Karmic Koala turning out to be Linux' version of Windows ME?

[LinuxMint-4]

(Karmic Koala turning out to be Linux' version of Windows ME?)

Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/03 ... ustration/

Ubuntu 9.10 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Linux distro.

Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Ubuntu forums.

Reg reader motoh delivered a warning on moving to Ubuntu 9.10 from version 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope - in comments on our review of the new OS here. "If you upgrade from Jaunty beware. You may have a rough ride. I made my mistake by trying too soon. Wait the usual month," motoh wrote. Angus77 at Ubuntuforums.org agreed: "This is so frustrating! Jaunty was a snap to install."

They're in good company, as more than a fifth of people upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 have reported issues they can't fix, according to an Ubuntuforums.org poll here. Only around 10 per cent of those upgrading or installing reported a completely flawless experience.

Overall, those installing Ubuntu 9.10 on a clean machine are having a slightly easier time than those making the upgrade. Users installing Ubuntu 9.10 were able to solve more of the niggling problems than those trying to upgrade from an older version.

Canonical and Ubuntu should be worried. Typically, it's the more technical users overall who install Ubuntu - and early adopters tend to be the most technical of the technical.

If these people are experiencing problems they cannot solve, then the outlook for Ubuntu among a broader, less technical consumer base - especially on prized netbooks against Windows 7 - is not great.

And that's a sentiment already being voiced in the Ubuntu forums. Ubuntu 9.10 upgrader graydo64 posted: "Wish I'd done a clean install. Appreciate that as an existing and generally content Ubuntu user I'm not Joe Public but if I were I'd have dropped Ubuntu at about 9.30 last night and toddled off to find a copy of Windows 7."

The problems causing the biggest headaches are in graphics, with reports of flickering or dead screens. Adopters have re-downloaded and re-installed Ubuntu 9.10, and people have scoured the web for answers only to hit the same issues.

A bug has now being filed in Ubuntu forums on how Ubuntu 9.10 breaks graphics drivers and X, preventing log in or startx.

Motoh wrote in our comments section: "A wealth of X server issues have cropped up, causing black screens with hard to trace causes. Proprietary driver activation has become buggy, and program crashes are routine instead of rare."

Motoh called Ubuntu 9.10 "a huge disappointment", writing "All in all, a very underwhelming release. You can do better, Canonical."

A conflict with graphics cards from Nvidia and ATI seems to be the issue, but there's no answer "why" or obvious fix.

Other problems: Ubuntu 9.10 is installing the old Linux kernel - 2.6.28 - not the new, 2.6.31 kernel released in September, with Ubuntu 9.10 also failing to see hard drives on certain machines.

Encryption proved a hurdle for Ubuntu forum member w00ly, who decried the lack of automation on encrypting his home partition.

"I had chosen to encrypt the home partition when installing 9.04 and then wasn't able to get the passphrase command to complete the encryption process to work properly," w00ly wrote.

Finally, after a late night and getting some advice online, w00ly wrote: "I certainly wish the encryption mounting process was more automated like everything else is!!"

The best you can say of this situation is that the problems aren't universal. Ubuntu and Reg readers together report installing Ubuntu 9.10 on Acer Aspire A150s, Hewlett Packard 2133, IBM T60, ThinkPad T42, and EEE PC netbooks, and laptops either flawlessly or with minor issues. Still, that proves that Ubuntu has a long road to haul before installing even this popular Linux distro is the no-brainer that helps makes Windows the success it is among regular PC users.

Canonical was unable to comment on the problems at press time.

[MattKingUSA]

And on that note, Mandriva 2010 is out today. http://www.mandriva.com

[dann]

Interesting, I had a painless upgrade a month before release. Not sure what the problems are. Oh yeah, and this is on two machines too. I love Karmic. Oh wells...

[Patrick]

This is normal for any release cycle. Who usually posts in the forums? People that have issues when installing or upgrading. Most satisfied users will not go post in the forums and say "awesome, good job!". That's the nature of software releases. If all goes well you don't hear a peep. So if 200 people post saying they have issues then the release is deemed a total failure?! How many people did this guy actually talk to? With any OS there will always be issues related to a particular piece of hardware and some configuration. Karmic is light years ahead of Windows ME or any POS Windows product IMHO.

[NYbill]

i'm trying to get to karmic... but, my root partition is full! i was always under the impression that 7gigs was an adequate root partition. i made mine 11 gigs. now its 94% used.

i'm still trying to figure out what filled it up. once i do, i'll see how my karmic upgrade goes.

[eddie]

With the last update yesterday, karmic allegedly seems to be getting solid for me, even though I did have to do a few tweaks in the beginning..

[kwisher]

So far I have done three fresh installs with no problems. Two of the systems are MythTV backend/frontend systems and the last one is my main desktop workstation. I was previously running Mint-5/Hardy & Mint-7/Jaunty on these systems. I made the move to Ubuntu mainly for the ease of distro in-place upgrades. Mint does not provide and easy in-place upgrade for new releases.

MythTV .22 is a great release. Been running it since last Saturday and it has been performing flawlessly.

[Patrick]

MythTV .22 is a great release. Been running it since last Saturday and it has been performing flawlessly.

I totally agree. Even though 0.22 is not official (as of today) it really is a huge jump forward. My main box has migrated down to the mancave and has triple recording capability. The PVR-1212 is my main capture device followed by an HDHR(dual QAM tuners). I can record 3 HD shows at once!! I moved my Zotac Ion frontend box up to the family room. Just have to convince the wife to get a 42' LCD for the family room and we'll be set

[shopRatt]

I upgraded my laptop last Sunday while watching football. I had no problem at all with the upgrade and did not do a clean install I tried the upgrade button on the updater. I have used the machine all week and no issues.

[Claudio]

I'm going to have to call BS on this article. I've done a clean installation with the community-maintained PowerPC port of Karmic on my iMac G5 last weekend and I've also done a dist-upgrade with the Update Tool on my x86-based work PC. Both of them completed flawlessly without me having to configure a damn thing. Mind you, my home directory is on a separate partition and I don't have my drives encrypted, but one of the issues mentioned was the in-place upgrade and that never happened to me. So far, I'm extremely pleased with Karmic on these platforms. Next installation will be on my Eee PC via Unetbootin. I expect it to be just as successful.

[eddie]

It would have been interesting to run karmic on a g3. I do not want my ppc g3's back.

[Claudio]

It would have been interesting to run karmic on a g3. I do not want my ppc g3's back.

Incidentally, I'll be giving it a go today on these 600 MHz G3-based iMacs here at work for a project. This is the last hurrah for them, though. If this doesn't work, they are getting surveyed and shipped out.

I had Debian "sarge" running on a Motorola StarMax 4000 MT Mac clone. That was fun to use and I wish I still had that Mac clone. Came with a PowerPC 604e processor and I fitted it with a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000 card I had laying around and a USB PCI card. It was nice to finally use a PPC machine with a PS/2 mouse (and the right-click actually worked under Debian), but I was still using the Apple-branded ADB keyboard.

More on the StarMax 4000 MT:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/motorol ... 200mt.html

[eddie]

My blue g3 towers, umax and imac were in the 300mhz range. Ran debian etch and ubuntu hardy on them. I later used the towers and imac as thin clients for k12ltsp for a while. Weird seeing mac boxes boot off of an InteI system.(ppc binaries were on the server and loaded via netboot (similar to pxeboot)). I replaced the macs with compaq t20/30 (x86 based) thin clients Then I stripped the macs for parts i could use on my intel boxes and then donated what was left of the macs. I do still have a couple of scsi drives with mac stuff on them. Just as well wipe them someday when I am bored to build another rube goldberg pc.

[MattKingUSA]

i'm trying to get to karmic... but, my root partition is full! i was always under the impression that 7gigs was an adequate root partition. i made mine 11 gigs. now its 94% used.

i'm still trying to figure out what filled it up. once i do, i'll see how my karmic upgrade goes.

Why don't you just do a liveCD install and not format your /home partition? Wouldn't that fix this issue??

[dann]

Have yo cleaned out your log files? They could be taking up a lot of space: /var/log.

Lood for files ending in .gz or .#, they are the rotated log files.

In addition, you might want to run apt-get or aptitude clean to remove any package files still lingering around.

If your home directory is not on a separate partition, I would suggest also cleaning house in there.

Using du -sm is a godsend in my opinion. This can tell you what files/directories are taking up the most space. You may have hidden directories in your home directory really consuming a lot of space. Your mail client for instance or your browser's cache.

du -sm .* to do the hidden directories in your home file.

Maybe you want to remove some packages to.

My laptop is cramed with all sorts of software and I'm only using 8.8 gb. We're talking full gnome and kde suites, various office suites, graphic manipulation programs, many games, etc. I have a separate /home partition which is using 21 gb and that includes virtual machines, my photo library, etc.