Share with us your Noble Numbat installation/Upgrade Experience

[wildmanne39]

Noble Numbat was released April 24th, 2024, so it's time for a new poll. Please tell us about your experience upgrading, or doing a fresh install of Noble Numbat.

This thread is only for your experience, if you are having problems, please create a thread in the support forums.

The previous poll can be found here:

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2493482

[Irihapeti]

I've got several (X)Ubuntu systems, some of which I upgraded and others have been fresh installs. The upgrades were basic servers, so maybe not all that surprising that they proceeded without problems.

Anything more complex, I do a reinstall. I expect a few tweaks to be necessary along the way, but I've not encountered anything too serious this time around.

I'm not sure yet what I'll do about my public VPS, but that won't be until July/August. It's had one upgrade, and it might be time to do a fresh install. We'll see.

[gezzer2]

two computers both had 22.04.4 LTS installed both systems were encrypted on install with the Ubuntu default settings 22.04.4 for the partitioning and installer.

1st. system .. HP 24" AiO .. Ryzen 7 5000 series 5825u zen 3 .. 1TB M2 type SSD .. 64GB DDR4
USB live install 24.04 using default settings for partitioning with encryption.

install failed system was unbootable ..
reloaded the live installer and deleted all partitions on the SSD, reinstalled with default settings for partitioning with encryption.
systems booted to the desktop had to reset CPU governor to amd_pstate=active and is now working and running fine.

....

2nd. system .. Dell 13" latitude 3380 .. Intel i5 7200u 7th gen .. 275GB 2.5 SSD .. 16GB DDR4
USB live install 24.04 using default settings for partitioning with encryption.

install failed system was unbootable ..
reloaded the live installer and deleted all partitions on the SSD, reinstalled with default settings for partitioning with encryption.
systems booted to the desktop and had problems with screen tearing and CPU/GPU speed.
reset CPU governor to intel_pstate=active no improvement the system became unusable.

rebooted to a install USB live 22.04.4 and reinstalled 22.04.4 with default partitioning and encryption. changed the governor to intel_pstate=active.
laptop is now working perfectly with 22.04.4 .. 24.04 install failed completely and was unusable with this laptop.

just to note both systems have backup HDD's.
1st. system has a 1TB USB HDD and the 2nd. system has a 500GB USB HDD.

just a PS to this. i have now installed Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) on both systems ...

[ajgreeny]

I have an 11 year old desktop machine which had Xubuntu 22.04 and 20.04 as dual boot, sharing a separate /home partition.
I have clean installed 24.04 over the 20.04 version with no big problems noted so far even though it is still sharing the same /home partition.

For some reason which I do not understand my first attempt at a clean install failed completely and the new snap bootstrap installer just froze and sat going nowhere for about 45 minutes so I aborted that attempt and started again.

This second attempt was faultless even though all my settings etc were identical to my first attempt and the shared home has not caused problems so far and the whole system seems to be running smoothly and fast.

Early days but so far looking good!

[TheFu]

Did a fresh install into a KVM/QEMU VM for both Xubuntu and Lubuntu. For both, I was unable to figure out how to use a manual LVM layout, my preferred storage management system. All I wanted was LVs for root, home, and swap, nothing too complex. After screwing around with it in front of 20 or so people at my LUG, I gave up.

Immediately, after install, at the first login,
Xubuntu wasn't stable. It locked up 3 times in less than 20 minutes. The LUG decided it wasn't production ready. Wiped the storage.

Moved on to Lubuntu. Besides the LVM problem, this installed cleanly. I experienced zero lock ups. The interface was fast and responsive. I've been unable to get key-based ssh working. Don't know why, but after 5 minutes of screwing around, moved on. The Lubuntu VM was the same VM as Xubuntu - 4GB RAM and 1 vCPU (Ryzen 5xxx series). I didn't wipe the Lubuntu 24.04 install, but it won't be used in production and it won't have data loaded.

Lubuntu seems ready for production with a few issues for my personal needs - LVM and key-based ssh. I understand that LVM won't be fixed, so I'll be skipping 24.04 until that is addressed - if never addressed, I'll skip 24.04 completely. When it is time in 2025 to move my production systems to a new release, it cannot be 24.04 based. The ssh-key problem will likely have a resolution that I just haven't discovered yet.

I still need to try the Server install. Not sure why I'd bother if LVM isn't easily supported. The lack of LVM support is a huge problem for all our systems. We need the flexibility and long-time enterprise quality of a volume manager. It is central to our storage and backup methods.

[#&thj^%]

Xubuntu here, on zfs-root, clean install. Installer would crash over and over, until I zapped the Drive with No Format chosen.
After that install worked, lacking manual partitioning as said by others.

So this install is more or less a toying around install, and Bug-Triaging. (Not Ready for my usage)

My wish is for Canonical to stop re-inventing the wheel and stick to what made it a desirable Desktop/Server Distro in the first place. (Respectfully spoken)

[Dennis N]

First, I downloaded the Ubuntu 24.04 iso and burned a USB with the installer. I wanted to see if installation to an existing LV might be supported. It wasn't.

Instead I did a QEMU/KVM install as a virtual machine. I chose the Advanced Features > LVM install as a option. This is the only way to install with LVM. It worked. The result:

Resulting Partitions:

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  1128MB  1127MB  fat32              boot, esp
 2      1128MB  3258MB  2130MB  ext4
 3      3258MB  25.2GB  21.9GB

This installer insists on a boot partition, even with no encryption. In the previous installer, that was not so. So that's what partition 2 is. Partition 3 is used for the Ubuntu VG and Ubuntu LV.

The resulting sizes:

vda                        23.4G
├─vda1                        1G
├─vda2                        2G
└─vda3                     20.4G
  └─ubuntu--vg-ubuntu--lv  20.4G

I read there are improvements from Gnome 45, but from my end user point of view, its the same as Gnome 45 plus a number of (hopefully temporary) bugs and glitches introduced.

I have to use Wayland in the VM, otherwise, in the Xorg session the cursor is unstable.

A few things I noticed:

You get App Center to browse and install software instead of Ubuntu Software. With App Center, the overview screen in Ubuntu does not search for software as it does with Gnome software (and maybe Ubuntu Software). Since App Center does not support Flatpaks at all, I installed Gnome Software (not Ubuntu Software) which does.

Gnome Shell theme setting no longer appears in Tweaks. You have to install the "user themes" extension.

If using DMZ-white cursor, it turns to a box over gnome-shell components like the top panel or the dock.

windows may not open where they were previously closed. Example: Audacious always opens in upper left instead of where I want it. So one must manually move it to the place you want it. This may be the application's problem? The window size is retained, but not the location.

The Info Bar sound visualization no longer works in Audacious.

Bookmarks made in "Places" extension to the host OS no longer automatically mount the location when clicked as they did before. Files still does automount them.

And of course, a couple of extensions have not yet been updated so they don't work.

Probably more to be discovered over time.

Besides these things, the OS works fine. I'm waiting for Software Updater's notice that the upgrade from 23.10 is available. That would give me an LV with 24.04 without erasing my disk. We see how that goes.

[VMC]

Fresh install. Flawless. Obviously hardware is a major factor. No Nvidia for me.

[Claus7]

Hello,

upgrade went fine more or less from mantic apart from thunderbird issue: it caused a loop during upgrade. I had to install it manually and then continue with the rest of the installation. The good thing is that it was one of the last parts of the upgrade and something that will get fixed till .1 version is released.

I noticed that 0ad and freecad are removed from repositories even if 0ad-data is there.

Sometimes using window tiling, placing a window on the right hand side of the screen resulted in freezing of the computer. I noticed that gnome shell has been updated in the meantime which might solve the issue.

Double clicking on the top panel without having any window maximized results in a trembling movement of desktop icons. This stops if a new application opens.

Still under wayland Desktop bookmark of nautilus is not there by default.

I noticed too the box-shaped cursors using white ones.

Still gnome flashback does not have the option to copy paste files from/to desktop.

The ram usage I think that is lower compared to previous ubuntu versions: in my case ubuntu wayland uses 1.5 GB, which I consider it much lower from values like >1.7 that I was observing before.

Nice that gnome-system-monitor now is using gkt4.

One thing that I consider an improvement is the size of fonts of gnome shell. They are not so tiny especially in non-hd screens. Also I consider the fonts sharper than before.

I think that the response of the system in general is faster: e.g. opening nautilus, opening documents with LO.

No image thumbnails using desktop icons under wayland.

Applications extension has been renamed to Apps.

Blender "continue anyway" option is not working if a non compatible graphics card is identified.

Firefox snap was not working in my case. Using ppa firefox instead, it complains about a weak algorithm, something that is known and will get fixed soon.

Regards!

[TheFu]

Just installed 24.04 Server. LVM is there and it is possible to customize through the installer. I even guessed how to setup a static IP on the first attempt, though that screen in the installer REALLY, REALLY, needs examples of the data entry fields to the right of each field to prevent the guessing.

$ lsblk -e 7 -o name,type,fstype,size,FSAVAIL,FSUSE%,label,mountpoint
NAME            TYPE FSTYPE       SIZE FSAVAIL FSUSE% LABEL MOUNTP
sr0             rom                 2K                      
vda             disk               15G                      
├─vda1          part                1M                      
├─vda2          part ext4         750M    574M    13%       /boot
└─vda3          part LVM2_member 13.2G                      
  ├─vg02-root   lvm  ext4          10G      7G    23%       /
  └─vg02-swap00 lvm  swap         500M                      [SWAP]

$ df -hT -x squashfs -x tmpfs -x devtmpfs
Filesystem            Type  Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg02-root ext4  9.8G  2.2G  7.1G  24% /
/dev/vda2             ext4  721M   95M  574M  15% /boot

$ sudo vgs
  VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree 
  vg02   1   2   0 wz--n- <13.25g <2.76g

$ snap list
No snaps are installed yet.

So, it appears to me that this is solved on 24.04 Server.

I need to try the desktop installers again. Perhaps I didn't know what I was doing? I'd read that changing the VG name at install time wasn't allowed somewhere too. It was a hassle because I had to remove all the LVs first - renaming would be nice without having to remove the LVs, but it is possible. Normally, an install takes about 10 minutes. Because I had to figure out the "magic" requirements, took me about 20 minutes. As you can see, I changed the VG name, LV names, sizes to fit my needs.

Best of all, I have a little free space in the VG for other uses, like creating snapshots for my backup process. This was a toy server setup just to see that LVM and how much storage would really be needed. Minimal install with ssh. No snaps included. 2.2G used. Nice. The days of bloat may be over. We can hope.

Perhaps all my worries about 24.04 server weren't really true.

How do I say this. ZERO complaints so far (well, beyond systemd). Small, tight, things work as expected. No extra bloat. Golf clap to the Ubuntu Server team. Nice job.

Sorry, I didn't mean to shock people used to me constantly complaining about small things when Canonical does 10,000 things right. A clear, autoinstall YAML example would be nice that sets the 1st username, LVM layout, VG/LV names, LV sizes, file system format, static IP addresses, and allows specifying the file URL on the install screen would be nice. Perhaps this exists somewhere and I just haven't found it.

Just confirmed that 24.04 Lubuntu storage setup doesn't allow LVM. Can get to the point of selecting the PV for a new VG to use, but there's no list of PVs in the dialog box to choose. "Create Volume Group" button is gaslighting. That's rude. It was bad enough that LVM is an allowed type of partition.

Over all, nice job guys.