How many times a do you reinstall Ubuntu?

[DeadEnd]

Considering this is only my tenth day using Linux, I have found the need to reinstall Ubuntu due to some issue or another at least 20 times.
On average twice a day.

Although my last reinstall actually lasted a whole 24 hours before I managed to mess it up yet again.

I dont wholly blame Ubuntu / linux for my woes, I am sure 90% of the problems encountered are due to user inexperiance, 9% due to my impatiance/ inabilty to find a fix and then actually understanding the procedure.
But its this remaining 1% that keeps cropping up that can make the whole experiance painfull,and for some reason backup and restore seems a somewhat black art at the moment to me regarding linux.
Coming from a long use of windows I have system restore disabled but boy would I love that feature in Ubuntu whilst I get to grips with building a stable / usefull desktop.

[TeeAhr1]

In six months, I've utterly hosed Gnome once which required a reinstall of Gnome, but I haven't (knock on wood) ever gotten in so deep that the Ubuntu CD came back out. What keeps happening?

[DeadEnd]

Well presently this:

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=122675
I have tried every combination apt-get in all threads and google with same issue and all give me same error .

[equal]

When I first started using Ubuntu, my first foray into the Linux world, I did reformat quite frequently. Not on a daily basis, but more than once per week. The reason was that I would do things the long way around and often cause problems on the system. Once I'd learned the quick way of getting from point A to point B, it didn't make sense to me to spend hours learning how to undo the things I'd done, when a full reinstall would only take about 45 minutes.

Now I've gotten quite comfortable with linux, and it has been over a month since I reformated my desktop PC. I just recently formatted my laptop and installed Ubuntu as the sole OS, and everything is running fine. It detected and installed everything without a hitch. Fabulous distro this Ubuntu is.

[DeadEnd]

Once I'd learned the quick way of getting from point A to point B, it didn't make sense to me to spend hours learning how to undo the things I'd done, when a full reinstall would only take about 45 minutes.

Yes I have also found that is the case for me, I have reinstalled so often has given me the abity to get quickly back to where I had left of previously.

[zenwhen]

I am constantly beating the crap out of my install and have had Breezy installed since its release. I suppose you just have to learn to troubleshoot issues instead of giving up. Nothing requires a format.... unless of course you make a HUGE mistake like applying world readable permissions to your entire file system.

I have never done such a thing myself. :-#

[Sp@z]

wow and I thought I was the only one! I kept telling myself "if I have to install this ONE MORE time, I'm not goin to do it." LOL I can't always find the answers to my problems and a reformat takes about 45 minutes and about another hour to get it all set up again.........but it does get old for sure. I have reinstalled about 7 times in over a month......This time it has been almost a week since I reinstalled! YAY!!!!!!!

[Sheinar]

When I was new to Ubuntu, I ended up formatting around once a week. Now I never need to.

[mishranurag]

I reinstalled the system only once since I started using UBUNTU. I never thought I would need to until I will upgrade to Dapper Drake.
I have couple of small issues, but that's not such a big deal and reinstall wouldn't help in it :)

Anurag

[GeneralZod]

When I was new to Ubuntu, I ended up formatting around once a week. Now I never need to.

I was slightly more frequent than this, but now I only re-install when a new version comes around - as zenwhen says, very few things require a re-format, once you know (roughly!) what you're doing :)

I suppose I could just do a dist-upgrade next time around, but so far I haven't dared and always do a full backup + reinstall :)

[curuxz]

I have just done my first reformat in a good long while on this pc, but that was because I was testing dapper for a week so i wanted to come back to brezzy :)

[mstlyevil]

I have just done my first reformat in a good long while on this pc, but that was because I was testing dapper for a week so i wanted to come back to brezzy :)

When I first started using Ubuntu, I reformatted about three or four times the first two weeks because I played around with everything so much. I found it easier to start from scratch than trying to reverse all of my mistakes. It helped me gain valuable experience with Linux and helped me when I tried other distros. Now I just install Ubuntu once per release and after I set it up, I just use it. I still try other desktop enviroments on top of Ubuntu and I even play with software I have no Idea what it is actually used for. I have to say it is actually very hard to mess up Ubuntu once you know how to set it up an configure it properly.

[delaguer]

I have reinstalled perhaps only twice or thrice. However, the issue for me is not reinstalling but rebooting!
As you all know, most of us have this No Sound Problem after installing Ubuntu and I have tried every ideas that I could find from this forums but the only way I could get it to work is by rebooting until I get the sound to work properly. :-k

Other than that, Ubuntu is all good. ;)

[mohapi]

Considering this is only my tenth day using Linux, I have found the need to reinstall Ubuntu due to some issue or another at least 20 times.

I've been in a similar situation, sort of.

I've reinstalled Ubuntu probably four times on my M170, but those were mostly as learning experiences, or working through a dual boot setup. I think, at present, I've got it down to a pattern.

On the other hand, my little laptop has been reformatted about 10 times since my first attempt. Add to that the addition of a new hard drive (10x bigger than the original!), and I'm still tweaking things. And until I stumble upon a solution for my wireless troubles, there's no end in sight.

So in my case at least, it's dependent upon the hardware. I guess the luckier you are, the less you have to work at it.

[JAwuku]

I used to be in the phase of distro-surfing. I have used FC4, Suse 10, Xandros, Mepis, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu over the past few months.

I have installed Ubuntu about 4 times (once I installed Gnome, KDE and XFCE all together and it messed up my menus, also I messed up my ATI kernel drivers and modules), then I decided I only want KDE, and I have finally settled with Kubuntu.

[rttm]

I had the same problem with my ISO's, it turn out that I had 2 intermittent bad bits in one of my memory module. Normal memory tests did not find these errors, It was picked up with the memory jump test. This test found it after the first run. I replaced my memory module and retested. This time all memory passed. I reinstalled and this time the same ISO that appeard to bad installed properly. The reinstall also fixed my BUM error that prevented that module to work properly. Not all memory test find all errors. I had tried a different cd, cd drives, hard drives, original factory 5.10 cd all seem to point to bad media. Sometime the fault shows up when you do the install and an error shows up My point I guess is that there can be hidden hardward failure that are difficult to detect. The windows on my machine seem to work most of the time, except for random occational crashes. Linux showed errors during install. After replacing the bad memeory a nice clean install and so far no reinstall. Good luck and don't give up, there is logical answer. Hope my $.02 worth helps someone.

[Sirin]

With Windows XP, my installation lasted for over a year. With Fedora, only two days. With Ubuntu, only a half-week. I hate having to reinstall that much. There's no System Restore, so if you mess up, tough luck. :evil:

That's one advantage Windows XP has over Linux. :-?

[gord]

i re-install every 6 months, dist-upgrade is messy.

other than that, if you mess up there is allways the recovery console or live cd's that you can fix things with, install so much stuff it gets messy and you can uninstall it easy with apt.

[xequence]

When I dual booted ubuntu and windows I would reinstall one of them 1 or 2 times a week.

[Iandefor]

I've reinstalled once this month; I buggered up my user account and didn't want to screw with it. Now, I'm being careful with how I treat my system. Probably won't need to reinstall until Dapper.

[briancurtin]

when i first got ubuntu i think i reinstalled maybe 3 times during the first week, then a few weeks later i broke something that i didnt know how to fix and figured that id just reinstall since i have everything backed up anyways.

on SuSE i reinstalled once the first week just because my system was dual booted and i wanted it to just be SuSE and didnt know how to effectively go from dual boot to single boot and not break anything. after that i never had to

[public_void]

Never. Although I've only have Ubuntu for 3 months. But I'm surprised at the amount of reinstalling. For Windows I've reinstalled 98 3 times, once because my own mistake, once when the hard drive failed, and lastly after I moved to XP in 5 years and never for two XP boxes in two years. Reinstalling is always a last option if I can't fix a problem. TBH it worries me when I hear people just reinstalling because something simple went wrong.

[aysiu]

I've become less experimental these days. Back when I first started using Ubuntu, I probably reinstalled every other day. I would install and uninstall programs, trying different things. I would reinstall not necessarily because I had to but because I wanted a "fresh" start.

What I love about Linux is the ability to have a separate /home partition. It means I can reinstall as many times as I want and not have to copy my settings over somewhere and copy them back. It also helps when upgrading from one version of Ubuntu to another. I had trouble with the dist-upgrade process from Hoary to Breezy, and when Dapper comes along, I'm definitely doing a reinstall then.

I may reinstall today... just for the fun of it!

[briancurtin]

i tried to reinstall windows on this laptop right after everything died, and it was completely useless. that was with the HP/Windows repair intallation CDs

then i bought an OEM copy of windows media center edition (my laptop had all of the TV crap and MCE is meant to work with it) but that basically installed nothing, nothing at all. horrible resolution (not fixed by any driver CD or any CD i had), somehow no network tools were installed, and there was no way to get on the internet (even after all driver CDs, and any CDs i had were installed), and also IE was not installed so even i had a way to make networking work i couldnt get to the internet

[kewl1uk]

Twice: First time to test it and second time to format the whole disk and get rid of Windoze XP.

[bonzodog]

I have re-installed ubuntu twice since last october. Both times were upgrades (one from breezy preview to final,and next was to dapper flight 3, which I did last week). I NEVER re-installed slackware. or Mandrake. I did have to re-install Xp about 15 times in one month, due to major breakage caused by hacking system files, and trying to replace the shell system. I don't have Xp on this system anymore; it was too broken and difficult for me to use, slack was MUCH easier. I was only trying it anyway. This system now runs dapper as a sole OS.

[spartas]

Keeping /home on a separate partition from / is always a good idea, and should be recommended to new users (or at least set up in the default installation scheme). I have reinstalled ubuntu many many times, but it is my first linux distro and I have been using it since the Warty days.

Here's another piece of advice when reinstalling: type 'server' at the installation prompt and you will not waste time installing your graphical environment just to re-do it after installation. You can install ubuntu-desktop after updating the local repository tree (sudo apt-get update) to ensure you only install those packages once.

[aysiu]

Here's another piece of advice when reinstalling: type 'server' at the installation prompt and you will not waste time installing your graphical environment just to re-do it after installation. You can install ubuntu-desktop after updating the local repository tree (sudo apt-get update) to ensure you only install those packages once. Good point! I'll do that the next time I reinstall for fun. Maybe I'll do that now...

[vayu]

Normal memory tests did not find these errors, It was picked up with the memory jump test. This test found it after the first run.

I've been suspecting some kind of intermittent hardware problem for a while, but memory tests never show anything. What is the jump test?

[Madpilot]

Wow. I've been running Ubuntu almost 9 months - since April/May 2005 - and I've done a grand total of two installs...

...and the only reason I did that was is because I had a borked motherboard and it hosed part of the OS. After I got the mobo replaced I reinstalled Ubuntu to get everything back to stock.

I've also done one dist-upgrade (Hoary-->Breezy) which had a few hiccups based on my own ignorance. The Breezy-->Dapper dist-upgrade in a few months should be even easier.

Prior to that, on my previous computer, I had one install of Win98 run without any problems for over 4 years, with zero re-installs. Maybe I'm just lucky? :P

[Bandit]

When I first started using linux many years ago I used to reinstall it very often.
But now I very seldom reinstall it. Normally when I do its for testing purposes since I compile my own kernels and programs.
I need to see how they act when installed on fresh system and such.
Now and then I will screw some files up that I should have backed up before messing with and I have to install again or I just reinstall because its easy and I am to lazy to fix something I broke screwing with stuff.
And I also try other distros out to see how they really compair instead of taking someone else rant for it.
But its very very seldon. Heck my system normally stays up running for weeks to months at a time.
Cheers,
Bandit

[TeeAhr1]

Prior to that, on my previous computer, I had one install of Win98 run without any problems for over 4 years, with zero re-installs. Maybe I'm just lucky? :P
I have a box in the basement with Win95, installed when my dad bought the machine in 1996 (I was in junior high school). I've never had to reinstall.

No, really, there's no punchline. Not once, in ten years, cross my heart and hope to die. It'd boot now if I plugged it in.

[Mortimer]

As a user and not a curious cat, I only installed ubuntu once. Same with Fedora. I know better than to blindly screw around with it. I always look for recent specific info on the exact OS I am running if I want to add something, or I leave it alone. And I just kept in mind that everytime a password is asked for only put it in when the action has been triple checked. Gnome warns you about system-breaking actions in it's dialogues. If you skim through them that's your problem. Hopefully the 1 install will just keep running smoothly without any fiddling. *fingers crossed*

[Derek Djons]

Usually I don't have to reinstall my installation for years. I've been using computers for quite some time now and I have a standard pattern. I visit the same pages often, I use a default set of applications and I don't screw arround. My hobbying days are over, so it's pure working on my machines.

[alamba]

Had to reinstall only once post running fsck on a mounted drive. Might choose to once more since I have'nt since upgrading to 5.10 and was'nt able to figure out a reason why my display card works with the driver on live CD but not on the harddisk installation.

Akshay

[DeadEnd]

I think it only fair I point out that I am constently trying out new software and generally delving in,I generally have sessions lasting 20 hours per day so I guess my experince is kinda excellerated, if I just browsed and E-mailed etc I am sure it would run forever.

Others have hinted at patience to find the fix which I agree with,but after 6 hours of searching,trying solutions to no avail, patience wears thin and a reinstall is so much quicker.
I have got it down to fine art now and can get back to where I left of within the hour.

During the time of this thread I have actually reinstalled again.

E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened

Again every documented possible solution I could find,advice in Ubuntu irc channel and command line kung fu failed to repair, so nothing left to do but reinstall.

Please do not take my posting in any way as a moan at Ubuntu,it is an excellent Distro I am sure after a month or two of bashing it around I will settle down and man and machine will be in perfect harmony, but presently I more like bull in china shop

[PatrickMay16]

I'm suprised that some people have needed to reinstall Ubuntu.

On this computer, I installed Ubuntu on September 20th. I still haven't needed to reinstall or anything, and I even upgraded it from Hoary to Breezy. Everything seems to work pretty well.

[3rdalbum]

I've had Ubuntu installed for a few weeks now and I've only reinstalled it once. The first time I installed it, I set a root password - big mistake, I couldn't do anything that required sudo, and I didn't know enough Linux to set it right, so I reinstalled and didn't make the same mistake again.

Not had a problem since.

[Bandit]

I got Kubuntu 5.10 installed right now. I dont see any reason to reinstall until Dapper stable is released.
Xorg7, and corrected 64bit flgrx packages is enough for me to install Dapper.
Cheers,
Bandit

[Sp@z]

Well I had to reinstall lastnight...........Like a few other posters though...I love to try new stuff and mess around......I keep nothing important on Ubuntu just for this reason..........good news is since I reinstalled last night things are working now that hadn't before.........but I think it may have something to do with my Kubuntu disk is hosed and I used Ubuntu then installed the KDE desktop. It is a little cluttered now because of this, but I use launchers for whatever I have to run, so looking at my menus is minimal!

[TechSonic]

My experience with permissions became easier when a friend helped me out with a little thing called "-R" As in sudo chmod 0777 -R /path/to/whatnot

Sure helped getting all the contents under one directory permissioned instead of going down the line one at a time. That and +w funtion also helped a friggin ton.

I've reinstalled Ubuntu once. I haven't managed to screw it up bad enough where I couldn't undo the changes. My only reinstall was after I fugged up my video drivers trying to get the latest versions from www.ati.com when Ubuntu's driver database handled them just fine. But then again I want to restrict my monitor never include the option to go over 60 hurz but I'm still searching.. That and I want more then just 1024x768 desktop space. I can go larger on Windows while still using 60 hurz and yet the screen resolution control doesn't give the option beyond just said. It's the 75 to 85 hurz levels I want to block out cause it makes my screen wabble/wavy. And the back panel of the monitor says don't go past 60 hurz....

[Grey]

My desktop is going on two years without a reformat. My laptop is only about 5 months old at this point... But it's been running the same install of Ubuntu it had since day one. My server just got reformatted... but that was to move from Debian to Ubuntu, and to undo some damage I'd done with the partitioning scheme from a year ago. (the server had an uptime of almost a year when I took her down though)

My desktop will be getting a reformat in the next week or so... hopefully. I'm trying to remove the last vestiges of Windows partitions from it, and it's been a slow and painful process, due to the sheer quantity of stuff I had to back up. I also made a terrible error when partitioning it. Ubuntu is still good to go on my desktop... But I wish to repartition the hard drive, and considering that I had a 32-bit PC when I first installed it, and it's now 64-bit... I might want to try a 64-bit OS. :)

So no, I don't feel the need to reformat very often. To put that in contrast however, I am a very experienced Windows user. Before I switched to Ubuntu, I reformatted Windows about once every 3 - 6 months. (monthly for Win98). When I first tried out Linux, I would reformat almost weekly, due to hosing something or other (usually X). Nowadays... that's just not an issue.

[mcduck]

I hardly ever reformat. Not with Windows, and even less with Linux.

Last time I did it last summer to move both Win and Ubuntu to a new harddisk. Second last time was year before that, but that wasn't actually reinstalling, as I got a new computer then. And before that, it must have been around 2000 or 2001 :D

[nrwilk]

The time between reinstalls for me gets longer and longer.

First week, it was about once a day, for a month after that it was about once a week.

After that maybe twice more.

It was ALL user error. I would always just mess something up. I feel that I've noe figured out how to deal with problems and overcome errors enough to have a stable system. The system is very stable now and I feel comfortable enough with it to ditch the windows partition. But, I cannot do that for several reasons. Oh well.

Most of my present confidence, of course, comes from the presence of these awesome forums, though!

[erikpiper]

Darn. My hard drive crashed on the second month or so of my last ubuntu install :( (Dual boot system... Redo windows, redo both)

[eriqk]

I did a full reinstall on my laptop the other day. No big deal, it was just a basic install, hadn't really done anything with it yet.
I want a heavily modified Ubuntu for it (for no other reason than that I can! Mwa-hah) and made some rash dicisions that would have taken me longer to fix than the time it took me to reinstall the whole thing.
My other machine keeps purring like a cat no matter what I throw at it.

Groet, Erik

[nrwilk]

Well, I just had to reinstall again. Set my timer back to zero.

Ugh.

Though I admit that it was COMPLETELY my fault.

The user strikes again!

[Apocalypse]

In the last month, maybe 6 times. Last monday my hard drive died, so I had to reinstall everything and now Ubuntu and XP live in separate disks.

Today I had to install it 2 times (bad partitioning) but the system is good now.

And my record is with OS/2 Warp 3, in 1995, with five 20+ floppies reinstalls in one single day, because a failing hd...

[ferebee]

I've only reinstalled once, and that was just because I wasn't satisfied with my partitioning arrangements. I found I wanted more room to try out other distros
alongside my main two, Ubuntu and Mepis.

I think it's kind of fitting that the forum is coffee-themed 'cause this Linux stuff
is addictive!

[papangul]

Reinstall... what's that??
If my breezy install can be considered as a reinstall then I've reinistalled once, though I have a separate home partition and the reinstall was seamless.
The amazing thing is that I don't 'shut down' the computer properly, my way is to power off the UPS abruptly (about 5 times a day), still everything is fine. I'm particularly thankful to reiserfs and gnome for that.

[aliencds]

im on my 3rd day of ubuntu and installing automatix and no reformat yet :D

[TrendyDark]

I can't even remember how many times I've reinstalled Ubuntu. Most of the time it's because I messed up something or missed using a certain M$ program (*cough* photoshop *cough*), but I'm completely Windows- free and I've had this install of Ubuntu running for about two weeks now with video drivers and audio tweaks, etc.

My next reinstall will be when Dapper Drake is released.

[Minyaliel]

After a hellish Windows experience, I swapped to Ubuntu last Autumn and have never had to reinstall anything... Strange that so many people have to do this :P suppose I was too afraid to do anything that might break the system :P

[Master Shake]

When I first started using Ubuntu, I reformatted about three or four times the first two weeks because I played around with everything so much. I found it easier to start from scratch than trying to reverse all of my mistakes. It helped me gain valuable experience with Linux and helped me when I tried other distros.


That's the situation with me. It really does provide good learning experience. And seeing as I really have no critical data on Ubuntu (yet), I'm not really losing anything

I'm probably gonna reinstall tomorrow when I get an external HD case.

[poofyhairguy]

I've reinstalled Ubuntu on my main box over 40 times....

Its nice to have a seperate home folder so when I mess things up I can undue it "the Windows way."

[Kapre]

I've done 8 times already and burned 10 cds (which unfortunately 7 did not work).

K

[kaydot@kubuntu]

I've reformatted five or six times so far. Nothing detrimental, but it gets old fast. I'll get used to it, though. It just takes some trial and error.