Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) upgrade

[Robor]

I've been running Feisty since launch and didn't have any problems at launch time or down the road. I upgraded to Gutsy yesterday and IMO this release was not ready. My problems include:


- Random crashes in Firefox. UbuntuForums.org just failed to load completely and hung the browser. This has happened frequently.

- Black screens in windows when using compiz-fusion. So far it's happened in Thunderbird and several times in my Firefox bookmarks menus. Disabling desktop effects fixed the issue.

- Sound issues. With audio enabled in my WinXP VM I get popup errors about sound not being available in Ubuntu.

- VMWare Server performance is horrible. I get random pauses where typing and mouse activity totally stop.

- Streaming audio in my WinXP VM broke. I normally listen to an online radio feed in my VM because it doesn't load properly in native Ubuntu (Firefox). Now that stream connects, buffers, plays, buffers, plays, repeat. Tested it on another Windows box and the stream is fine.


Oh well. I guess that's what I can expect for upgrading to a just released OS. Hope they can get these bugs worked out soon. I'm gonna go over and see if I can find some solutions - assuming UbuntuForums.org loads this time.

 

[xtknight]

Report bugs. Git goin!

No worries I have plenty of regressions (but at the same time there are many improvements). The kinks will be worked out eventually.

I think I had a tad of an issue with VMware but somehow it cleared itself up overtime. I am using a custom 2.6.23 kernel though. Black screens, yes I get those too, I believe it's some NVIDIA bug. No sound issues though (maybe you should try reconfiguring VMware via vmware-config.pl and then reinstall the sound driver too).

I don't have too many Firefox problems. Although a couple sites crash for me the problem is well-known and it's being investigated.

 

[Robor]

Yeah, I'm not complaining - just warning.

I did a reinstall of VMWare. I was running 1.3 and when it failed to launch after the upgrade I decided I might as well download 1.4 and install that. I let it do the vmware-config.pl during the install process. Also had to get the newest build-essentials for this kernel and point the VMWare script to the location - something I didn't have to do in previous kernel upgrades that broke VMWare in Feisty.

I'm sure they'll get the bugs worked out eventually - just seems to me this release is a lot less stable than the Feisty release was.

 

[soonerproud]

Did you do a clean install or use the upgrade utility on an existing installation?

I have a real problem with Ubuntu making it easy to do a in place upgrade. I have never seen an operating system that did not have issues due to a in place upgrade. 99.9% of those issues are resolved by doing a clean installation.

 

[Brazen]

I've noticed lots of problems too - well, those same first 3 you mention. I'm glad I upgraded on a test laptop first I think I'll stick with Feisty for a while.

 

[soonerproud]

The black window bug is a part of compiz-fusion when using a Nvida graphics that is either low memory (128 or less) or onboard graphics. You might want to head to the compiz-fusion forums to find a solution to the issue.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: soonerproud
Did you do a clean install or use the upgrade utility on an existing installation?

I have a real problem with Ubuntu making it easy to do a in place upgrade. I have never seen an operating system that did not have issues due to a in place upgrade. 99.9% of those issues are resolved by doing a clean installation.

It was an upgrade over Feisty. I know upgrades aren't always the best but I didn't want to do a full reload. I might in the end but I hope these few bugs get worked out and I don't have to.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Brazen
I've noticed lots of problems too - well, those same first 3 you mention. I'm glad I upgraded on a test laptop first I think I'll stick with Feisty for a while.

I know I *should* have but it was slow so I said, 'why not?'. I can live with the bugs until they're fixed. Just glad to hear I'm not alone in these issues and hope this thread helps others.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: soonerproud
The black window bug is a part of compiz-fusion when using a Nvida graphics that is either low memory (128 or less) or onboard graphics. You might want to head to the compiz-fusion forums to find a solution to the issue.

The laptop I'm using is a D800 with a 128MB 5200Go card. I've got compiz-fusion disabled at the moment so that issue is fixed. I wish the VMWare Server issue was as simple! Thanks for the info though.

 

[cKGunslinger]

I'm putting it on my kid's system now, using the alternate install disk (trying out disk encryption.)

I couldn't get the amd64 LiveCD to work on my PC. I would press install, there would be a very brief text message at the top of the screen (too fast to read,) and my monitor loses signal. Same thing with safe mode. Oh well..

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: soonerproud
Did you do a clean install or use the upgrade utility on an existing installation?

I have a real problem with Ubuntu making it easy to do a in place upgrade. I have never seen an operating system that did not have issues due to a in place upgrade. 99.9% of those issues are resolved by doing a clean installation.

It was an upgrade over Feisty. I know upgrades aren't always the best but I didn't want to do a full reload. I might in the end but I hope these few bugs get worked out and I don't have to.

This is more of the Windows-way of thinking. Upgrades work fine on most linux distros. I have never had a problem dist-upgrading Ubuntu or Debian boxen. Besides, since I'm seeing the same issues on a fresh install, that lends credence to your problems not being upgrade related.

 

[postmortemIA]

still no "fake"RAID support... next!

 

[trmiv]

Only problem I've had so far is that the brightness on my laptop seems to mysteriously increase itself after I set it with the FN/Arrow keys. At least setting it in the first place works though, it didn't work at all in PCLinuxOS.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: soonerproud
Did you do a clean install or use the upgrade utility on an existing installation?

I have a real problem with Ubuntu making it easy to do a in place upgrade. I have never seen an operating system that did not have issues due to a in place upgrade. 99.9% of those issues are resolved by doing a clean installation.

It was an upgrade over Feisty. I know upgrades aren't always the best but I didn't want to do a full reload. I might in the end but I hope these few bugs get worked out and I don't have to.

This is more of the Windows-way of thinking. Upgrades work fine on most linux distros. I have never had a problem dist-upgrading Ubuntu or Debian boxen. Besides, since I'm seeing the same issues on a fresh install, that lends credence to your problems not being upgrade related.

Hehe... Don't say that. I'm doing a fresh install (preserve /home) on my desktop at home right now.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: Brazen

This is more of the Windows-way of thinking. Upgrades work fine on most linux distros. I have never had a problem dist-upgrading Ubuntu or Debian boxen. Besides, since I'm seeing the same issues on a fresh install, that lends credence to your problems not being upgrade related.

I have to disagree with you on this. I have been frequenting the Ubuntu forums since the upgrade from Hoary all the way to Gutsy. The vast majority of complaints about things going wrong with a new release are people who upgraded instead of doing a fresh installation. Debian does not have so much of an issue of this simply because they refuse to release until the distro is ready and not on a hard date. Ubuntu developers like to blame third party projects, but in my experience it is more related to a rush to get it out of the door.

Vista's upgrade was vastly improved also, but there were still minor issues mainly due to drivers. I still don't recommend upgrading either one for these reasons.

VMware seems to always have hiccups when a new version of Ubuntu is released. That is almost always a problem with VMware and not Ubuntu and is usually fixed the next update to VMware. This bug is probably VMware tools related.

As I previously mentioned, the black window bug is related to both compiz fusion and Nvidia and not Ubuntu. (Nvidia says it is a C-F bug and C-F says it is a Nvidia bug. Both are passing the buck on this one.)

 

[blackangst1]

You could substitute Fiesty Fawn with Windows XP, and Gutsy Gibbon with Vista and have the same thread

Just an observation

 

[Nothinman]

still no "fake"RAID support... next!

Maybe not in the installer but it's there for most of those crap things.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

still no "fake"RAID support... next!

Maybe not in the installer but it's there for most of those crap things.

my crap is faster than whatever you have.

 

[silverpig]

Do you use automatix?

Everything works fine here.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: silverpig
Do you use automatix?

Everything works fine here.

Automatix is not the only thing that can break an upgrade. VMware looks to be the culprit in this case.

BTW

Automatix is not as responsible for breakage during upgrades as some developers have spread. There are many things that can contribute to breakage outside of the supported repos. If you install ANY unsupported software there is a much higher chance of breakage. Almost every one installs unsupported software in Ubuntu so to blame just one application for all the borked upgrades is plain dishonest.

 

[Fox5]

I ended up hosing my gutsy gibbon upgrade thanks to some stuff I did to get beryl working on feisty fawn. I reformatted and this time made home on a separate partition from root so I don't have to worry about losing files for the next upgrade. I'm also trying to avoid making any non-OS approved modifications to the OS.
I also took the opportunity to reformat from reiserfs to jfs. Boot times may be slightly improved (only a little bit) but I think it 'feels' less responsive on the desktop. In reality, there's probably no difference though.

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: soonerproud

Originally posted by: silverpig
Do you use automatix?

Everything works fine here.

Automatix is not the only thing that can break an upgrade. VMware looks to be the culprit in this case.

BTW

Automatix is not as responsible for breakage during upgrades as some developers have spread. There are many things that can contribute to breakage outside of the supported repos. If you install ANY unsupported software there is a much higher chance of breakage. Almost every one installs unsupported software in Ubuntu so to blame just one application for all the borked upgrades is plain dishonest.

Automatix isn't just one application. Okay it is, but it's responsible for potentially hundreds of non-official packages, any of which might cause breakage.


User: Help I have viruses and spyware!
Help: Do you have windows installed?
Guy: It's not windows' fault he has spyware.
Help: If he didn't have windows, he wouldn't have the problem.

 

[Nothinman]

my crap is faster than whatever you have.

That's a pretty bold statement.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: silverpig

Automatix isn't just one application. Okay it is, but it's responsible for potentially hundreds of non-official packages, any of which might cause breakage.


User: Help I have viruses and spyware!
Help: Do you have windows installed?
Guy: It's not windows' fault he has spyware.
Help: If he didn't have windows, he wouldn't have the problem.

That is true, but most of those packages are in Ubuntu's own multiverse and universe repos. So Ubuntu is almost as responsible.

 

[Nothinman]

That is true, but most of those packages are in Ubuntu's own multiverse and universe repos. So Ubuntu is almost as responsible.

Except that AFAIK Ubuntu doesn't officially support anything in universe and multiverse so those packages are all pretty much "use at your own risk".