NULL Project

Bug #876146
Comment #12

Comment 12 for bug 876146

Revision history for this message

Subharo Bhikkhu (subharo) wrote on 2011-10-19: Re: Upgrading Ubuntu is risky (unusable or unbootable PC). The Upgrade Popup does not warn of the risks or offers fail-safe alternatives. This is a mouse trap for unsuspecting users.

#12

boot-up-manager-after-oneiric.png Edit (812.4 KiB, image/png)

I have been using some kind of linux distro since 1997, and in all that time, I have never, ever been "done like this" before. I have a few specific egregious gripes to add, after dragging myself out of a horrendous upgrade. Good thing I have a Computer Science Degree, and 5 years experience as a Unix System Administrator. I pity the newbies. I'll never stray from an LTS-to-LTS upgrade again.

Before I get into specific, difficult-to-believe gripes, Mark Shuttleworth, I beseech you: PLEASE BASE UBUNTU OFF DEBIAN STABLE, NOT DEBIAN TESTING. Why? Because Ubuntu is CUTTING EDGE ENOUGH now, and has all the basic application functionality well-covered that 98% of all users will want. No need to skate the edge anymore. Quit grinding us. If you want this to be "Linux for Human beings", then make it stable, and keep it stable. Stability should come ahead of being cutting edge. The cutting edge is inherently NOT for the masses. That's an axiom you can take to the bank.

OK, here are some specific, huge upgrading problems, described in general terms. I provide them mainly to underscore my general point above. No, I don't have the time to open like 15 seperate bug reports for each of these.

-When the upgrade popup first appeared inviting me to upgrade to 11.10, when I pressed the "Remind me later" button, it did nothing. I had to press the X in the upper right to make the invitation go away. It makes we wonder, "Is that installer tool QA'ed whatsoever? How did they miss that button being broken, which about 90% of all users will surely click (who don't want to upgrade that very instant they are first invited)."

-I wanted to use the "alternate" installation CD, to cut down on bandwidth used. This is because I'm on satellite internet, where the bandwidth is metered, and precious. Once this install was initiated, the installer asked if I wanted to download newer packages in addition to installing from CD. By pressing the "No," button it promised to not download anything from the internet, and just install from the CD. When I pressed "No", the installer DOWNLOADS FROM THE INTERNET ANYWAY.

-To confirm that I wasn't hallucinating, I wanted to open System Monitor to see if in fact downloading was occuring. The very instant I launched it, my DESKTOP SESSION WENT ALL WONKY. The sidebar along the left DISAPPEARED. Only two icons on the desktop remained, with my desktop background still there. But they flashed in and out of existence,and were unresponsive. The installer also flashed in and out of existence, and lost all it's window decorations! The installer froze when it wanted to make a popup to ask me a question, but that popup wouldn't show up at all. (At the time of configuring libpam0g). I had to kill the X session and try to continue the install, in a now-broken state from the command line.

-I discovered the alternate install CD was having I/O errors, even though it was freshly burnt (good thing I knew to look in the logs), since THE INSTALLER MADE NO CHECKSUM CHECK BEFORE INSTALLING, NOR INFORMED ME OF THE I/O ERRORS. Good thing I knew how to remove the CD from /etc/apt/sources.list, and "sudo apt-get update".

-After much command-line kung foo (manually installing "unity-greeter," "nvidia-current," blacklisting the "nouveau" kernel module (since I have an NVidia video card), then running "sudo do-release-upgrade", ), I managed to get the system to boot to a graphical screen.

-But my phpmyadmin, and mysql server still remain broken after the upgrade. Since MYSQL-CLIENT WAS NOT INSTALLED, BUT THE UPGRADE PROCESS ASSUMED IT SHOULD EXIST, now I can't even start mysql-server.

-Also broken: now when I launch the "boot-up manager", many (but not all) boot-time system services now have descriptions that are just strings that look like MD5sums, instead of English descriptions. See attachment. And turning on services that look like they should be on (such as lightdm, plymouth, udev, dmesg, and cron) just make error messages on the console at boot time. These SERVICES ARE SOMEHOW NO LONGER IN THE DOMAIN OF BOOT UP MANAGER TO CONTROL, but the end user is not informed of this. How are these services now to be managed, graphically, if not with the Boot Up Manager? Oh yeah, Boot Up Manager might also freeze if you enable several of these no-longer-controlled-services, and try to start them.

I have been using some kind of linux distro since 1997, and in all that time, I have never, ever been "done like this" before.  I have a few specific egregious gripes to add, after dragging myself out of a horrendous upgrade.  Good thing I have a Computer Science Degree, and 5 years experience as a Unix System Administrator.  I pity the newbies.  I'll never stray from an LTS-to-LTS upgrade again.

Before I get into specific, difficult-to-believe gripes, Mark Shuttleworth, I beseech you: PLEASE BASE UBUNTU OFF DEBIAN STABLE, NOT DEBIAN TESTING.  Why?  Because Ubuntu is CUTTING EDGE ENOUGH now, and has all the basic application functionality well-covered that 98% of all users will want.  No need to skate the edge anymore.  Quit grinding us.  If you want this to be "Linux for Human beings", then make it stable, and keep it stable.  Stability should come ahead of being cutting edge.  The cutting edge is inherently NOT for the masses.  That's an axiom you can take to the bank.

OK, here are some specific, huge upgrading problems, described in general terms.  I provide them mainly to underscore my general point above.  No, I don't have the time to open like 15 seperate bug reports for each of these.

-When the upgrade popup first appeared inviting me to upgrade to 11.10, when I pressed the "Remind me later" button, it did nothing.  I had to press the X in the upper right to make the invitation go away.  It makes we wonder, "Is that installer tool QA'ed whatsoever?  How did they miss that button being broken, which about 90% of all users will surely click (who don't want to upgrade that very instant they are first invited)."

-I wanted to use the "alternate" installation CD, to cut down on bandwidth used.  This is because I'm on satellite internet, where the bandwidth is metered, and precious.  Once this install was initiated, the installer asked if I wanted to download newer packages in addition to installing from CD.  By pressing the "No," button it promised to not download anything from the internet, and just install from the CD.  When I pressed "No", the installer DOWNLOADS FROM THE INTERNET ANYWAY.

-To confirm that I wasn't hallucinating, I wanted to open System Monitor to see if in fact downloading was occuring.  The very instant I launched it, my DESKTOP SESSION WENT ALL WONKY.  The sidebar along the left DISAPPEARED.  Only two icons on the desktop remained, with my desktop background still there.  But they flashed in and out of existence,and were unresponsive.  The installer also flashed in and out of existence, and lost all it's window decorations!  The installer froze when it wanted to make a popup to ask me a question, but that popup wouldn't show up at all.  (At the time of configuring libpam0g).  I had to kill the X session and try to continue the install, in a now-broken state from the command line.

-I discovered the alternate install CD was having I/O errors, even though it was freshly burnt (good thing I knew to look in the logs), since THE INSTALLER MADE NO CHECKSUM CHECK BEFORE INSTALLING, NOR INFORMED ME OF THE I/O ERRORS.  Good thing I knew how to remove the CD from /etc/apt/sources.list, and "sudo apt-get update".

-But my phpmyadmin, and mysql server still remain broken after the upgrade.  Since MYSQL-CLIENT WAS NOT INSTALLED, BUT THE UPGRADE PROCESS ASSUMED IT SHOULD EXIST, now I can't even start mysql-server.

-Also broken: now when I launch the "boot-up manager", many (but not all) boot-time system services now have descriptions that are just strings that look like MD5sums, instead of English descriptions.  See attachment.  And turning on services that look like they should be on (such as lightdm, plymouth, udev, dmesg, and cron)  just make error messages on the console at boot time.  These SERVICES ARE SOMEHOW NO LONGER IN THE DOMAIN OF BOOT UP MANAGER TO CONTROL, but the end user is not informed of this.  How are these services now to be managed, graphically, if not with the Boot Up Manager?  Oh yeah, Boot Up Manager might also freeze if you enable several of these no-longer-controlled-services, and try to start them.