A cry of pain

[pwabrahams]

I've had more problems with 10.04 than with any other Kubuntu release, and it's very difficult to go back. Maybe the problems can be solved, but why should installing this version be so much more painful than its predecessors? A problem that can be solved is often a problem that shouldn't have been there at all.

Two big ones for me (discussed elsewhere):

1. On one of my several systems (not all), I cannot get the screen resolution above 1024x768. I've tried nouveau (the default) as well as the Nvidia drivers. Interestingly, running Kubuntu in a VirtualBox virtual machine under OpenSuSE on that same machine does provide the full resolution.

2. With multiple desktops and "separate activities for each desktop", I can't get application items onto the desktop. "Add to desktop" does nothing visible -- although unchecking "separate activities" makes it possible. But then I can't have different backgrounds for different desktops. Can't win. I tried updating from KDE 4.4.2 to KDE 4.5.0, which sort of solved the problem but introduced a bunch of problems of its own. And again, I cannot easily go back.

[askrieger]

Re: A cry of pain

I suspect that there comes a moment in every Linux user's experience (at least once) when they upgrade to a new version of their favorite distro and it fouls up their system BIG TIME. It happened to me (most recently), in going from Hardy to Intrepid on my primary computer. Fortunately, I had a decent backup, so very little was actually lost when I reverted to Hardy. Jaunty worked well on that machine, when it finally arrived.

The only answer is: before you upgrade, back up your "stuff", where that normally means (at least) your entire /home/<username>/* directory tree and (usually) your /etc/* tree as well. This means that, after a few days of pain and confusion, you can revert to the previous version and bide your time for six months.

All I can say is:
(0) I feel your pain. Now you can consider yourself a REAL Linux veteran.
(1) Get a removable mass storage device and USE IT.
(2) Go back to Karmic with whatever material, you've managed to salvage or reconstruct.
(3) When Maverick comes out, backup all your "stuff" again, and then do a fresh install. The odds are that it will work.

[dibl]

Re: A cry of pain

I totally concur with what Al has said. Here's the main point: KEEP YOUR IMPORTANT DATA SEPARATE FROM YOUR OS.

That way, if an OS upgrade disappoints, or crashes, or fails to do whatever you need it to do, you have no worries when nuking that partition and installing a different OS. Your data are not affected. Sure -- you gotta go through a lot of time setting it up and re-doing your configurations -- that's a tough enough price to pay. But you do not want your data to be at risk, ever. So keep it on its own partition, and backed up, and you can be just a little bit cavalier about the capabilities of the "Next Great" OS -- if it disappoints you, you can just replace it and move on.

[pwabrahams]

Separate partitions

I keep the contents of my home directory in a separate partition, so I don't lose that even if an upgrade screws up. There are still some problems with the dot files, which are often version-dependent.

Are there any directories other than /home that are best kept in a separate partition? The big advantage I find of not separating partitions is that it makes it easier to assign partition sizes, so I don't like to separate partitions unnecessarily. Historically there once were a number of reasons for separating partitions, but most of those reasons no longer apply.

[Ole Juul]

Re: A cry of pain

Well if you have other variable files than the usual /home then another partition might be good for that. For example web pages or archives might be kept in /var or whatever.

I have a server where the HDD is very small and being too cheap to buy a big one, I just added another one and mounted /var/www on it. So, a separate partition can also be used to advantage just to keep drives separate and prevent future hassles with drive installation.