bobdobbs
November 3rd, 2009, 01:11 AM
I started my work week on monday morning with a mojor problem. Hard drive death.
It took me about four hours to figure out which drive had actually died. I was sad. :(
Fortunately, I had everything backed up. But I lost the OS.
So, I figured that this would be the right time to update to Karmic Koala.
I was reluctant. Before something broke, I had nothing to fix, and I didn't want to have to troubleshoot and solve the raft of problems that comes with new OS's. I've had great trouble in the past getting sound, video and networking to work.
I expected a great deal of hassle with a fresh install.
I got close to zero hassle.
Thank you ubuntu developers.
First of all I found a working hard drive and tinkered with the innards of my box while downloading an install CD. Then I went out for a while while the cd was downloading.
The first two install attempts failed. They froze at 5%.
After a little troubleshooting, I figured out that I had misdiagnosed my original hardware failure problem. The hard drive that was dying was not the one that I had extricated.
This meant that I had the option of restoring Jackalope.
But I decided that I'd go ahead and install koala anyway.
I reconfigured my hardware and started again.
This time everything went smoothly.
That is, up till I booted and got a black screen with a blinking cursor and no os.
I turned the computer off for a while and tried again.
Success. New ubuntu!
Here is the awesome part: I had no problem getting video working with my nvidia card. No problems with sound so far. I got advanced desktop effects going.
With previous versions of ubuntu, I have spent days trying to get these things working.
Smooth sailing so far.
BTW:
The overall experience seems smoother.
I can run lots of memory-hogging apps with apparent greater ease than before.
The video seems smoother and clearer. I can't put my finger on quiet exactly why, but video-wise, the grass is greener on this side of the fence.
It took me about four hours to figure out which drive had actually died. I was sad. :(
Fortunately, I had everything backed up. But I lost the OS.
So, I figured that this would be the right time to update to Karmic Koala.
I was reluctant. Before something broke, I had nothing to fix, and I didn't want to have to troubleshoot and solve the raft of problems that comes with new OS's. I've had great trouble in the past getting sound, video and networking to work.
I expected a great deal of hassle with a fresh install.
I got close to zero hassle.
Thank you ubuntu developers.
First of all I found a working hard drive and tinkered with the innards of my box while downloading an install CD. Then I went out for a while while the cd was downloading.
The first two install attempts failed. They froze at 5%.
After a little troubleshooting, I figured out that I had misdiagnosed my original hardware failure problem. The hard drive that was dying was not the one that I had extricated.
This meant that I had the option of restoring Jackalope.
But I decided that I'd go ahead and install koala anyway.
I reconfigured my hardware and started again.
This time everything went smoothly.
That is, up till I booted and got a black screen with a blinking cursor and no os.
I turned the computer off for a while and tried again.
Success. New ubuntu!
Here is the awesome part: I had no problem getting video working with my nvidia card. No problems with sound so far. I got advanced desktop effects going.
With previous versions of ubuntu, I have spent days trying to get these things working.
Smooth sailing so far.
BTW:
The overall experience seems smoother.
I can run lots of memory-hogging apps with apparent greater ease than before.
The video seems smoother and clearer. I can't put my finger on quiet exactly why, but video-wise, the grass is greener on this side of the fence.