An alternate upgrade procedure for Ubuntu 11.10
 

I just finished a week-long struggle to upgrade Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10. The program ("upgrade release tool") invoked by the upgrade button on the Upgrade Manager failed to run on my machine. Help from https://answers.launchpad.net suggested I download the alternate install CD from

http://releases.ubuntu.com/oneiric/

The file I downloaded was 'ubuntu-11.10-alternate-amd64.iso". There is another file for 32-bit machines. This is intended to be burned to a CD, but that isn't necessary, I learned.

I put this file into my superuser's Downloads folder. The upgrade procedure is as follows:

su "superuser"

sudo mount -o loop ~/Downloads/ubuntu-11.10-alternate-amd64.iso /media/iso

cd media/iso

sudo ./cdromupgrade

The alternate procedure given at the Ubuntu web site

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/On...e_CD.2BAC8-DVD

did not work for me. Specifically, the gksu step failed.

I am not thrilled with 11.10. As a babe in the woods, so to speak, I am chagrined to find that gfortran has not been compiled for 11.10 and my 11.04 executables don't run under 11.10. The commands to change the number or workspaces don't work. Not sure what to do about these problems.

Switch to a distro designed for folks that do more than giggles and gossip (porn and social sites) on their computer.

You may be a babe in the woods but I think you would find Debian Wheezy or Sid to your liking. You have RH9 listed so, unlike me, you must be rpm tolerant. Mandriva was not bad last time I checked it out (early last year). A lot of folks like Fedora.

That is my suggestion for your problems. As an alternative you could, as root;
if you check synaptic (you will need to install it) you will find several supporting packages. I got that package name from synaptic here under Debian testing so it should be current with Ubuntu if they haven't changed the name or just dropped it.

Red Hat 9 must be nearly 10 years old. I have a copy of RH8 and could never get it to work.

I'm with Widget, try Debian. If you try Wheezy you'll be using the testing version, if you try Sid you'll be close to cutting edge (I say "close to" because there are other distros who have more up to date versions). If you want stability try Squeeze it is comparable to Ubuntu 10.04 and 100% more stable. You could, if you are game, cut fully sick and run Sid/Experimental ;)

Thank you for your suggestions, widget and k3It01. I will probably struggle with Ubuntu for a bit longer, since it and the machine are new. But I'll probably end up going with one of the more serious distributions as you suggest.

...Giggles and gossip? ...a more serious distro??? Very un-PC of you members and I appreciate your candor; thanks! What could I do with a more serious distro that I can't do on Kubuntu? I'd really like to know. Is this common knowledge that Kubuntu is not a "serious" distro? This is the first time I've every heard this. Please advise.

mhumm2

You have obviously never been a serious participant in a certain community if you don't understand what Widget has said. If you have then you are either a troll or a fanboy. You can have your opinion but my advise would be to listen to reason and then do your research.

Like all Ubuntu variants Kubuntu is bloated, you can save space, time, energy, resources, just to name a few things IF you choose a "more serious distro" like Debian. There is no need for things like Ureadahead, Plymouth, UbuntuOne, when Debian without all these things can boot faster run more efficiently and also use DropBox.

k3lt01,

Actually I believe I do understand what widget posted. So much so that it caused me to ask the question I did. The second paragraph of your response was interesting and helpful. It provides some real terms that I can use to research other distros including Debian.

The content of your first paragraph is based on incorrect assumption, intolerance towards me, a person trying to shed his ignorance, and it drips with arrogance. It's okay though since I choose not to give you permission to offend me. I'll just chalk it up to our cultural differences, being from different countries, and the egregious warning you provide in your signature block. It's very amusing. Thank you again for the information you provided. That part, I did take seriously and will begin my research.

I need to post a correction to my above statement. Contrary to what I wrote above, gfortran is available to Ubuntu 11.10 users through the standard download/install procedure (i.e., the Ubuntu Software Center (USC)). My problem was that the input (sources.list) to the USC was apparently messed up and I lack the experience to have recognized that problem. However, a very patient person at answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu walked me though the process to get my system properly configured.

I suspect my problem with the workspaces is that I don't fully understand the changes the developers made to the desktop. So I will work on that.

I should not have chosen the term "serious", which deprecates Ubuntu. I don't have enough experience to make that charge.

From reading various sources, I concluded that some linux distributions require more fundamental involvement by the user and assume a higher level of knowledge and perhaps prowess (i.e., more "serious" implications for the demands on the user). The attraction of Ubuntu for me was that the upgrade and software installation procedures are programmed in brain-off buttons that you just have to choose to click (or not). Is Ubuntu unique in this respect? My problem was that the button didn't work in my case, and I was forced to fall back to more fundamental procedures; but my competence level was, unfortunately, one button deep.

I will probably never attain geek status when it comes to system administration. I am just an engineer who needs to deal with physics and differential equations, which I find difficult enough. If Ubuntu can minimize diverting my attention to operating system matters, then that is the fantasy world I will pursue.

I appreciate your comment.

Well, one good thing to do is stick with Ubuntus LTS (Long Term Service) release. The current one right now is 10.04. These get 3 years of support so it will be supported until the end of April in 2013. A LTS is released every 2 years. 12.04 will be the next one. The LTS is based on Debian testing for stability.

Every 6 months Ubuntu puts out a "regular" release such as 11.10. These are more cutting edge and not as stable as the LTS and are based on Debian unstable. They get 18 months of support.

If what you want in Ubuntu is a consistent platform that is relatively stable get 10.04 and use it until next fall when 12.04 will be stable. It takes a while for the devs to get the thing stable after the release.

PCLOS is another distro you may want to look at. It is aimed at being easy for folks getting started. It is, or was last time I looked, based on Mandriva.

Linux Mint is another that has striven to be noob friendly and is based on Ubuntu. I have not ever installed it but know a lot of folks really like it. One of the things they concentrate on is package management but as I have not used it I can't say what they do differently. It is based on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu puts way too much priority on being cutting edge and not any where near enough on fixing bugs. 11.10 has had a very rough start because of this. They are also removing a lot of tools that make working on your OS easier. They are correct in thinking that most folks do not use these tools but when something goes wrong is not the time to try and install them. The instability of the regular releases (much more unstable than Debian unstable). Makes them impractical for serious use. The LTS is not too bad if you let it mature after release before you install it. 2 to 4 months is good.

The difficulty of using other distros is exaggerated. Ubuntu is based on Debian, most of the packages come straight from Debian. Ubuntu spends a lot of time dressing up for you, Debian does not figuring you can add eye candy if you want. They are interested in having a stable release. Debian stable is currently Squeeze which Ubuntu 10.04 was based on. My wife runs 10.04 and I run Squeeze on here for secure transactions. Squeeze is more stable. The main difference between Ubuntu and Debian is the repo system. Ubuntu has made it easier while making it more complex. There is a sticky thread on this forum to show how a Debian sources.list is set up and makes that simple.

One link that every Ubuntu user should have is;
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Lucid

They have a page for all current releases, this link is for 10.04. They do a very good job of explaining things like how to set up your sources.list and give all commands and directions you need to get set up and running.

If you want a distro that will hand you an OS that is fairly "shiny" if lacking in stability and functionality Ubuntu is great and is "social from the start". If you want something stable that you may want to pretty up over time, use something else.

If what you are mainly interested in is number crunching the Xfce desktop environment is probably a good one. You can try it out by getting a Live CD for Xubuntu 10.04 although xfce has improved a good bit since then. I run Xfce under Debian testing as my main OS.

If you upgrade or change distros install manually (not real tough) on two partitions / (root) and /home. If you were installed by one of the auto installs on the installer you are on one partition / (root). This configuration makes recovery somewhat harder when problems happen.

No offence was intended nor was it given. I say what I think, I don't talk in riddles. If I made any post on an incorrect assumption it is because I did not get the "full" meaning of the post I commented on. I do however get what you mean when you start talking about intolerance and arrogance an then in the very next sentence say it's ok since you don't give me permission to offend you. Sorry but that is just psychological back chat and when you are online it doesn't mean a thing because everything we do here is anonymous. Personal empowerment is for the real world, it does no good practicing personal empowerment in cyberspace.

You said the OP and Widget were very un PC but you appreciated their candor, now appreciate mine as I am being as frank as I can. You wasted 2 posts when you could have actually said something productive or asked in a way that didn't lead people to believe you joking and they replied likewise.

I can fully understand your comment, flshope. I think I'm effectively in the same camp as you, although I do have quite a bit of experience in system administration. You and I simply look at the OS as a tool to accomplish something else, whereas others tend to wrap their identities in it. I don't generally care too much about a desktop as long as it has the functionality I need. Effectively, I don't give a shit as long as it gets the job done. If Windows is a better option, that's what I'm going to suggest.

Something I do wonder, however, is why you were trying to upgrade to 11.10? I know it's fun to poke around the latest and greatest, but when it comes to a system you rely on for work, sometimes that upgrade isn't worth the hassle. Something else in that upgrade is Unity, whereas Gnome is an afterthought. I upgraded a virtual machine to 11.10, and dealt with Unity for a bit, but determined I didn't like it, so I installed Gnome, which seems about half-baked at this point. Installed Xfce and found that to work perfectly well. In my situation, however, the upgrade when through without any problems at all.

My experience with the latest version of Ubuntu has me seriously considering another distro. The main question I have at this point is if I want to upgrade this laptop to 11.10, and work with Xfce, which seems to be a plausible solution, or migrate to something else? Dunno. Thought about Slackware again, but I've been down that road and while I do use it on a few systems I have, mucking around with the OS isn't my favorite pastime. If I'm going to go that route, I'd just as soon use OpenBSD, but that can be a handful too -- although I have it installed on a few netbooks and I'm seriously impressed with it. I don't use them in a way where I'm using them for desktop duty, and I'm sure that would be a stretch. Chromium does work rather well on the latest one, however. I'd not recommend OpenBSD in your case, however.

Anyhow, in your case, it appears you're past the point of no return with regard to reverting to 11.04. It almost sounds like you should consider backing all your various programs/configs for your work to a usb drive or whatever, and wipe/install 11.04. Debian probably would work as well as someone suggested.

If you found something with which you are comfortable, then why not use it? Who really gives a crap if something is using a 100 meg of RAM on something extraneous (well, if you're using a system short on RAM, that could be an issue, but I suppose I'm assuming that isn't the case) if it does what you want and it's performing well enough? You don't have to impress someone here, or anywhere else for that matter.

Good luck on your choice.

Thank you for the elaboration on the LTS. I was vaguely aware that it existed, but I didn't know the schedule or for whom it was intended. Somehow I had gotten the idea it was for their business customers. In any case, my machine's vendor (Pogo) recommended 11.04, and I cavalierly upgraded to 11.10.

Your explanation of Ubuntu's philosophy and priorities was useful to me. I guess that explains their stability issues. While researching my workspace problem, I have noticed an enormous amount of internet reports of 11.10 problems. Perhaps that is common with a new release.

I continue to be surprised by how many distributions there are. I'll study the alternatives you mention to see where I want to go with this. I'll also look into alternate desktop environments with Ubuntu.

Thank you for your extensive discussion and insightful recommendations. I also appreciate your taking the time to write this out.

Fred

Ah! A kindred spirit, as they say. Yep. Personally, I am more attached to my code editor nedit and gnuplot than the OS. Of course, the OS can mess everything up, as I did when I upgraded to 11.10. You wonder why I would do that. I am now wondering, too. After using Ubuntu for a month or so and watching it effortlessly upgrade applications without bothering me, I guess I just thoughtlessly punched the 11.10 upgrade button, assuming the upgrade would proceed similarly. When it failed -- and I tried a bunch of times -- it upset me considerably. My previous machine has been running Red Hat 9 since 2003, which was about the time Red Hat dropped support for their free OS. So that OS has never been upgraded, and I just lived with it as long as I could. Of course, eventually, I couldn't even upgrade the applications. So the promise of Ubuntu, as I saw it, was that system maintenance would be easy. I did the 11.10 upgrade because I thought it was the proper thing to do. Big mistake on my part, especially since 11.04 was running fine.

You and a lot of others are unhappy with Unity. I was becoming happy with 11.04 (is that what people are calling "classic" desktop?), and I think I could learn to like Unity. Except that I am stuck with 4 workspaces and can't change the number. Even Dead Red Hat 9 let me have 36! I had 64 under 11.04. Neither compizconfig-settings-manager nor the terminal commands in the Ubuntu Desktop Guide do anything on my machine under 11.10. But I think there may be a way to manually edit a configuration file to set the number of workspaces.

I think you are right that I am now stuck with 11.10, although fresh a install of 11.04 is seeming better all the time. Before I do that, I think I should check with my vendor Pogo. I wonder if they had to do anything nonstandard in the original 11.04 installation. They must have originated my sources.list, which the Ubuntu site helper said was strange.

Like you, I don't worry much about resources. I just try to buy plenty. My new Pogo has 8 GB RAM and two 500 GB hard drives, and the CP is triple core -- nothing special these days, I guess, but more than adequate for my needs.

Thanks for your discussion and the time it took to write it. It is very helpful.

A Not So Nice Place to Visit...
 

This is my first and last post on this forum. I am obviously in the wrong neighborhood since I am a "real" babe-in-the-woods (absolute beginner)with Linux/Ubuntu. But, even if I was an "expert" programmer/designer of Linux applications, after reading the exchange between k3lt01 and mhumm2, I wouldn't participate in a group with a member who accuses, abuses and labels other members. Not to mention the obvious display of condescension. Its sad how you resort to total denial with "didn't intend to offend" and then hide behind your rudeness with "I am a tell it like it is/matter of fact" kind of person when confronted with a response. And, your "devils advocate" bullsh&t tag line was chosen as a cover for your antisocial tendencies. Don't write about someone's psychological strategies being non effective via the anonymity of the internet when, I, and I'm sure plenty of others see you as using the internet to feed your own insecurities and behave like a 13 year old. Gosh, I didn't mean to offend you, I'm just a "tell it like it is" kinda guy. Now, go pull the wings off some flies. BTW if you have been allowed to behave this way for any length of time I blame the moderator(s) for not removing you.

Robin, you are entitled to your opinion as mhumm2 and myself are entitled to ours. If you have a question or statement relevant to the original intention of this thread I am more than happy to try to help. However, if you just intended to post so you can have a go at me then you have wasted your time, effort, and a post.

If you think I am a problem in this fora then please feel free to contact the moderators yourself and ask them to remove me but do not blame others if you are not willing to take such action. I'm happy to be contacted by the mod team and discuss my posting style, are you happy to start the ball rolling? If you aren't then you shouldn't blame anyone else.

My problem with not being able to change the number of workspaces under 11.10 has been solved. I discovered that the machine apparently was shipped to me with a proprietary nVidia display driver installed along with 11.04. Apparently, the 11.10 upgrade disabled the proprietary driver in favor of another one, and this apparently disabled Unity. I located the driver under System Settings/Hardware/Additional Drivers (not through great police work but by just messing around). After re-installing the proprietary driver, I was able to alter the number of workspaces using the gconftool-2 commands given in the Ubuntu Desktop Guide. So I am happily back to my 8X8 desktop.

One serious problem down, one to go. Ubuntu 11.10, unlike 11.04, does not recognize my trusty old HP LaserJet 5L even though Ubuntu has the drivers available and installed. The command hp-probe does not detect any printers. I did plug in a Brother HL-2040 from my wife's Mac and that worked OK. So, thinking about replacing the ancient HP, I've been searching for drivers for some of the newer low-end Brothers printers like the HL-2240 (the 2040 is long since out of production), but the Ubuntu Software Center (USC) refuses to install them, saying they are for the wrong architecture -- my machine is amd64 and the drivers are i386. The 32-64 interface libraries are already installed, but the USC says "no".

I read similar discussion somewhere where the advice was to just plug in the printer and let Ubuntu take care of the drivers. Could that possibly work if Ubuntu's installed driver list doesn't contain the appropriate driver?