Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic" Alpha4 and the Intel video drivers...

[Bob Elzer]

The best way to upgrade an OS is to do a fresh install.  Nobody can catch
everything, these distro's have so much stuff included, there is bound to be
some complications.

If you are going to do the upgrade route, then I recommend Mondo Rescue. It
can make a bare metal backup of your machine and if and when you find any
problems that are deal breakers you can roll back.

Another thing I always consider when I build a system, is where I put my
data. I put all the data I want to keep on a separate disk (I.E. I create a
link from /usr/local/ to /mydisk/local/ )

After a fresh install, it's easy to recreate the links

There are still files I make copies of (I.E. /etc stuff and other things), I
then have a list of files that need to be looked at in the new system.

Doing these things makes a fresh install easier.
 

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Michael
Butash
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 12:42 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic" Alpha4 and the Intel video drivers...

I just upgraded from ibex to jaunty and to Karmic on my laptop, and I've
been having some major issues with it.  No intel (thank goodness) to deal
with, so can't attest to it.  Suspend functions for me are now broken, gnome
power manager is buggy at best, and my screen saver refuses to work.  For a
laptop these are killing me...  VMware barely works with some hackery, and
some of the alsa devices get figured out backward now.  Even going from ibex
to jaunty, network manager simply refused to adequately control the wireless
hardware which was entirely a deal breaker, forcing me to roll the dice on
karmic.  This all from a perfectly working install in hardy or ibex.
Otherwise, I am mostly pleased with the overall performance of it,
definitely improved from Ibex.

I'm assuming you did a clean install that everything works ok for you?
Those typically work well for me too, but upgrades for me have been entirely
crapshoots, which is really disappointing as otherwise I'm quite fond of
ubuntu.  I'm curious what success others have had here with upgrades, as the
ubuntu forms tend to indicate it's a perpetual kludge of a process with
destruction and mayhem as a result.  I've always had major cleanup and
fixage after a dist-upgrade.

I long ago gave up on Fedora/RedHat when pretty much
installing/upgrading/compiling any software just led to dependency hell.
This has gotten somewhat better since yellowdog cloned apt with yum for
RH-ish distros, but I'm still not ready to bother trying fedora again quite
yet.  If ubuntu keeps annoying me, perhaps I might.

-mb


On Mon, 2009-08-17 at 23:39 -0700, Ryan Rix wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 9:48 PM, Jim March<1.jim.march at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Folks,
> >
> > I have a laptop with the mediocre Intel 965/X3100 chipset.  In 
> > Ubuntu Jaunty it ran like a turd until major tweaks were applied, 
> > and the results weren't 100% stable.  Jaunty came out right as the 
> > Intel video support was in flux and Jaunty basically caught about 
> > half of what was needed between the kernel, xorg, Intel driver, Mesa and
Compiz.
> >
> > Karmic has the whole package.  I've been running it for five days 
> > now, ever since alpha4 came out, and it's more solid (and FASTER) 
> > than I ever got out of Jaunty.  I did a full re-install with the 
> > alternate installer (as I use whole disk encryption) and I went with 
> > Ext4 - it's working great.
> >
> > On a lark I loaded the 64bit Adobe Flash "alpha" and it's rock solid 
> > too - best flash Linux experience I've ever had, period, end of 
> > discussion.
> >
> > I think Karmic is going to be a really sweet Ubuntu flavor when it 
> > ships and the improvements in Intel video support are so amazingly 
> > vast I'd say anybody with at least moderate technical chops able to 
> > cope with minor pre-release glitches should switch NOW.  I'm told 
> > the fixes also apply perfectly to the Intel 4500 chipset found on 
> > the newest el cheapo laptops.
> >
> > WARNING: this applies to all Intel video drivers except the GMA500 
> > chipset.  That thing is a major turd and will remain so until the 
> > Ubuntu distro post-Karmic at a minimum.  The most common GMA500 
> > machine is the Dell "mini 10" I think it's called, and for some 
> > reason that thing is an excellent Hackintosh candidate.  While I'm 
> > not normally a proponent of running Apple OSX on non-Apple hardware 
> > (as Apple is actively trying to stomp your install with updates!), 
> > the difference in support for the GMA500 between Linux generally and 
> > OSX is severe enough I'd consider it, at least until Intel helps get 
> > the driver situation under control.  (The issue is, Intel recently 
> > bought the GMA500 tech from another company that was very 
> > Linux-hostile...Intel is getting it sorted out but it's just not 
> > done yet.  That company did do some OSX drivers for Apple...)
> 
> Fedora never had these problems :)
> *ducks*
> 

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