ubuntu 8.04 turned xubuntu

[Costas100]

Hello to all I have a problem with a new installation of 10.04 that is almost funny and unbelievable:
I had a computer with two hard disks and three operating systems installed: Windows XP Home and ArtistX (Ubuntu 8.10 fully loaded over 3 GB live CD) in the same HD plus UBUNTU 9.10 in a separate HD. All were happy sitting site by site except the occasional problems on start up of 9.10. ArtistX was not really what I thought, so I decided to replace it with Ubuntu 10.04. I downloaded an iso for i365 machines, made a live CD and started the installation in the same location where ArtistX was located. Near the end of the installation a screen appeared to advise me that something went wrong and that it will provide me with a desktop in order to try and figure what went wrong. Soon a full startup desktop appeared, I checked left and right and nothing appeared to be wrong. So I proceeded to install. The installation was very smooth and soon I had in front of me the 10.04 desktop. I was excited, I even changed the appearance, added second language, installed new programs and checked most of the installed programs. All were working fine. This was this morning around 11:00 AM
When I reopened my computer this evening, the strangest thing happened. Ubuntu 10.04 was no longer Ubuntu it was Xubuntu and I am not quite sure what version of Xubuntu. It had all the programs previously installed from the live CD plus what I added this morning, I checked some of them and they were working fine except some peculiarities (e.g my second language had disappeared). Also a few items very useful in daily work were not there, such as Computer (where I can access all partitions – the full Places Menu list is not there - System is now under applications and within system (or anywhere else I cannot find how to add second language in my keyboard). The new desktop is lousy and other problems that I did not explore further (it is getting late here – I will check more tomorrow and update with anything new).
Searching through the forum I found a kind of a related issue under http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1477196 where xubuntu was installed and now they wish to change it to 10.04 and I thought maybe I should try this thread in my computer (worst comes to worst I will reinstall), but I cannot find even the terminal, or any other means to make sure that at least this is 10.04 Xubuntu.

Has anyone had a similar strange experience? Should I make anew CD and reinstall? Any suggestions to find the version of Xubuntu? If I follow the above method to change the desktop to ubuntu-desktop will I get back the Places menu and the keyboard under System?

Any suggestion will be appreciated.

Thank you all

Costas

[Costas100]

I think I solved the problem. I checked inside the Xubuntu menu under System and found an entry for Login Screen. I unlocked the screen and changed to GNOME (This session logs you into GNOME).
Restarted the computer and after a relatively longer wait my original UBUNTU 10.04 appeared.
Thank you UBUNTU, thank you Canonical, thank you all associates for providing to the World this unique operating system.

I am not quite sure what Xfce, xterm and the other entries are suppose to do. I will check it out. I think most of us use only a percenatge of UBUNTU capabilities.

For me this issue is now closed, I hope this may help others.

Costas

[Costas100]

The good news did not last long. After working for an hour or so I decided to do a restart in my computer selecting again UBUNTU 10.04. The first thing that happened, I received a screen with this statement and nothing more, would not go further:

[ 12.843335] [drm:rs400_gart_adjust_size] *ERROR* Forcing to 32 M GART size (because of ASIC bug ?)

–
I restarted (with the computer restart button which I understand is not recommended) and selected the first recovery mode, which took me to a dos (unix) screen asking for commands. I did new restart with ctrl+alt+del.

After a longer wait time, UBUNTU 10.04 in GNOME appeared and this is where I am now writing this message.
I am not sure if this is a problem with my computer or a bug in the program.

I need some expert help and advice.

Thank you all

Costas

[Costas100]

Two more strange behaviors:

When I last logged off from (Ubuntu 10.04) on my screen for a few seconds the name Xybuntu with the mouse logo appeared for a few seconds.
When I logged in again, the first live screen I received was a Xubuntu empty desktop which stayed there for a few seconds with no applications or anything on the blue background. Then all of a sudden my selected desktop for UBUNTU 10.04 appeared and all was there.


I am just reporting the above just in case it triggers some thoughts on the reason of my problems

UBUNTU is still the greatest of all and I get the feeling that when 10.04 will finally stabilize, I will be able to abandon windows for good.

Thank you all.

Costas

[kansasnoob]

Just FYI, the reason I skipped over this previously is because of the continuous block of text.

It's hard to read!

But I'll try.

[kansasnoob]

This may or may not be helpful, look at this section in the following link:


Playing Around
KDE/Gnome Comparison
Install KDE
Install XFCE
Pure Gnome
Pure KDE
Pure XFCE

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/index

[Costas100]

Thank you kansasnoob, your link has a wealth of information.

I am now tempted to use the “remove Xububtu files” from http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/puregnome I suppose the worst case scenario will be to start all over again.

The funny thing is that despite my age (72) I have installed various versions of Ubuntu at least 10 or more times and never had any problems.
I will post again here if I succeed (or fail).

I am not quite sure your reference to: “Just FYI, the reason I skipped over this previously is because of the continuous block of text.” I am assuming you are referring to my first entry, sorry about that, sometimes it is difficult to explain things with short phrases.

Thank you again for your interest.

Costas

[Costas100]

Just wish to report SUCCESS, at least 99.9% success. I only lost one program I installed yesterday (GIMP) I have it installed in my other UBUNTUs so for now I will not even try to reinstall.

No traces of Xubuntu anymore, but still start up takes much longer than other UBUNTU, but miles faster than windows. I hope it will improve with time.

I will keep this thread open for a day or two, just in case more problems appear.

Thank you kansasnoob

Costas
PS: GIMP was among the deleted items list, I will leave it out.

[Costas100]

Yesterday all was fine and used the computer for a few hours. All was fine.

This morning I had some new problems which disappeared after a restart. So I am closing this thread as solved and if these new problems persist I will add a new thread.

Once again my THANK YOU to all at UBUNTU.

Costas