Move to Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty was traumatic

[Skyguy]

I finally made the jump to Ubuntu 9.04 from 8.10 but it was an extremely painful move...

I tried installing it from the CD onto a separate HD partition as a dual boot but no luck.
-The installation would work and I could do I restart. But when I did a complete shut down and reboot, it just gave me an Error 18 message.

Eventually, I got the message that Jaunty wanted to be alone on my HD, so I backed up my Intrepid (once again I give a loud 'THANK YOU!' to the software engineers at Acronis) and installed Jaunty by itself on the drive.
-It worked, but all attempts to get GPPP to connect to my ISP failed. I don't know what it was sending in place of my password, but the ISP didn't like it.
-I tried getting all the files to use KPPP, but that was taking forever since I didn't know precisely which specific files to get.

Eventually, I couldn't stand it any more and just decided to restore my 8.10 from my backup and do an online upgrade. I have only got dial-up so I knew this would take forever and a day.
Well... In actuality, it took me ~5 days of downloading files 6 hours at a time overnight to get everything.

I woke up on Wednesday and saw that it was ready to go. The word, 'Hallelujah!' went through my mind and then I did a complete shut down and restart. All seemed well.... for about 3 minutes... then it locked up completely.

After scratching my head, I realized that it was probably the ATI proprietary video driver giving Jaunty the trouble. Fortunately, I had been backing up my HD after each night downloading so I just restored the system to the last backup point and turned off the video driver. Only about 40 MB of files needed to be downloaded again.

The Upside:
The upgrade is now complete and things seem to be working fine. :)
In fact, I notice that I can play full screen AVIs, MPEGs, and DVDs W/O any jitters. Something that I could NEVER do in the last 2 Ubuntu versions.

The Downside:
I have asked my doctor to recommend good talk therapy groups for people who have been traumatized by Ubuntu instillation hassles.
.

[Limey32]

:) Ditch the hassle, wipe clean and go with either Linux Mint 7 Gloria (What Ubuntu should be), or even better.. Dreamlinux 3.5 (Solid as a rock stable and fast as all get out)

I gave up on Ubuntu with 8.10.. too many issues.

[Ken_ver_1_5]

I agree with you Skyguy. I have a working 7.04...... 9.04 simply sucks.
I am still jumping through hoops
to get simple things working.

whats worse ubuntu forms are
no help when you have a problem
thats not been fixed.

they made so many changes and half
of then are broke.

its sad, it was a good distro:(

[Steven]

I'm going to give mint a try right now. Got my second hand machine here, P4 2.4 1GB DDR400 should be enough.
I've had minor issues with Ubuntu, but was never really overall happy with it.

[Skyguy]

:) Ditch the hassle, wipe clean and go with either Linux Mint 7 Gloria (What Ubuntu should be), or even better.. Dreamlinux 3.5 (Solid as a rock stable and fast as all get out)

I gave up on Ubuntu with 8.10.. too many issues.I think I will take a look at Dreamlinux 3.5. With luck, it might take away the nightmares.

[Digiital]

Mint is my Fav by far. Use the KDE version.

[Limey32]

Mint is my Fav by far. Use the KDE version.

While I respect your right to choose your favorite, personally I could not disagree more. I have always found KDE of any distro to be clunky and buggy.. Gnome is superior imo, and as for Dreamlinux.. XFCE is the way to go without question.

But if it works for you, more power to you. KDE is also the most resource intensive kernal available for any linux distro.. so make sure you have the hardware to power it. Linux is supposed to be stable and fast by definition, so using the slowest incarnation of it kind of defeats the purpose, again.. imo.

[cdnLilWolf]

While I don't dispute that the KDE desktop is more resource hungry, it should make no discernible difference to most PC's now. The stuff that slows you down is the screenary add ons and visual bling. There is little perceptible difference (if any) opening a document from (ie) OpenOffice when using either desktop.

You should note that even Novell now supplies KDE by default (Gnome is still a checkbox option) with OpenSUSE. If works quite nicely there.

[cdnLilWolf]

Skyguy, when you say the "Upgrade is complete", do you mean that you chose to do an actual "Upgrade" or did you install side by side? Most people will tell you it is always better to do a fresh install and move your data over.

Otherwise, the general rule is don't upgrade if there is no real need to.

[Skyguy]

Skyguy, when you say the "Upgrade is complete", do you mean that you chose to do an actual "Upgrade" or did you install side by side? Most people will tell you it is always better to do a fresh install and move your data over.

Otherwise, the general rule is don't upgrade if there is no real need to.I did the actual upgrade. I tried the side-by-side approach several times (it didn't work...) and I also tried installing it on a separate partition (once again, several times) - but that never worked either.

Yes, I admit the fresh install approach worked. But that whole GPPP/KPPP hassle prevented me from getting back online and obtaining any of the apps I needed. Using my local library's PCs to rummage through the Launchpad web site simply got painful since I ended spending time downloading tonnes of files that a) Were already present from the instillation... or b) Sounded similar to what I was looking for but didn't give me anything that I could have used to make a proper determination.

For example, I didn't know if:
kppp_4.1.2-0ubuntu4_i386.deb or
kppp_4.2.2-0ubuntu2_i386.deb or
kppp_4.2.2-0ubuntu2.1_i386.deb or
kppp_4.2.4-0ubuntu1~jaunty2_i386.deb

...was the proper file.

I could have lived with the fresh install and just moved my data files over IF I had been able to log into my ISP.

[Skyguy]

:) Ditch the hassle, wipe clean and go with either Linux Mint 7 Gloria (What Ubuntu should be), or even better.. Dreamlinux 3.5 (Solid as a rock stable and fast as all get out)

I gave up on Ubuntu with 8.10.. too many issues.I'm going to try a little jump into Dream Linux and see how things go.

But before I do that, can you tell me what I need to know about setting up a dial-up modem in DL 3.5?

My psychiatrist says I'm still in a very vulnerable state and two members of my talk therapy group have been institutionalized because their medication didn't stop the Ubuntu nightmares.

[linuxguru]

Try the Mandriva ONE 2010 editions. They are live CD's [can be installed if you want from the desktop icon]. There is a Gnome and a KDE version.
You will be pleased.

http://www2.mandriva.com/downloads/?p=linux-one

[Skyguy]

Try the Mandriva ONE 2010 editions. They are live CD's [can be installed if you want from the desktop icon]. There is a Gnome and a KDE version.
You will be pleased.

http://www2.mandriva.com/downloads/?p=linux-oneI could dial-out to my ISP just running it as a live session from the CD. Impressive. Not one single Linux version I have tried has ever done that before now.

The style is a little too reminiscent of Ubuntu though... but I haven't explored everything quite yet.