Having just performed an update to my Linux installation my current advice to those who have a dual boot Linux installation is DO NOT. I have Vista and Linux to dual boot (or rather HAD). Despite erring on the side of caution when presented with the advice to install GRUB2 on all hard drives and not doing this (why install over the MBR for another OS?) I now have a poorly performing installation of the latest version and no ability to boot into Vista. While this is no great loss I have serious issues of Firefox greying out and simply typing this post is subject to significant lag issues - I type and a few seconds later the text appears.
Visiting the Ubuntu forums is no help and the advice being provided is being drowned out by others who are experiencing the same problems. One recommendation is to use the recovery CD that came with your OS. This is great if your system did come with one. My machine came with a recovery partition that is no longer accessible.
As a long time supporter of Linux I am astounded that they have rushed this version out with the resultant issues that many are facing. Fortunately I have no problem as I have the technical ability to understand what is going on and recover from this. In addition I made the decision a while back to have Windows as a secondary OS. I do pity those who are now in the position of having a rather shoddy installation of an OS and no clear announcement from Canonical.
BAD, BAD, BAD.
UPDATE:
The latest download 'appears' to be better and there is currently an update of packages d/l'ing. Personally I am certainly NOT happy that one OS interferes with another AND also a partition that was not marked as active/mounted (i.e., my recovery partition).
For Canonical I think this is a hard lesson learned in a hard way. There are conspiracy theorists out there who are insisting that this is their way of tying new users into the OS. I think they need to do a serious review of their pre-release testing.
For those of you experiencing type lag in Firefox... a 'simple' re-install is 'all' that is required.
For those who are looking for a Vista fix to their "I do not have the original disks" issue there is a solution from MS which is covered here. I tried but... no joy yet. More anon.
UPDATE 2:
Nope, that did not work. The Vista recovery disk tries to repair and nothing. If anyone has some sensible suggestions I would be interested in hearing from them. I visited the forums and there are still people experiencing exactly the same problem. Canonical this is your fault for rushing with a known bug, saying it was fixed so you could all go off and party, and there are still people losing access to their machines.
UPDATE 3:
After much grief I now have a 'working' machine. Not exactly the way I want it, but I now have a working machine. For those having problems with a Lucid Lynx installation after UPGRADING rather than a fresh install my recommendation is that you perform an install rather than an upgrade.
Lucid completely destroyed my Vista MBR and I have performed a complete install of Linux (well several/many installs until it worked 'correctly'). Also, I have installed VirtualBox to utilise my XP licence on a virtual machine. This allows me to run the apps I want that are not available under Linux. It is working relatively well currently and I will post more once I have that working correctly. At the moment I have XP displayed on my second screen and can switch easily between them. There is a lot of tweaking to be done and additional installations of software to get it trimmed to what I need. As an example, I am in the process of configuring file/network shares with SMB. More anon re that.
I am annoyed with Canonical as this is clearly bad management who allowed/forced a release of a product that was not ready for release. Thanks for redirecting my life for two days of PC rebuilding and installations that should not have happened.
The resultant impact on users is not hard to assess if you visit the forums and look for dual boot. It is clear that this does not work. I have lost my Vista installation. No great loss in one regard as I used Linux/Vista on an 80/20 basis with Vista being used for just a couple of applications that are not available under Linux - one game, Cinta Notes, an ID3 tag editor, and a few others.
What I will say, despite my negative comments above, is that this release of Ubuntu appears to be much better than prior versions and would recommend it to others as long as it is a none dual boot scenario.
Update 4
After using Lucid Lynx for a while now I am in the process of putting together a further posting on getting Lucid working with a virtual machine (or two or three) using Virtualbox OSE - I have this working and sharing files across XP and Lucid. My only current comment is that Firefox (with certain sites using Ajax) runs like a dead-dog with no legs and give lots of 'grey outs'... investigating an alternate browser. More anon.
Update 5 - 19/06/10
Well a lot of people seem to be having the same problem as I did. Having worked through the various issues (main one being I do not have my boot disks for Vista but do have a proper (legal) copy of XP) associated with this problem. I have searched extensively on the internet for a solution and there does not appear to be one (if someone does have one then please let me know). In the meantime... VirtualBox is a very workable solution. More anon...
2 comments:
The Day After, after having updated 9.10 to 10.04 and encountering NVIDA resolution problems, I latched on to a pre release thread attached to a bug report related to my problem. At least one poster in there, mere hours before release, was absolutely stunned that this release was going out with the video problems left unfixed. I think you have to blame management for this one. The tea leaves were there for the reading.
When I attempted to upgrade from 9.10 to 10.4, I had few Ubuntu issues but Grub failed to recognize my Vista partition which nevertheless appeared to still be intact. Frankly, I don't understand why it was necessary to change my grub settings which were working perfectly well prior to the update. My efforts to force grub to recognize my Vista partition failed despite advice from the Community. Using the windows terminal typing bootrec.exe/fixmbr and then bootrec.exe/fix boot restored my Vista access but terminated my Grub access to Ubuntu. I attempted to do a clean install with a burned ISO image but got the same result, so I am back to my 9.10 and Vista original dualboot configuration.
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