[Sussex] New Ubuntu (11.04) older PC (about 5 y.o.) and how, to get it sorted.

[Stephen Williams]

On Fri, 2011-05-13 at 13:32 +0100, Dave wrote:
> > On Thu, 12 May 2011 21:53:09 +0100 john davis<johnsemailaccount at gmail.com>  writ
> > Subject: [Sussex] New Ubuntu (11.04) older PC (about 5 y.o.) and how
> > 	to get	it sorted.
> >
> > Wotcha List,
> >
> > My great Aunts (she's 82) PC (Evesham AMD64) is about 5 years old.
> >
> > Until recently, she was happily dual booting Ubuntu 10.04LTS and XP pro
> > (mainly using the Ubuntu).
> >
> > So, she learned that there was a more up to date version available, I went
> > over there and did the dist-upgrade through the package manager (she does
> > the package updates herself, but isn't confident enough to do a
> > dist-upgrade).
> >
> > Here is where we hit snags. Her graphics are nvidia based and as normal she
> > had the nvidia driver installed (and working fine).
> >
> > When rebooting the new kernel (initially, the one that came with 10.10, but
> > since then they've released 11.04), the system seemed to fire up Ok, but
> > then we either get error text and no graphics (as was the case with 10.10,
> > we just get a white screen with gibberish characters with 11.04).
> >
> > Now, with either upgrade, we can still start earlier kernel versions and get
> > the GUI fine.
> >
> > I'm guessing, but given some of the hints from stuff mentioned in the error
> > dialogue, it seems it might be to do with incompatibility/lack of support
> > for her graphics card in the newer driver from Nvidia. The older kernel
> > versions still installed will boot and display fine with the 173 driver (an
> > older version) but having watched the install/upgrade dialogue, it seems
> > that something called "Nouveau" installs along with the latest (apparently)
> > version of the Nvidia driver.
> >
> > As "matters Xorg" have progressed since I last had to meddle with stuff like
> > that, it's now rather over my head as to how I go about trying to revert the
> > system back to an older nvidia driver or even to the vesa driver so I can
> > see what I'm doing with installing an older nvidia driver graphically. I
> > certainly don't have the knowledge to do this via command line.
> >
> > Can anyone point me in the right direction, or maybe post a link as to how I
> > might get round this ?
> >
> > regards
> >
> > John D.
> You may want to look at the following link.  There has been a lot of 
> talk / swearing about 11.04 as it is also having a problem with ATI as well.
> 
> I have heard that as long as you can get to the log-on screen, what you 
> need to do is the the desktop option (on the bottom panel) to Ubuntu 
> Classic.  Hence I have stuck with Linux Mint even though it is switching 
> to Gnome 3 with it's next release.
> 
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTM2Mw
> 
> Dave P
> 

A colleague of mine wanted Ubuntu installed on his new laptop. On went
10.10. A week later the upgrade manager said 11.04 is available, do you
want to upgrade? Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unity interface is trying to be too Microsoft Office toolbar like, and
it wasn't as quick as 10.10. Yes, you can select Ubuntu classic desktop
at login, but there are still issues. My colleague eventually decided to
install 10.04 LTS, and he is exceptionally happy with it. He even
prefers it to his beloved Mac OSX.

If your great aunt's installation hasn't gone too far you might consider
re-installing 10.10 or 10.04 LTS.

Steve Williams.
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