[Nottingham] Running Ubuntu at Nottingham Uni

[Barry Drake]

On 22/05/12 13:26, ForkBombFluf wrote:
> Upgrading in Linux shouldn't harm or rearrange anything in your 
> bootloader (although the same can't always be said for Windows 
> installations!) so moving to a newer long term support version should 
> be good.  I think Barry's just advised a fresh install rather than an 
> in place upgrade though, and I have to admit I'm curious what sort of 
> issues he's encountered with upgrading.

Most of the issues were with people who really had no idea what they 
were doing and who didn't seem to know what 'backing up data' was.  But 
one or two of them did get the bootloader clobbered!  Some of the 
problems were due to a CD being made using Windows - the iso is very 
slightly oversized and they had tried to use it to upgrade rather than 
the updater.  But I think the most common problem was that the upgrade 
failed part way through possibly because of connection failure and left 
them with an un-bootable system.

Another problem was those who thought they had Ubuntu 'installed' when 
they were using wubi.  Upgrades in a wubi system just don't seem to work 
most of the time.

My advice has always been to back up all data - in the Windows system as 
well if they are dual booting.  Then to run 12.04 from the live DVD to 
make sure it's OK on their hardware, and only then do the installation 
using the defaults right the way through.  Folk who are not geeks trying 
to partition manually always seem to have got it wrong.  Mostly they 
have ended up with the bootloader in a partition and not in the boot 
sector ....  I've been hanging out on: 
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu - if anyone is interested, the 
first few days after 12.04 release date say it all!  Oh, and then there 
are the folk who use the 64 bit version and then can't install a whole 
lot of apps they want to run ....

myunity is a neat little app that lets you re-size the launcher among 
other things ...  well worth getting.  Also, if you haven't used it 
before, press and hold the Super key (the one that was formerly called 
the 'Windows' key for legacy reasons).

Having said that, I didn't encounter any problems at all myself, but 
then I always do a clean install as an easy way of keeping my system tidy.

Regards,        Barry.

-- 
Barry Drake is a member of the the Ubuntu Advertising team.
http://ubuntuadverts.org/