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Thread: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

  1. #1
    Join Date
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    Ubuntu Mate 20.04 Focal Fossa

    Thumbs down Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    I had been running 10.04 LTS very happily.
    I seem to remember seeing a pop-up some weeks back (in Update Manager I think) telling me that 10.04 LTS was now obsolete, unsupported and that 12.04 LTS was available. I had Update Manager configured to update to LTS releases only and assumed that this would happen automatically.

    I happened to browse www.ubuntu.com yesterday and saw that 12.04 LTS was now the current release, available for download. Obviously Update Manager has some bug in it. So I began the slow and tedious process of upgrading through 10.10, 11.04, and 11.10, to 12.04 LTS.

    Everything seemed to work fine until the last step - 11.10, to 12.04. Problems appeared as soon as 12.04 started up:

    The top 'menu bar' is now transparent, making date/time/icons/etc. invisible against my background. Not only that, but moving mouse over menu bar now causes menu text to appear, which clashes with the 'ubuntu desktop' title, making it unreadable / unusable. I see that this problem screws up the menu for ANY maximised application.

    Similarly, the text/background on my desktop items are now black/transparent, making them all but invisible against the desktop background.

    The new side/menu bar home-folder and task-switcher buttons have icons missing and now show a folder icon. They were there in 11.x - where have they gone??

    I eventually discovered that system preferences and settings are now hidden in the shutdown / restart menu. Totally obvious / sensible place to put them.

    The weather is now missing from clock/calendar and there is no option to add this.

    The "Displays" setting window no longer offers the option to set the monitor frequency.

    I can't find any trace of the Palm device sync to sync with my PDA.

    Evolution has been messed up beyond belief:-
    * I now have 2 lists of folders !!!
    * mail highlight is now a solid black bar which masks text completely
    * contacts (titles) are black bars = absolutely useless
    * calendar display is mostly black blocks: again, absolutely useless

    I hoped that the grub boot menu would allow me to go back to a previous version/installation, but they have all gone now.

    I haven't been able to find VBox to see if my other OSes are accessible.

    I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.


    As you might imagine, I am more than a little annoyed about this. Is there any way I can get back to a usable system or should I just lick my wounds and limp back to Microsoft?

    10.04 worked perfectly well FFS! Was there really any need to change to this new arty-farty sidebar system at all? All that seems to have happened is that Ubuntu is now much less usable, less intuitive and more susceptible to problems.

    Ubuntu developers should remember the 1st rule of engineering: If it works - don't mess with it!

    and thrice
    Last edited by Timothy Taylor; May 9th, 2012 at 06:50 PM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver

    Re: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    I don't want to insult you in any way, especially since you are in upset mode right now, but you either had some issue in 10.04 LTS too, or you misread everything.

    1. 10.04 LTS is NOT unsupported. It has support 3yrs for desktop system, and 5yrs for server. That would put desktop supported until 04.2013. That's the point of being LTS, it is supported one year after the new LTS is released. For the current 12.04 Canonical decided the desktop version to have 5yrs support also, so you wouldn't need to change it until 2017.

    2. A direct upgrade from LTS to LTS is NOT offered by the update manager until the first .1 is released. 12.04.1 will be released in July and only then update manager should prompt you to upgrade to the next LTS. This is if you had it set up to report upgrades to LTS only.

    Doing 4 upgrades in a row is almost certain to break your system, regardless how much effort developers put into the process. There are simply too many things to go wrong.

    Did the upgrade to 12.04 finish completely, or it was stopped or frozen in any way? If it was stopped, you can try finishing off the package configuration.

    If it did finish completely, tough luck. Personally I can't troubleshoot this, maybe someone else will be able to.
    Darko.
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 64bit

  3. #3
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    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    Have you checked installed drivers?

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
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    818

    Re: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    Open a text window (terminal) and do: sudo -i

    Then try:
    apt-get update
    apt-get upgrade

    I did a fresh install on a system that happily ran 10.04 and the graphics was messed up, until I did a bunch of updates and a reboot.

    System upgrades are an attractive option in theory because its hard to remember all the stuff you've installed, but in practice they rarely go smoothly.

    I'm setting up 12.04 now and I'm sure I'll be constantly rediscovering little bits and pieces that are missing as I transition from 10.04 to 12.04 these next few months

    I've cloned my 10.04 drive and may try an update from the CDROM just for grins later this afternoon.
    Your commitment to Freedom is measured by your tolerence for others doing things you disapprove.

  5. #5
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    Ubuntu Mate 20.04 Focal Fossa

    Re: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    Quote Originally Posted by wkulecz View Post
    Open a text window (terminal) and do: sudo -i

    Then try:
    apt-get update
    apt-get upgrade

    ...
    I eventually managed to find terminal...

    It opens a terminal window, but this is completely blank - no prompt or cursor or anything.


    Quote Originally Posted by iMurshaq View Post
    Have you checked installed drivers?
    I checked 'Hardware Drivers' which said that none are installed, which is funny - I thought I had nVidia drivers before ??? Looks like these were deleted by the upgrade?? Seems that the graphics / monitor support is trashed..?

    Quote Originally Posted by darkod View Post
    I don't want to insult you in any way, especially since you are in upset mode right now, but you either had some issue in 10.04 LTS too, or you misread everything.
    ...
    Yeah, looks like I misread re 10.04 LTS.
    I should take my own advice re "if it works.."
    :facepalm:
    Last edited by Timothy Taylor; May 9th, 2012 at 09:01 PM.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    May 2012
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    2

    Re: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    Try running 12.04 from the live cd. If the problems go away it is a configuration issue. A clean install would clear up configuration issues. Test before you leap into a install. If all else fails I a working on a 10.04 like fork because 12.04 breaks things for me as well.

  7. #7
    Join Date
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    Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver

    Re: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    How about booting the recovery mode entry? Does that work?

    If a menu pops up, select Drop to root shell (or similar). That should bring up a command prompt.

    You can run those suggested commands in the prompt. Note that if it drops you in a root shell you already have root permissions so the sudo -i is not needed.

    Just in case it needs to finish configuring some packages, I would also run:
    dpkg --configure -a

    Another idea is trying to run the normal mode with nomodeset parameter. It might be missing drivers and that might be distorting windows, etc. If you need help how to add the parameter for a one off boot, ask.
    Darko.
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 64bit

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
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    176

    Re: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    I sincerely wish you luck in trying to recover your old settings. If you can't, a fresh install is in order. Like you, I didn't care for the new desktop. You have two options: after a fresh install, you can simply log out and click on the option for the "Classic" Ubuntu desktop or do what I did and first install the Lubuntu desktop in synaptic and click on that when you log out. 12.04 really is cool once you make it bend to your will a little, and I've had no major issues so far. What makes this all worthwhile is the new 5-year Long Term Support. Once you go through this pain, you won't have to again for 5 long years as long as you keep updating. That's like 35 years in computer years! Good luck.
    "Discovery begins when you throw away the instruction manual!"

  9. #9
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    Re: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    If you drop straight to root, you will not have networking and you will probably be mounted read-only, so the commands will give you a permissions error.

    First enable networking in the recovery menu. That will get you a connection and read-write mount. Then go to root with networking.
    Please read The Forum Rules and The Forum Posting Guidelines

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  10. #10
    Join Date
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    Re: Upgrade to 12.04 has totally screwed up my PC

    I have installed v. 12.04 on 2 systems and both had the same problem described in the initial message of the post. In both installations, I re-built the partition table and completely installed the OS. After re-starting, I logged in, the background briefly displayed and then the screen went black with only my mouse cursor showing. Sometimes I have been able to get the background to show and I have crashed compiz twice (whatever that is), once on each system. Note: nothing else is visible on the screen - NOTHING. Sometimes with clicking I have gotten some dialogs to display, but nothing that would let me make the system workable. At the moment I am trying to do yet another install, this time with 11.04. If that fails I will move on to fedora, which I have used at home for over 3 years. Frankly, I can't see how a professional organization can release something that behaves like this directly 'out of the box'.

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