Comment 171 for bug 930447

oliver, I agree with you entirely on your previous comments. The ThinkPad series were rather expensive hardware, and maybe on that account rather long lasting hardware. To this date I'm servicing 5 of these older ThinkPads running 12.04 *buntu, installed using the USB GRUB method described above in this bug.
In later *buntus the kernel packages have been deliberately crippled by developers, so it isn't quiet as easy to work around, while you now have to fiddle with the kernel package for installation, and every time a subsequent kernel upgrade happens.

I completely agree with the Ubuntu decision to let NON-PAE hardware go, but can't understand why hardware that works absolutely perfect with even the latest (kernel-fixed) versions of *buntu is left out this way. The change in the pre 12.04 kernel packages placing an OBSTRUCTION, is absolutely misplaced. The syslinux bug on the other hand demands bug-fixing work to be done, and we must accept if neither Canonical or the syslinux developer will spend time on that.

But what I absolutely don't understand is, that the time used to make the *buntu kernel packages OBSTRUCTION, wasn't spent on fixing syslinux bug instead.
A lot of people (ThinkPad among others) would probably have benefitted from this, and even those who don't find this bug rapport, and probably don't know what hit them when trying to install *buntu on their great hardware. Instead they may try another newer bad operating system from around 2007, and find that it just installs and works on their hardware - thus linux or *buntu is just a pain to use, which is hard for us who value open source and linux to argue against. So everybody, except you know who, looses out.