How many times have you done a clean reinstall?

[matbluvenger]

So this should be fun. I'm about to do a clean reinstall on Ubuntu 11.10 because I messed up pretty decently. And it got me thinking... how many times have other people done this? I'm talking about full versions on main boxes.

Let's find out what your "Reinstall Ratio" is.

(# of times clean reinstall) / (# of months with Ubuntu)

After tomorrow, mine will be:

5 / 0.5 = 10 (ouch)

[jpdeaton]

atleast 20

[HavarN]

In the beginning, I did some, maybe 2 or 3. After a while, I learned that everything can normally be fixed without a clean reinstall. So...

3 / 77 = 4 %

[Erik1984]

I count from my return to Ubuntu in December 2010:

14 months of Ubuntu, install moments: 10.10 -> 11.04 -> 11.04 -> 10.04 -> 11.10

5 / 14 = approx. 0.36 fresh installs per month :P

[sffvba[e0rt]

Too many times to count... plus distro hopping will always keep your ratio's high (if you like to install on the machine rather than use VM's)...


404

[makitso]

On my main system, about once a year, 9.04, 10.04, 11.04 etc.

[Bölvaður]

Many times on many computers.
If I'd have to limit myself to only my main computer when I do a clean install with Ubuntu (no other distro) it should be something like:
13 / 56 = 0.23

I have most often done a clean installs when installing new version. Think I did a reinstall few times when I was a beginner due to some strange configs I made or something... dont remember why I did reinstalls.

[yetiman64]

# of months (Nov 07 - Oct 11 = 4y. to date: +4 months) = 52 months

# of clean reinstalls (only bare metal, no VMs), a reasonable guess would be: 30 (over several machines and multi partition dual boot installs)

Ratio: 30/52 = 0.58

Mostly do clean reinstalls when messing with partitioning or set-up configuration changes and such.


because I messed up pretty decentlyMy worst ever need to reinstall came about by me forgetting to unmount a 32 bit chroot bind mounted, and using the dreaded rm command very recursively and forcibly on the 32bit chroot folder structure in terminal as root. My blood seemed to freeze for a split second before my fingers hit the ctrl + c keyboard combo, too late, my system fonts folder got nuked and turned my whole interface to blank rectangles. Reinstall time.:p

Why I say my blood seemed to freeze for a split second is because my home folder and about 4 very full media partitions were also bind mounted at the time. Luckily none of them were touched, but I was unsure if any of the 3 or 4 system bind mounted folders were also touched. Safer to do a reinstall :)

[philinux]

So this should be fun. I'm about to do a clean reinstall on Ubuntu 11.10 because I messed up pretty decently. And it got me thinking... how many times have other people done this? I'm talking about full versions on main boxes.

Let's find out what your "Reinstall Ratio" is.

(# of times clean reinstall) / (# of months with Ubuntu)

After tomorrow, mine will be:

5 / 0.5 = 10 (ouch)

Every 6 months new version on main drive. Then development release gets installed to drive 2.

[matbluvenger]

My worst ever need to reinstall came about by me forgetting to unmount a 32 bit chroot bind mounted, and using the dreaded rm command very recursively and forcibly on the 32bit chroot folder structure in terminal as root. My blood seemed to freeze for a split second before my fingers hit the ctrl + c keyboard combo, too late, my system fonts folder got nuked and turned my whole interface to blank rectangles. Reinstall time.:p

Why I say my blood seemed to freeze for a split second is because my home folder and about 4 very full media partitions were also bind mounted at the time. Luckily none of them were touched, but I was unsure if any of the 3 or 4 system bind mounted folders were also touched. Safer to do a reinstall :)

Wow... ouch. No I didn't do anything that bad. Just installed xubuntu-desktop, lubuntu-desktop, and kubuntu-desktop (not the desktop environments) over Ubuntu 11.10. Not a terrible fix but I think it's more worth it to start over clean.

[jerrrys]

The first 33 months: maybe 20

The last 6 months: more than 20

[julioneander]

Wow, I see people here break their systems very often! LOL

I once broke the whole gnome setup on my 10.04, but I managed to fix it using the terminal (I'm typing with the fixed gnome right now!).

For SO/distro testing I have an isolated disk, so I'm never messing with the "working" one.

Regards.

[oxman]

I do a fresh install with every lts release. I do a new install on all new hardware. 11.10 was my first ever non-lts. It came with the hardware. I started out with red hat 5.2 and doing a fresh install was a major pain for me. Ubuntu made such practices very easy. I periodically backup my hard drive. A new install was a piece of cake until Unity came along. I'm adjusting....again.

[mr-woof]

I've been using Ubuntu for about 3 years maybe, I've always generally just ran the upgrade from one release to the next and I've had no problems.

I did do a fresh install of 10.04, then upgraded upto 11.10. I'm moving machines soon, so I will be doing a fresh install of 12.04 sometime soon.

[MisterGaribaldi]

Lots and LOTS and even more. That's what keeping your data backed up is all about. ;)

[lovinglinux]

Too many times to count. I never do upgrades, so at least once every 6 months, but usually more, since I like to mess things a little bit.

[Grenage]

Over 10 years, maybe around 100; it's been an awful lot. These days I'll only reinstall if an upgrade has problems - which has yet to happen.

[winh8r]

It is important to remember that there is a huge difference between WANTING to do a full clean install and NEEDING to do one!!

Some people do it because they want to experiment with aspects of the OS, whilst others need to do it because they have "experimented" without realising the true nature of what they are doing and are left with an unusable machine.

I tend to stick with the LTS releases now on my main machine, but do numerous clean installs on other test machines , I was even running 7.10 on one machine recently!

[mihalybaci]

7 clean installs on four computers over a year and a half of ubuntu use, or 0.1 installs per month per computer because i've actually had pretty good luck with the "dreaded" upgrades (3-for-3 so far). once the 12.04 releases come out though, i'll probably do fresh installs on all my computers, which will make it 0.16 installs/month/computer.

[jerrrys]

Yes, to be clear. I run LTS and have not had any down time.

[Ms. Daisy]

It is important to remember that there is a huge difference between WANTING to do a full clean install and NEEDING to do one!!

Some people do it because they want to experiment with aspects of the OS, whilst others need to do it because they have "experimented" without realising the true nature of what they are doing and are left with an unusable machine.
All of the above!

I've lost count but I would guess my reinstall ratio (of all operating systems) on main boxes to be roughly

20 / 6 = 3ish

Reasons for reinstalling vary from failed upgrades, failed dual-boots, failed experimentation (the common denominator being lots of fails!) I also reinstalled in the beginning simply to understand HDDs & partitioning. I do lots of experimentation cluelessly implementing new complex configurations & procedures, so it's inevitable.

It helped me out tremendously when I discovered VMs & reverting to a snapshot when I broke something. Learning is much easier when I do the risky stuff in VMs. However I don't see any reason that I would stop borking my machines (whether by accident or on purpose). No electronic device is safe in my house!

[matbluvenger]

Add two more for me in the last 48 hours :D

[winh8r]

Confession time!

I just had to do a full clean install of my 10.04LTS, because............

I broke it! All running as normal again though, and by the grace of the great Penguin God, I had just backed up my home partition this morning so I lost nothing other than the half hour to get it reinstalled again.

Just goes to show that I thought I lived in the "want to " world but today I went for a trip in "need to " land.


The first rule of messing around with stuff......make sure you have good back-ups.

[Linuxratty]

Over ten times when I count how many times I had to reinstall Klickit Linux.

[matbluvenger]

Well I took a lesson from your anecdote. I started using Backup and set it to do it Weekly.

I suddenly feel much more secure. :D

[Meelad]

I have two servers running 10.04 (installed them when it first came out). Didn't reinstall any of them. Still running nicely (I even changed the server hardware on both a year ago - bought two new servers and took the hard disks and connected them to the new servers, worked flawlessly! :D Try to do that with Windows ):P ).. I had a couple of problems with them (including a kernel panic error), but I managed to solve them without the need to reinstall the system.

Having said that, I do reinstall Ubuntu everytime a new distro comes out (on my desktop computer), because Ubuntu + Upgrade = No Friends.

[Lokireloaded]

I have only ever done 3 installs of linux, discounting updates. The first time I used linux was so long ago that I can't remember the distro. I dual booted it with ME. And the other two times were ubuntu, 9.04 and 11.10.

[wolfen69]

Too many times to count... plus distro hopping will always keep your ratio's high (if you like to install on the machine rather than use VM's)...


404

This.

[KiwiNZ]

On my main machine as little as possible. On my test machine, countless. For me it is not a badge of honour.

[Ms. Daisy]

For me it is not a badge of honour. Nor is it for me. Each reinstallation is an admission of error in my case. So if anything it's an exercise in humility.

[matbluvenger]

Nor is it for me. Each reinstallation is an admission of error in my case. So if anything it's an exercise in humility.

That's exactly how I feel. Each reinstall results from a mistake on my part, so I learn from it. Each time I lose 30 minutes to a reinstall and a subsequent 15 from downloading updates again, I'm reminded of how much I suck and that I need to fix that :D

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

If I understand the question, I rarely do a fresh install because I messed up the operating system. I have used Ubuntu for about 5 years. I have only messed it up a few times on a bare metal install requiring me to reinstall the bare metal instance. I use virtual machines when I want to play with the configuration of a system or I want to play with a new version of the OS. After I install the OS in a virtual machine (VM), update it and configure it, I take a snapshot of the VM. If I mess up a VM, I delete it and recreate the VM from the snapshot. It is not quite the same as reinstalling as it only takes a few minutes to recreate a VM from a snapshot.

If I used the suggested equation for bare metal mission critical installs, I would get a number less than 4% (=2/(5*12) < 0.04). :)

[ageofsteam]

So. Many. Times. I'm an "explorer" and I tend to experiment on my software- sometimes with disastrous results. I keep all my important items on external HD (usually Passport drives, which are small enough to carry) and so when I accidentally blast an installation, I just reinstall it.

I've done complete format + reinstalls- I guess, about 10 or 11 times over several computers? Possibly more. I've done reinstalls over installations- no format, but with only home left intact- even more often.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

[uRock]

I only do clean installs when it is time to upgrade. My installs have run perfectly smooth and have not required a reinstall to fix problem in quite some time.

[samalex]

I haven't borked my system to the degree where it needs a clean install in over a decade. As for installing a new OS on my current laptop I installed 10.04 LTS over 9.04, which was preinstalled from System76, and that's really it. I plan on doing a wipe and reload with 12.04 Desktop LTS when it comes out and won't look at reinstalling again until 14.04 comes out, or whatever the next LTS version is. Non-LTS versions are WAY too buggy for a production system of any sort, which is why I cringe at those guys who reinstall every 6 months.

I do run various OSes, including non-LTS versions of Ubuntu in VirtualBox, so I guess I do clean installs there quite often, but on my main box it's only every 2 years thus far.

[newbemac]

after every major upgrade, once a year maybe, or when a mess up the meachine so bad there is no other fix

[GraeW]

I've toyed with linux in general for over a decade, and have played with Ubuntu since I think 9.04 or earlier. I did upgrade between 10.10 and 11.10 on my desktop (including 11.04 in between) but my laptop has always gotten clean installs - partly because I've gone back and forth between windows and linux on there and don't have a lot of harddrive to play with.

I only ever truly "borked" my laptop once, and I think it was Mint which did it. Ever since putting 11.10 back on it - and my most recent wipe/install was 12.04b1 this past weekend - the laptop smiles at me. Now to play with a virtualbox and winxp...

[stalkingwolf]

I have done many many fresh installs. on many machines with varying hardware.

Recently i have had to do a fresh install of a particular os . not because of anything wrong with it, but because any time i change an Os, ( i am running 5 different ones on this machine) to test another i have to install pinguy again to get a viewable grub menu. It is there with all of them but is invisiable.

i get the resolution is out of bounds please reset. The menu is there i can if i can remember how many times to hit the down arrow get what i want. it just doesnt display.

[viperdvman]

Let's see. I've been running Ubuntu 11.04 on the desktop since May last year, and have yet to do a clean reinstall of it :D

So on my desktop:

0/10=0 reinstalls per month... 100% uptime

My netbook, however, I've only reinstalled once, and that was when I upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10. Reinstall was not due to any fubar or other self-inflicted problems. And I've been running Ubuntu on the netbook since June last year.

So on my netbook:

1/9= 0.11 reinstalls per month... 88.88% uptime

[Dragonbite]

11 Ubuntu* (I have probably forgot a few times)
+ 1 Edubuntu [1]
+ 5 openSUSE*
+ 4 Fedora*
+ 1 TinyMe
+ 1 Zentyal
+ 1 Ubuntu Server
+ 1 IPCop
+ 4 WindowsXP*
+ 2 Windows7*
+ 2 Red Hat (ver. 8 and 9) [1]
+ 1 Gentoo [1] (I'll count as one though technically...)
-----------------
34 total I can remember at this time

From 2003 until today (2012) = 8 years

34 / 8 years = 4.25 per yr average
4.25 per yr average / 12 months in a year = 0.354166 per month average

* not all on the same machine, not all at the same time
[1] in the beginning I used my Sony Vaio PIII desktop
No longer active, installed or machine in my possession anymore

[Welly Wu]

I've re-installed Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit LTS at least three times before I decided to re-install Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit at least 2 times. I hate doing re-installations even though they are relatively fast and painless. I stopped trying to hack my way to get things to work the way that I want to and I just settled for the default configurations for most of my software applications. I think that this is the last time that I will need to re-install Ubuntu GNU/Linux for at least a few more years because I have learned enough about the basics to know my way around the operating system.

[cespinal]

And yet we all say that linux is super stable ;).

I did not do any fresh installs in the last year (got a new laptop by then).

I did a fresh Mint install last weekend as I upgraded to precise beta and it wrecked my system.. yes... I know I had it coming

I will probably will not do any fresh installs in a loooong time.

[Ms. Daisy]

And yet we all say that linux is super stable ;).
IMHO the fact that a bunch of nerds broke their Linux systems doesn't indicate that Linux isn't stable. It just indicates that nerds don't leave good enough alone ;)

[Dragonbite]

And yet we all say that linux is super stable ;).

I learned a long time ago that any instability was not really the fault of Linux, rather than my ADHD-laden "Oooo, what's this like" and constantly installing and removing programs (and tweaking, customizing and "oops! what just happened??")

A lot of my installations were either to initially install Ubuntu on one of 3 laptops and 2 desktops and 1 server, to update with a newer version and to try out different distributions to see which works better (and to satisfy my constantly changing mood). Plus what doesn't help is that my 1 laptop has 3 hard drives I can easily switch between!

[matbluvenger]

+1 to Linux being stable and its users being quite unstable.

[Dragonbite]

+1 to Linux being stable and its users being quite unstable.

I resemble that remark! :lolflag:

[MisterGaribaldi]

With some people, it's a need. With others, it's an obsession!

As for me, I'm not obsessed with clean reinstalls.

Yes I am.

No I'm not.

Yes I... oh, never mind.

[KiwiNZ]

It's just an Operating System, something that works (should work) in the back ground. As long as it is doing what it is intended to do I leave it alone. The only clean installs I do is for any new version of the OS concerned.