Had it with Ubuntu

[virtuo]

My HTPC (well, technically not, it's an N54L) has been happily running under my TV for quite a while, Ubuntu Desktop 13.04, XBMC auto-start and a few emulators and bits. No "data" as that's all on various NAS and servers.

Mrs was watching some vids on it while I was at work, got a friendly pop up saying that there's a new version available (14.04) and an irresistible "Upgrade" button. Clicked the button, system has a good old think about it and, half way through applying the updates, decides to tell her it's failed. Nothing else, just failed.

"Great", thought she. Shut it down and wait for someone who knows what they are doing to get home. Enter the hero of this story. Booted the machine, Kernel panics, won't even get to the Ubuntu splash screen. Can get it to crawl past the Ubuntu 14.04 splash by selecting the oldest Kernel available, but then just arrive on a weird resolution desktop with no interface or mouse pointer. No easy way to roll back, just a totally 4-LETTER-WORDed half-upgraded system. Can get to terminals but not wanting to manually fix whatever the heck happened, it's getting binned.


Not a cry for help post, just annoyed at how a "User Friendly" OS like Ubuntu can crash and burn so easily, with very little warning to the user that performing an upgrade is dangerous. I wouldn't have minded if the notification was in the software center or something, but it was a big pop-up at boot.


Going to throw Mint Debian on it tonight, and not touch anything *buntu again.

How's your Friday going?

[aidanjt]

In fairness, only LTS->LTS updates and previous regular release->current release are supported/tested. Although the updater should be smart enough not to offer an update, yeah. Good luck with Mint Debian. Let us know how you get on.

[Goobley]

I lost it with ubuntu around 11.10 when I started having to battle with it to get it to behave like a linux distribution and not a Windows clone with a different interface. I've since been using Mint and Arch and haven't regretted it for one second.

[AGTDenton]

I know its too late now but I got into the habit of taking an image of my PC's or PC's I've built for people whilst they are working so that I have something to fall back on should the worst happen.

If you don't store any data on Ubuntu, why not just re-install a known working version and disable updates?
Sounds like its just a dumb terminal and not much work involved.

[virtuo]

I know its too late now but I got into the habit of taking an image of my PC's or PC's I've built for people whilst they are working so that I have something to fall back on should the worst happen.

If you don't store any data on Ubuntu, why not just re-install a known working version and disable updates?
Sounds like its just a dumb terminal and not much work involved.

The HTPC is the only one I don't regularly back up, as there's nothing important on there (although looking back, all my lovely XBMC customisations are on it - will pop the drive out and rescue those.)

I only put Ubuntu on as I thought Unity might be better for use at a distance on the TV (It's not that good, really), and there'll be a few non-techies using it. I'll be honest and say the update fiasco was the last straw, I've been going off it for a while. Nothing seems to just "work" like it does on other distributions. There's always something crashing, and the nVidia drivers are constantly fighting with something else and dropping my refresh rate from 60 to 50Hz. Although that could be the drivers' fault.


I'm half thinking trying Win7 and hyperspin-FE for a while for the HTPC, but I don't think the N54L is meaty enough..

[DanceswithUnix]

I seem to keep hearing bad things about Debian, makes me glad I didn't move away from Fedora (or Centos on the server).

[Firejack]

I upgraded Ubuntu from 12.04.4 LTS to 14.04 LTS this afternoon. To be fair after clicking upgrade it specifically mentions closing all programs and recommends backing up before proceeding. The upgrade process takes awhile and there was lots of config change approvals and package deletions that your wife would of had to click through. A simple process to those who know about these things but I could easily imagine a novice choosing the wrong option a few times.

Apart from having to remove and reinstall the AMD Catalyst driver I seem to of made it through the upgrade ok. Had one crash on startup which was easily fixed by rebooted and letting some settings update.

I can definitely see your frustration and agree with other users comments in this topic. Ubuntu doesn't quite seem to know what it wants to be from my first impressions in 14.04.

One thing worth mentioning which is frankly hilarious. The Amazon / Shopping search results that are returned when you search in the Dash are totally NSFW. First thing after rebooting Ubuntu I did was type "Update" to open the Update Manager and one of the first results was for "Update Thongs" with a tiny thumbnail of a model in said Thong!
Later on this afternoon I went to open Transmission and before I knew it "Trans" has been searched for and I was looking at an advert for "The intimate thoughts of a cross-dresser" Hmmm yeah not exactly what I was after! Will be disabling this "feature" ASAP!

[peterb]

I had a similar problem with Fedora a few releases ago. If he update fails you end up with a hybrid version, some old bits and some new bits, which aren't comparable.

It can usually be fixed via the command Lin, manually installing the new bits, but that can cause problems with the package manager. Running a live CD I'll enable you to get and data and configuration information off the system, and then a clean install of the new versersion is probably the quickest and easiest solution, re-installing the previously retrieved configuration files as required.

[virtuo]

I did actually manage to "repair" the Ubuntu install, and got a working 14.04, but it just didn't feel right - and it had lost my trust. Thought I'd give plain Fedora a go instead of a Debian based distro, as I've not looked at it since v 14 or 15. Quite nice, although getting XBMC 13 compiled was a bit of a pain.

Just getting the "screen tearing" issue with full-screen video that will need looking at now.