Ubuntu will be the next big desktop

19Mar/078

Ubuntu will be the next big desktop

How can I tell?

I installed Ubuntu on an old machine I had last night. All I had were 6.06 install disks so I figured I would just upgrade the distribution after I got it up and running. No problem with the install, I start the upgrade. It says the upgrade will take about 4 hours to download the files and run and can not be stopped once it has started. No problem, I started this at 10PM. I wake up this morning and check on it. Guess what? After it finished downloading the files the upgrade ran and stopped. It popped up a dialog box asking me if I wanted to replace a file. I clicked “Replace” and it went on. I had to leave so I hope it finished the upgrade and restarted without my babysitting services.

That’s how I know it’ll be the next big desktop. That’s what people are used to. Long running processes that stop for user confirmation at random points during the process requiring you to babysit them.

Filed under: Linux Leave a comment

http://paulg57.blogspot.com Paul

Hi

I wonder how old was your computer. I have installed 6.06 on two different machines, one a 5 year old xp desktop running at 1.0 gig with 256 meg ram and it took only 1 hour.

the other was a 3 year dell laptop, inspiron 1000 and again it took about 1 hour.
http://www.lazycoder.com Scott

Paul,

The install itself didn’t take an hour. The download of the files to upgrade to 6.10 took four hours.

I think the initial install of 6.06 on this machine took about 45 minutes. The machine is about 5 or 6 years old. The upgrade seemed to be speeding right along when I left.
http://terminally-incoherent.com Luke

I guess they do this because upgrading to the newest distribution is not a straightforward process during which your system might temporarily become unstable. This is why they provide those dialogs.

If you do it on the command line via apt and you can use the -y parameter to force a ‘yes’ answer to all the prompts.
http://www.lazycoder.com Scott

Argh! Luke, where were you at 11:30PM last night when I started it!
http://www.webberlog.com Gabri

As usual, the solution to any Linux problem is the command line
http://www.lazycoder.com Scott

Gabri, the sad thing is I *did* start this from the command line but I didn’t know about the -y option.

I used the instructions from here. http://dailycupoftech.com/upgrade-ubuntu-606-to-610/
http://ubuntu-tutorials.com Christer Edwards

I second the suggestion for using the -y option. If you know you want it added, tell it to assume yes and it’ll automate the process.

Sorry you had that trouble, that is pretty frustrating.
http://www.lazycoder.com Scott

Checked the upgrade when I got home last night. It went fine, it was waiting on me to confirm the removal of some packages but oh well. I’ll know for the next release.

Sound card still doesn’t work, but it’s some kind of modem/sound card I *think* by Lucent. I’ll either find drivers for it or just replace it with a Creative card I have lying around.