40 replies to this topic

[theapu]

UBUNTU 9.10 The flaw in the plan

Following the Karmic Koala's joyful reception three weeks ago, sentiments toward the cute marsupial have become distinctly less enthusiastic in recent days -- at least for some(including me).

I was very excited about the relase of ubuntu 9.10. I expected it to compete with windows 7 in performance and GUI. I downloaded and installed it on the very day it was realesed. I had problem no 2. (look below) while installing. But i installed again using wubi and every thing looked fine untill problem 1. (look below) occured. I tried many things nothing fixed the problem. And i installed ubuntu again and after two days grub screwed up agiain.

I have used every version ubuntu from version 7.04(Feisty Fawn). But i never had such a terrible experiance with ubuntu. Why did i installed ububtu 9.10? I should have stuck with 9.04.

I've never been pissed off with Ubuntu before, 9.10 = headache

After trying many thing unsuccessfully i uninstalled ubuntu 9.10 with a realization that Windows 7 is a indeed great os and it will take years for linux operating systems to reach anywhere near win 7.

According to a recent article on TheRegister it seems that people who have installed Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) are experiencing a wide-range of issues, figures suggest that only 10 percent of people who have installed the latest version have gone completely smoothly, however a fifth of all installations are said to have resulted in “unfixable issues”.

Here are some issues with Ubuntu 9.10

1. GRUB 2 Sucks
Ubuntu 9.10 uses GRUB2 boot loader which is very complicated compared to very simple GRUB1. GRUB2 is causing problems especially to those who installed ubuntu within windows (wubi). For those who installed wubi without any warning instead of grub boot loader the grub command line appears (It happened to me thrice). This happends when you run ubuntu upgrade (So if you upgrade ubuntu you sucks)Look here and Here.Then the only possible solution is to reinstall ubuntu or manually enter the commands for booting at the grub command line every time we boot(which is very frustrating). Cannonical should have sticked with grub1 with ext4 file support. (They used grub2 because the creaters of the grub was not redy to add support for ext4 file system in grub1)

2. Installation hangs
If you are installing ubuntu 9.10 while your nettwork is on, beware! the installation may stuck at 80%. (it also happened to me).Look Here

3. 9.04 to 9.10 upgrade head ache
More than a fifth of people upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 have reported issues they can't fix, according to an Ubuntuforums.org pollhere. Only around 10 per cent of those upgrading or installing reported a completely flawless experience. Look here.

4.A bug has now being filed in Ubuntu forums on how Ubuntu 9.10 breaks graphics drivers and X, preventing log in or startx.

currently from what we can see Ubuntu have not officially addressed the issues with the release, therefore we cannot help you yet, our best advice is to avoid the OS verison for the time being.

What do you think Ubuntu should do about the problems? Do you think their support has been adequate?

Edited by theapu, 22 November 2009 - 11:28 AM.

[adrynalyne]

9.10 is a step back from 9.04.

Everything worked out of the box for me on 9.04. Interesting that a newer release did not contain my wireless, or touchscreen drivers.

Sure I can work around it, and did. But in my book, thats an epic fail when its a current machine. Why go backwards on out of the box compatibility?

[Villain]

yeah i had Major problems with 9.10, as how i wrote in my review about it.
Grub2 was a problem, it would very often mess up my MBR for some unknown reason.

I had to enable Auto-Login for me to get to gnome, if not, i would hear a cycle of the "login" drums sound, but no login screen, and for me to get the software store to work for me, i had to apt-get update ... and it just seems wrong to me that if i had to do so, that kind of means to me that i should have stuck with 9.04, where almost everything worked out of the box.

Grub would not recognize and filesystem for me that was NOT ext4, but i finally got ReiserFS forking as my \Home folder.
This version was supposed to have increased Intel compatibility... but i did not see it.

So yeah, i agree 100%, stick with 9.04

[M!W]

1. Grub2 is only used by default if you do a fresh install of the System, not when you upgrade.

All other Issues:
With Ubuntu 9.10 the whole hardware abstraction layer was replaced.
So it was absolutely impossible to not get into problems with some systems.
I wish canonical had made this clear for endusers.

But one thing most people seem to forget:
Only the LTS-Versions are meant stable, all others are only testing for the next stable release!

[PurplePeopleEater]

ARe they going to fix the problems anytime soon? I'm interested in trying it out but all these problems deterred me.

[adrynalyne]

I actually installed Grub 1.97b4 and said screw it to grub 2. Maybe they will fix it, but how often does Ubuntu send out drivers not there in the first place?(Honest question, I don't know).

[shivaram]

I did not experience such problems as such, i have upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 in my laptop without any problems, and installed in my pc without any problem. (all 32bit)

But faced problems in installing 64bit, reaches upto 56% and then fires errors !!!!.

Grub2 is still in beta i think.

Edited by shivaram, 18 November 2009 - 06:19 AM.

[uch_haiden]

UBUNTU 9.10 The flaw in the plan

After trying many thing unsuccessfully i uninstalled ubuntu 9.10 with a realization that Windows 7 is a indeed great os and it will take years for linux operating systems to reach anywhere near win 7.

What?

How could you conclude this when you just tested Ubuntu 9.10. Ubuntu is NOT Linux. Ubuntu is just a distro and besides its one of the most criticized.

While you concluded that Linux is nowhere near 7, I conclude the other way round (though 7 is coming close). My Basis, User/Account security, Windows is approaching the Unix/Linux way. Shutdown/Cold boot, Windows followed the trend also set by Linux to slash the booting up and shut down times, and many more.

AGAIN LINUX is NOT UBUNTU and vice versa.

Anyway let me rephrase it:
After trying many thing unsuccessfully i uninstalled ubuntu 9.10 with a realization that Windows 7 is a indeed great os and it will take years for Ubuntu 9.10 to reach anywhere near win 7.

But again, other users might still disagree with it.

[adrynalyne]

If you want to be anal about it, Linux isn't an OS, its a kernel.

The correct terminology would be Linux/GNU OS.

[theapu]

Being the most popular linux distro this types of bugs are not what we expect from UBUNTU.

Seems like UBUNTU 9.10 is going to make a bad impression on canonical like vista did to microsoft

[theapu]

I did not experience such problems as such, i have upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 in my laptop without any problems, and installed in my pc without any problem. (all 32bit)

But faced problems in installing 64bit, reaches upto 56% and then fires errors !!!!.

Grub2 is still in beta i think.

Grub2 is still in beta. a beta release in a supposedly stable LONG TERM SUPPORT release. Why do they do this?

Ubuntu Linux 9.10 seems to have made it much more difficult to add or remove entries from the Grub boot menu. In previous versions of Ubuntu it was a simple matter of editing the menu.lst or grub.cfg file in "/boot/grub/". Now that same file has comments stating "Do not modify this file". And GRUB.CFG looks very perplexing. Whenever i edited grub.cfg some sort of errors appeared while booting.

As for the ext4 filesystem, I do find it odd that so many people are apparently having data corruption issues considering the filesystem is just as stable as NTFS or FAT.

Ubuntu Linux 9.10 is buggy as hell.

Make sure to read the buglist before installing this version:
Bug List

Hmm.. 200+ bugs to date... Its only three weeks ago that ubuntu was realeased. This should have been an RC2 version....

Edited by theapu, 18 November 2009 - 08:45 AM.

[theapu]

yeah i had Major problems with 9.10, as how i wrote in my review about it.
Grub2 was a problem, it would very often mess up my MBR for some unknown reason.

I had to enable Auto-Login for me to get to gnome, if not, i would hear a cycle of the "login" drums sound, but no login screen, and for me to get the software store to work for me, i had to apt-get update ... and it just seems wrong to me that if i had to do so, that kind of means to me that i should have stuck with 9.04, where almost everything worked out of the box.

Grub would not recognize and filesystem for me that was NOT ext4, but i finally got ReiserFS forking as my \Home folder.
This version was supposed to have increased Intel compatibility... but i did not see it.

So yeah, i agree 100%, stick with 9.04

Yes true indeed
UBUNTU 9.10

[uch_haiden]

9.10 is a step back from 9.04.

Everything worked out of the box for me on 9.04. Interesting that a newer release did not contain my wireless, or touchscreen drivers.

Sure I can work around it, and did. But in my book, thats an epic fail when its a current machine. Why go backwards on out of the box compatibility?

Thanks for clarifying that. I just can't accept concluding things when you are just taking just one example. Logistically its not at all accurate and never will. Besides you can never conclude such thing (as theapu stated) when he did not test all distros.

Anyway that's his opinion but when it will be posted somewhere else where subscribers are more knowledgeable, I am sure he will be met with criticisms (if not much more to a way that his review or whatever is wasted space/ink).

Judging Ubuntu 9.10 where I tested just to see what's wrong with it. It went smoothly. I tested it on AMD X2, and Jetway MB with integrated ATI card and Realtek LAN and Audio. So far the sound is just the one not working as it supposed to be.

Edited by uch_haiden, 18 November 2009 - 09:17 AM.

[Borix]

No problem installing the 32bit version of 9.10 (64bit was a no go)

Remember: only little nerdy boys like to shout "(epic) fail"

[Rajesh Joseph J]

Ubuntu 9.10 is bloddy buggy. GRUB2 is really a mess.

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)must be renamed as Ubuntu 9.10 (buggy bunny).

It is better not to install linux distros as soon as they are realesed. better use them after one or two months when the bugs are fixed.

[hellboy]

I installed ubuntu 9.10 three days ago. The installation hanged at 80%. After turning off my modem i installed again and then the installation was smooth.

But after reading this post i am scared. If grub get corrupted how will i boot in to windows? Should i have to reinstall windows? I think it is better to uninstall ubuntu. But i didnt used wubi for installation. So how can i remove ubuntu without affecting windows?

[Borix]

I installed ubuntu 9.10 three days ago. The installation hanged at 80%. After turning off my modem i installed again and then the installation was smooth.

But after reading this post i am scared. If grub get corrupted how will i boot in to windows? Should i have to reinstall windows? I think it is better to uninstall ubuntu. But i didnt used wubi for installation. So how can i remove ubuntu without affecting windows?

You could use easybcd (windows) to put the windows boot loader back. Also you can add grub/ubuntu to the windows boot loader with easybcd.

But i think there is no need to be scared

[adrynalyne]

I did not experience such problems as such, i have upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 in my laptop without any problems, and installed in my pc without any problem. (all 32bit)

But faced problems in installing 64bit, reaches upto 56% and then fires errors !!!!.

Grub2 is still in beta i think.

Grub2 is still in beta. a beta release in a supposedly stable LONG TERM SUPPORT release. Why do they do this?

Theapu, do you know anything what are you are talking about? the '.04 releases are long term, not the '.10.

[hellboy]

I installed ubuntu 9.10 three days ago. The installation hanged at 80%. After turning off my modem i installed again and then the installation was smooth.

But after reading this post i am scared. If grub get corrupted how will i boot in to windows? Should i have to reinstall windows? I think it is better to uninstall ubuntu. But i didnt used wubi for installation. So how can i remove ubuntu without affecting windows?

You could use easybcd (windows) to put the windows boot loader back. Also you can add grub/ubuntu to the windows boot loader with easybcd.

But i think there is no need to be scared

Thankyou

This easy bcd is great.