[Palomides]

But only a teeny tiny bit.

I feel a bit like laurance wotsit in Apocalypse Now when he's ranting "Never get out of the boat, NEVER get out of the boat"

Except that for me it's "Never click on Upgrade, NEVER click on upgrade"

Using the Update Manager to go from xubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 has hosed my system. The new install seems to have some problems reconfiguring to use the latest kernel and ati drivers = blank screen.

I'm not really after help, there's lots of "things to try" on the ubuntu forums - amongst the raft of people who have similarly f'ed up their systems...

I just feel like a bit of a rant.

And a bit of a fool, given that all sorts of bad shit happened last time I clicked on Upgrade to go from 8.10 to 9.04.

Doh.

[slackline]

Should have kept an eye on this

Its likely down to the fact that ATi and nVidia, despite releasing Linux drivers, still don't keep up with the latest releases of Xorg, and Canonical will have gone with some very new version of xorg in the 9.10 release, but then bundled older drivers.

Best option, go with a source based distro that doesn't have "releases".

Have fun sorting it out.  Will duly advise my wife to hold back on upgrades this evening!!

slack

[slackline]

Oh yeah, the quickest and easiest way to revert to 9.04 would be to grab the ISO and re-install from that, as presumably your /home is on a separate partition.  Make sure you back up any customised files in /etc/ first (although you may have trouble identifying them if you always use the GUI's for config).

[Palomides]

Actually I'm considering nuking the whole thing and reverting to 8.10!

Even with XFCE as the windows manager, it seems to me that ubuntu-based distros are getting worse at supporting old hardware - each time there's a new release the performance seems to go down on the old-ish laptop I'm using (I haven't benchmarked anything, it just feels like it).

It means that I'll never have graphics performance as good as in winXP under linux on the laptop, but that's OK, as I kept the windows side intact (for the purposes of running Visual Studio and a few games).

I might try a fresh install of 9.10 first though, just cause I can't resist shinyness. Or try Mint. Or something else.

BTW have you seen this http://framakey.org/. It's a combined image of applications (in Mac/Windows/Linux flavours) along with persistant data storage and a bootable ubuntu. A friend of mine has started using it as an alternative to just carrying around a stick with data on, and he really rates it (he uses the french version though, the english version is still a beta)

[slackline]

Seriously consider trying out Gentoo in that case, its source based, and you can choose which versions of each package/driver you want installed.

The main disadvantage of binary based ditros like Debian (on which Ubuntu is based) is that as with M$-Windoze you have to have support for everything.  As a result binaries end up bloated 'cause there's say support for KDE when its never used (shouldn't happen under Xubuntu really, but it might do as its only Xubuntu as the default desktop is Xfce, theres nothing to stop you installing and switching to KDE, and other components would have to have support for this).

Recent article here that explains some of that better.

You could also try out an even more basic window manager, I use Fluxbox on my laptop (but had used it for years on desktop too).

Gentoo really is a brilliant way to get a customised installation without any bloat.

Framakey looks good, was a major drawback to portableapps was that it was only for M$-Windows.

I'm waiting to see if the Gento 10.2 DVD release supports a writebale filesystem as I've copied 10.1 to a USB and carry that round when I want to use a computer and boot from that, the downside is though because its from a DVD the main filesystem is read only, so I can't say install R which I'd like to be able to carry round on a USB stick.

Having your own OS to carry around on a USB with your key work is uber-cool geeky though.

[tomtom]

Just thought Id say that I'm loving Win7 on my net/notebook.... 

(throws hand grenade into room and walks calmly away.....)

On a more on-topic point... theres been quite alot of press about how the latest Ubuntu release is a sack of shite still in development.... but I'm intrugued by slackers point... how easy is it to get Linux up and running from a USB stick - would I still be able to read files on the hdd, and is there a how to do it for Windows based eeejuts website you could point me towards??

[slackline]

Just thought Id say that I'm loving Win7 on my net/notebook.... 

(throws hand grenade into room and walks calmly away.....)

This is not the thread you're looking for!

but I'm intrugued by slackers point... how easy is it to get Linux up and running from a USB stick - would I still be able to read files on the hdd, and is there a how to do it for Windows based eeejuts website you could point me towards??

Easiest is likey Slax.

In fact you can do it with anything really decide which distro you want to have on your USB drive, download the ISO and get unetbootin.  Use it to put the ISO on your USB drive and make it bootable, stick it in your target/test computer and on boot jump into the boot menu and select boot from USB device (or change the boot order in your BIOS).

You'll definately be able to read computers HDD's, and potentially write to them if they are mounted with the correct options.  The crux is writing to the USB itself.

[slackline]

Oh yeah, and at least you didn't fork out money to find out the latest release didn't work Palomides

[Johnny Brown]

My Win 7 beta install was free too. And it works perfectly...

Sorry.

[slackline]

No its a good thing that it was released for beta testing, something that wasn't really done with earlier versions.

There will be differences between what you have and the full version though and I've a vague recollection that there' a time limit that you may have to work around, the legal way of which is to fork out some cash....

[Jim]

That's all taken care of 
I like windows 7 as well. Upgrades itself with no problems either
 

[slackline]

I like windows 7 as well. Upgrades itself with no problems either
 

That must be refreshing