Focal Testing of Kubuntu 20.04 LTS

[Don B. Cilly]

Played with it a bit. It seems exceptionally well-behaved :·)
It didn't do the xapian-cripple thing at boot.
Maybe because I did the updates myself... it got 4 MB of updates total
Well, it was a daily-build and I only got it last night...

I copied my Neon /home to it, installed some essentials, so far it looks... tip-top

[Don B. Cilly]

I managed to install it.
It "only" took some 45 minutes. From a RAM-mounted ISO to an SSD, on a quad-core 2GHz processor. In the words of an English queen of pure German blood, "We are not amused".
Considering also that it was a minimal installation, with no pre-downloading of updates.

I don't know whether it was re-downloading the ISO, putting it on a separate disk, or letting it unmount all partitions. I guess the last one.
Which of course I could do because it was on a separate disk and I only trusted the RAM-mounting so far.

Anyway, I'll check it out and report any ... and other things :·)

[Don B. Cilly]

Failure reports 3 and 4:
I tried the toram - which I can't help but call tattycoram - option :·)
It seems to like it as much as the original Tattycoram liked people calling her that...

I tried to let it stew a while before installing. Not much change.
Even with the Updates icon in place, wait time at "Disk setup" went from five to four mintues.
I still think having an update-system-hog at two minutes after boot is rather... well... particularly on an installer... but... oh well.

It complained about mounted partitions. (it specifically said "copying ISO to RAM... done, at boot).
Then it said, application is in use on partition (sdc2 I presume, the ISO is there, even though it's in RAM)... I don't plan on letting it touch that partition anyway...
It was KSysguard. I closed it. It let me do Disk Setup.

Gets to Installing... just as before, Detecting filesystems, 100%, the "Kubuntu is nice", "You'll love it", Get on the bus" splash screens cycle happily, but after 20 minutes it's still "detecting filesystems, 100%".
Are you sure you want to quit the installer? Yes please. Do it again... No, you have to reboot, you used the tattycoram option, I don't like you.

So I reboot, retry the install, don't open KSysguard, allow it to format my already formatted partition, try to avoid anything that might confuse it.
Same result.

I'll try
- Downloading and checksumming the ISO again.
- Put it on a different disk.
and see what it does.

[jglen490]

In my opinion, the security risk for having an active internet connection open during an install, is no different from any other internet connected activity.

I may have deliberately not connected once or twice during the 25+ years that I've installed and upgraded Linux and BSD distros. The time it took to install a complete Linux/BSD is no different, and security exposure is no different. Your system is hitting the same repos - which are either trustworthy or not trustworthy.

While it's true that I've dropped internet connections from time to time, but - again in my opinion - those were not related to the actual install/upgrade.

I've had some bad downloads of ISOs, bad that's just the way it goes, and those become apparent pretty quickly.

[Radcliff]

Off-line

We also disconnect Internet for a fresh install, the desktop setup is made before enabling Internet.
No need to run live CD for Focal daily builds.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

For Windows, full setup is made off-line, we don't even touch check for update after. A source of noise there.

[NoWorries]

I've always activated the internet connection and never had a problem with installs. (I just screw things up later)

Like you, I always activate my internet connection during the install and have not had any trouble. I must confess that I am connected to my router by Ethernet, and the router is connected to a fibre termination on the wall in my study.

Even when I do an install with no Ethernet but Wireless, I set up the wireless connection during the install. I have noticed that the installation downloads quite a few packages before it is finished.

[jlittle]

I *NEVER* activate an Internet connection when I do an install.

Neither do I, but... I suspect it's a habit I learned more than a decade and a half ago, when downloads were much slower and much less reliable. I was stung a couple of times with screwed up installs from something going wrong with the downloading. I seem to remember that one was caused by disconnections, and the other was due to something at the mirror I was using.

I imagine that like the installer says, updating as part of the install would save time. But if something goes wrong I want to see the error messages, and if the updating is occurring behind the flashy installer GUI, it's possible I won't get to see them.

[SpecialEd]

I've always activated the internet connection and never had a problem with installs. (I just screw things up later)

[Don B. Cilly]

Oh, I don't know... I've installed roughly 65535 ;·) distros over the last two centuries - millennia actually - with active internet connections, and they all pretty much worked... :·)

[Snowhog]

I *NEVER* activate an Internet connection when I do an install.

Ditto. Install *ONLY* from the .iso, then after you are on the Desktop, open a konsole and perform and apt update and apt full-upgrade, then activate the other repositories and repeat. Never fails. Never.

[GreyGeek]

I *NEVER* activate an Internet connection when I do an install. I wait till after I've completed the install and have done my preliminary setup. THEN, I do the usual update-upgrade on a Konsole, install the GPU driver, install my printer, install my special apps, etc. But, I haven't done that since Jan of 2018. I will be doing it in April of 2020 when I install 20.04 on top of BTRFS.

[Don B. Cilly]

I tried again... and failed.
Like last time, as soon as I got to disk setup (very likely coincidental, it's just what it does anyway), I got a rotating cursor for about five minutes after getting to the next screen.
Honestly, I'm not exaggerating. Five full minutes.



After which, the updates notification came up, the system came back to life, and I proceeded.
I told it not to unmount anything - I had a nice partition all ready for it - and went on.

So it said OK, installing.
Detecting file systems... 100%.
Nothing else. I went and did other things, after half an hour, Detecting file systems... 100%.
CPUs close to 0%, everything else working. Installer stuck.

I'll try and put the ISO on another disk, or do the "toram" thing...

[Don B. Cilly]

OK, next time I fire up K18 I will. Thanks.
At the moment, I'm kind of busy redefining steampunk ;·)

Still, unattended-upgrades are a minor annoyance compared to the xapian-cripple at each boot. That is a major one, and should really be addressed, IMHO.

[Snowhog]

In 18.04, launch Muon Package Manager. Click on Settings > Configure Software Sources > Updates and under Automatic updates click on Only notify about available updates and click on Close.

If you use Discover instead, click on Settings, then click on the 'hamburger' icon below Help... and then click on Software Sources then on Updates and do as above.

[Don B. Cilly]

If unattended upgrades are happening, it's because you have it set up to do so.

Actually, I did not. It does it by default. I have K18.04 on the laptop too, it does it there as well.

You can change that.

I looked at how to do it. It said to edit /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic. I had no such file. Postponed it, moved to Neon, didn't need to anymore.

I have mine set to only notify about available updates. I do all my updates from a konsole.

Neon has it by default. I only had to hide the notification. It's in the "hidden" icons. I use Neon Testing, updates are always there...
And I also do all my updates from a konsole. I have two aliases for it :·)
alias upd='sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade' and
alias kupd='sudo pkcon refresh && sudo pkcon update'

I normally use "upd", I don't quite like pkcon, but I use it sometimes just it case apt misses something. Neon say it can.