. I have no complaints. This was on my new quad core 64bit machine with the latest and greatest 1 gig nVidia graphics card, running 64bit Karmic. |
| herzeleid Nov 04, 2009 1:09 AM EDT |
I've installed 9.10 on 4 computers now - 2 laptops and 2 desktops. I'm happy to say it's been quite smooth, but then again, I always save /home and /etc, and do a clean install. One desktop and one laptop have intel graphics and the video is in the best shape it's ever been. One of the desktop machines has nvidia graphics and it runs perfectly. One laptop has ATI video, and while it seemed to work well for me with the radeon driver, the display is slow when 3 people are logged into the laptop (we pass it around among ourselves to check email etc) so I may have to try the ATI binary blob since that's what it was running under 8.10 and there was no video slowdown with multiple X servers running on the ATI bnary blob. That ATI video issue is the only nit I've found with 9.10, and that is IMHO not the common case. On the plus side, along with all the other improvements, I noticed that when the laptop wakes up from suspend, the wireless networking comes up much faster than it did under 8.04 or 8.10. |
| caitlyn Nov 04, 2009 1:14 AM EDT |
I've had no problems with Karmic on the netbook. I don't know where they get the 10% number but this is the first version since Edgy that hasn't given me major grief. I consider Karmic a huge step forward. It's not "Windows-think" to say clean upgrade only, especially with Ubuntu and Fedora. Both have done some disastrously bad upgrades. Yes, Hans, it is that broken. I remember Red Hat when I was there (2004-05) officially supported upgrades but every consultant there told customers not to do it. Sorry, just a couple of things in Linux really aren't all that much better than Windows and upgrades is one such thing. |
| mortenalver Nov 04, 2009 3:55 AM EDT |
The 10% number is apparently from a poll on Ubuntuforums - perhaps they misread the numbers, because actually about 25% say they had no problems. They may have looked at the "Upgrade" numbers only. Even so, I believe the people visiting the forum just after a new release is a very skewed selection - most people who have no trouble won't be visiting the forums. The contents of the Register article have later been repeated at least in a Norwegian news site, and probably many others, leaving the impression that Ubuntu 9.10 is a disaster for 90% of users. Nice... |
| mortenalver Nov 04, 2009 3:58 AM EDT |
Sorry, I misunderstood the "This poll will close ..." message on the poll to think that the poll had already been closed. Now I see that the poll is still going on, so the numbers have probably just changed since The Register article was written. It's nearly up to 30% with no trouble now :) |
| mortenalver Nov 04, 2009 4:02 AM EDT |
There is a nice message for journalists in the forum thread for the poll: *** Disclaimer for those willing to analyse this poll *** Most of users voting here are users with issues. Users with painless experience are not likely to come here. |
| cabreh Nov 04, 2009 7:13 AM EDT |
Ah. So 30% of those having issues didn't have any issues? :) |
| jdixon Nov 04, 2009 7:22 AM EDT |
I have some spare desktop machines I just swapped out at work (Dell Optiplex GX280 models). I installed 9.10 on one of them to test it out and show off to interested coworkers. The install ran with no problems and everything seems to be working fine. Since this is a desktop, I can't speak to wireless. I may set up a USB stick and try it on a laptop or two to see if the wireless difficulties I've had with 8.04 on the Mini9 have been resolved. |
| penguinist Nov 04, 2009 11:48 AM EDT |
My experience: One server and one notebook upgraded. Both with zero problems. |
| hkwint Nov 04, 2009 6:17 PM EDT |
Hey, did I say Kubuntu Karmic 'works for me' after I edit menu.lst (syslinux) and Xorg.conf? Uhmm, I mean, at least it booted! |
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