Lubuntu fails to boot after applying upgrade (13.04 -> 13.10)

**edburns** · December 3rd, 2013

I had a perfectly fine Lubuntu system on my olp Dell Inspiron2650 laptop. I was feeling
adventurous today so I said yes to the "Upgrade to Lubuntu 13.10" dialog. I regret
this decision.

Now the system does not boot. Thankfully, the GRUB config saved aside the old kernel,
so I am able to type this, however, I would like to complete the upgrade successfully.

Here is what I observe.

The system freezes after the "Loading ramdisk" line when left to boot with the new,
default, configuration. Here are some specifics.

Hardware: Dell Inspiron 2650 Laptop

New Lubuntu version: 13.10
New kernel version: 3.11.0-13-generic

Old Lubuntu version: 13.04
Old kernel version: 3.8.0-33-generic

Any ideas? I am always suspicious of GNU/Linux OS upgrades, and this experience
reminds me why.

Thanks,

Ed

**sudodus** · December 3rd, 2013

I would suspect that there is some hardware driver, that does not work or is dropped in 13.10. Please specify your

- graphics chip/card
- wifi chip/card/dongle

I can understand that you want to upgrade from 13.04, because its end of life is January 2014. If your system works with 12.04 LTS, you can try that (but you need to re-install because there is no automatic way to downgrade the version number). Lubuntu 12.04 has passed end of life, but

Xubuntu 12.04 has LTS until April 2015 (three years).

There are also several tweaks, re-spins or distros based on Ubuntu 12.04 that promise LTS until April 2017 (five years),

Precise Gnome Classic Tweaks
LXLE
Bodhi linux
Bento Ubuntu-Remix

See also the beginning and end of this Ubuntu Forums thread Old hardware brought back to life

**edburns** · December 3rd, 2013

Thank you for your reply. Here are the answers to your questions:

Graphics: AGP 4x - NVIDIA GeForce2 Go 100
Wifi: none, just using the built in ethernet.

I hope this helps you help me!

Ed

**sudodus** · December 3rd, 2013

According this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...ocessing_units it is a very old graphics card, which makes me think that you have the best chances with a system based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (see post #2). It also depends on the RAM available. I would say you need at least 512 MB.