Hi there, brave and Raring Kubuntu testers!
Its that time again, where more and more folks are trying out the development version of Kubuntu 13.04, Raring Ringtail. This has its thrills, but it will also have its spills
so a few suggestions and warnings are warranted.
It goes without saying that backing up your important data is vital, as is having a known good livecd hanging around for rescue purposes.
In the early stages, there is a rapid and constant flow of changes that at some point might break your install, at least temporarily. The earlier you try it out, the greater likelihood that you will experience breakage. Usually these clear out quickly with the next batches of updates, but it can be a day or more in many cases.
Often it is a new bug in a new system library or app, but just as often it is simply that all the needed packages haven't been fully uploaded to the repos and mirrors just yet. Outdated or incomplete binary drivers frequently bork desktops -- these often haven't been built against the latest kernel version, or are not yet compatible with the fresh Xorg builds.
Again, this can take time to resolve, depending on how fast the creators (AMD and nVidia, for example) can fix things. We recommend avoiding proprietary drivers until they've been updated for this release, and even then there may be problems, so be prepared and forewarned.
Updating and upgrading
So with that in hand, happy testing and pleasant breakages!
---
Please do post any issues you have had, especially if you have resolved them. Also, please remember that something is broken now does not mean it will be that way later on, or that something is going to remain in a certain state in the final release. So with these things in mind, please try to keep the complaints about broken bits in perspective here
Its that time again, where more and more folks are trying out the development version of Kubuntu 13.04, Raring Ringtail. This has its thrills, but it will also have its spills
so a few suggestions and warnings are warranted.
It goes without saying that backing up your important data is vital, as is having a known good livecd hanging around for rescue purposes.
In the early stages, there is a rapid and constant flow of changes that at some point might break your install, at least temporarily. The earlier you try it out, the greater likelihood that you will experience breakage. Usually these clear out quickly with the next batches of updates, but it can be a day or more in many cases.
Often it is a new bug in a new system library or app, but just as often it is simply that all the needed packages haven't been fully uploaded to the repos and mirrors just yet. Outdated or incomplete binary drivers frequently bork desktops -- these often haven't been built against the latest kernel version, or are not yet compatible with the fresh Xorg builds.
Again, this can take time to resolve, depending on how fast the creators (AMD and nVidia, for example) can fix things. We recommend avoiding proprietary drivers until they've been updated for this release, and even then there may be problems, so be prepared and forewarned.
Updating and upgrading
- We recommend using the command line for updating and upgrading. Using apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade will give you proper warnings with useful info that will help greatly. For example, any packages "held back" most likely indicate that some updated package has not yet made it into the repo as it is either still building or just hasn't finished uploading.
- Good links for possible issues to check out regularly are the Ringtail Technical Overview (when posted) and the Kubuntu wiki. These do not always have Kubuntu-specific information, but do detail the underlying system changes that could cause problems for any Ubuntu-based system.
So with that in hand, happy testing and pleasant breakages!
---
Please do post any issues you have had, especially if you have resolved them. Also, please remember that something is broken now does not mean it will be that way later on, or that something is going to remain in a certain state in the final release. So with these things in mind, please try to keep the complaints about broken bits in perspective here