Share with us your Trusty (14.04) Upgrade & Installation Experiences

[rickm1945]

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on a Toshiba 160 GB External HD. The install was flawless. I'm on a Asus Intel i7, with 16 GB DDR3 ram and a 1TB UEFI HD. After I installed Ubuntu I had to make some changes in the UEFI (BIOS) used Advanced Mode to have the UBS be the first boot and and enabled CSM (Compatibility Support Mode) Disabled fast boot. I enjoy having Ubuntu on the USB drive which I use daily. I haven't used ******* for about three months now. I don't like Win 8.1 at all. I extremely happy to be using Ubuntu 14.04 It's great!

[crl2]

I've recently installed 14.04 as double boot on a HP EliteBook 8740w that runs an industrial application on an old version of Red Hat Enterprise Server that can't be modified. Had to use Linux-Secure Boot Repair (Version on an Ubuntu 13.04 iso). It took charge of the situation and the options it proposed set up Ubuntu as first boot option. Nice. I don't feel happy GRUBbing around but would expect to need some geek stuff in that situation.

The thing that's been a show-stopper for many people for several years is that the screen is too dim and the brightness controls don't work. I got a partial fix from one of the very numerous web pages. Apparently it may or may not be due to the Nvidia card, or HP, or both. Portable machines and their components seem to be designed around Windows and sometimes I wonder if the commercial game is being played fairly...

Not being able to put things easily on the desktop is a relatively minor issue, though it's best not to have to read the manual for each version.

I was quite pleased with myself for rescuing a few people from XP by installing Lubuntu on Pentium IVs and suchlike. However, on the subject of big bugs there was one total and well-known failure - all browsers crash within seconds or minutes.

Unfortunately, Linux and other open-source developers (LibreOffice) seem to class the bugs I've mentioned as unimportant. If one or more of them prevents you from using your big-name top-end computer there seems no way out but to give in to the competition, however unfair that may seem.

There is some hope and time for a joke: Windows seems to be going the same way. After the latest updates, you can no longer find out which ADSL box you're connected to and it might be your next-door neighbour's if you've had their kids round. Of course, M$ supply no help, but you can do it the Linux way and discover geek stuff on the web to type into a terminal: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/view-c...rity-windows-8.

[StewartM]

Sad to say, my upgrade from 12.04 to 14.04 last weekend was my worst Ubuntu experience ever.

First, my home desktop (a Zareason box). I tried to do take the upgrade path, waiting until 14.04.1 was released. Upon reboot I got an ugly splash screen. I thought "I know how to fix that", having done just that before (using tutorials such as these) but this time no matter what I did the splash still was ugly. I tried switching to the proprietary NVIDIA drivers from Nouveau after that, which didn't help the splash screen at all, but added other display bugs, like all terminal programs save Xterm having no prompts. I finally tried switching back to Nouveau and got an unbootable system at the lightdm prompt. I then tried to fix that from the command line, using online tutorials, yet nothing in grub worked as it should either (like after selecting "enable networking", the step you need to do before switching drivers, it would do a fsck of the disk and then just sit there).

I finally bit the bullet and did a clean install. Luckily, I had already placed /home on a separate partition; unfortunately, I had no experience doing such an install so I had to wing it (I use ecryptfs, I did not know if I needed to create a separate new sudo-account for the install or if I could select one of my old ones when I was prompted for the user). I selected one of the old ones, and luckily Ubuntu did recognize it and its existing /home directory and I was able to log back into it with the old password. From there I was able to recreate the other old accounts similarly (same userid, same password) and get back into the encrypted /home directories. From then on it was back re-tweaking settings, installing programs and other DEs, and getting my system to look "nice" again. Even then, the first time someone called me on Skype there was no sound--I had to play around with Pulseaudio for a while to get that to work (but that's more Skype's fault for deprecating ALSA, IMHO, than Ubuntu's).

Then came the laptop's (a Dell Inspiron 1525) turn. There I had a pre-existing problem with wanting to use lightdm but having gdm as the login manager, which nothing I could do could fix (even removing gdm and specifiying lightdm gave me kdm, or something else...weird). There however the install hung up like 8 times after I selected my first userid. I finally got it to work by formatting the filesystem partition, but even after that happened I ended up with an unbootable system because the bootloader didn't install properly. I was able to solve that by following this tutorial..

Then I noticed the swapfile didn't exist on my laptop. When I checked on my desktop, it didn't exist either. I found that was a bug too, as described here. I have tried on my laptop the recommended fix, but it doesn't work--it tells me first that when trying to unmount swap that it isn't mounted, then after I try the 'mkswap' step after that that swap is busy. So what gives?? Luckily, I have no swap, instead of just an unencrypted swap, and I have enough RAM (3 and 4 GB) that I can do w/o it in nearly all cases.

So there you have it. I've been using Ubuntu since 2007, and this by far has been my worse upgrade experience. Both of my computers btw were purchased as Ubuntu computers; one from Dell, one from Zareason, and so there is no funky or difficult unsupported hardware in them. I'm not an expert who can recite bash commands by heart, but am not a newbie either, and have been supporting my own plus the Ubuntu computers of other non-tech savvy friends during all that time. Almost always I am eventually able to fix my problems, and in this case I was able to fix all but the swap problems as well.

But the trend has not been not good. Ubuntu used to 'just work' and just work nearly seamlessly for me up until 2010-2011. Upgrades went nearly flawlessly and each release got better. Now each release seems buggier. I can't help but think this is because Canonical's "going their own way" in terms of designing their own DE and components, which has led to bugs not being fixed as promptly or being prevented in the release cycle. My experience seems to fit with my hypothesis as it was then that Canonical started to push out Unity. I'm not a Unity-hater but I do believe that if Mark Shuttlesworth wants to take Ubuntu in this direction and still want a Linux that "just works" he'd be wise to double or triple Canonical's staff, in order to devote the same energy that once was devoted to making Ubuntu robust as is devoted to designing new interfaces.

EDIT:

One last question: why is the poll closed? 14.04 is a LTS release, and 14.04.1, the upgrade release that was pushed out to 12.04 users, was just recent. Doesn't the experience of those upgrading from 12.04 --> 14.04 count too?? It would seem to me to be very important, and also that the poll should be open through the end of 2014 as people will probably be continually upgrading their 12.04 computers all during that time. My 2 cents.

[pfeiffep]

My daughter prohibited (rightly so) my 2 grandkids from using their Win XP computer (dedicated for kids use)! Since school's about to start (one 7th grader the other 4th) she asked me for help.

She didn't want to spend any money so I decided to help her out - not with money but with time!

The HP Pavillion a1130n accepted Ubuntu 14.04.1 (32 bit) readily.

1. wireless keyboard and mouse worked flawlessly.
2. wireless interface connected to the internet first time.
3. kids game and education site worked after Iinstalled Chromium and pepper flash
4. installed gnome flashback (hardware barely supported 3d)

Now the kids have the fastest response PC in the household!

[nadrach]

Two ASUS eeePC's, one ASUS netbook, one Sony Vaio PCG-2GWM, one DELL Presario (think that's the name), another DELL 64-bit laptop thing and one desktop of indeterminate construction ... all currently with Lubuntu 14.04 ... some 32-bit, some 64-bit.
Apart from a haggle with b43 WiFi drivers on a DELL, an issue with a recent Libre Office upgrade and an unresolved Lexmark x5650 printer (just unresolved ... don't ask), the only problem was the time taken to load from a USB 2.0 stick, especially if I allowed download of updates and/or restricted extras during the install. Quicker to do that in the post-install with the customisation.
Pretty much all positive feedback (only the printer hink is getting me some mildy dark looks). The stunning ease with which a recent 4G/3G/2G multi-compatible dongle replaced an earlier 2G !"£$%&*! counterpart was icing on the proverbial cake.
The only other problem is the possibility of a raft other machines to come.
Hey, ho ... I like it!

[skunkbad]

It's too bad the poll is closed, as letting it run for a long time might give a better overall picture of how well Ubuntu is working.

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 about a month ago. So far everything except one thing (and it's big for me) is working well.

The problem is that when I enabled workspaces, I cannot use suspend reliably. I had three instances in two weeks where suspend totally locked the computer. No problems after disabling workspaces. The problem is, I really want to use them.

[cariboo]

It's too bad the poll is closed, as letting it run for a long time might give a better overall picture of how well Ubuntu is working.

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 about a month ago. So far everything except one thing (and it's big for me) is working well.

The problem is that when I enabled workspaces, I cannot use suspend reliably. I had three instances in two weeks where suspend totally locked the computer. No problems after disabling workspaces. The problem is, I really want to use them.

If you haven't already, I'd suggest you start a thread in General Help, to solve the workspace problem.

The reason the poll has been closed, is because this thread will be unstuck when Utopic is released and fall way off the first page. We start a sticky for each new release.

[farrinux]

Upgraded my netbook and one of my boxes so far. Has worked just great.

[uRock]

My install experience was painless. I did a clean install. I have installed it a few times and every time there were no problems. So far this is the best release since Karmic Koala. Jaunty Jackalope was by far my favorite, but that is probably because I was so excited to try something other than Windows.

[ibjsb4]

Same for me, fresh install was painless and ended up with only what I wanted.

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