Ubuntu Upgrade

I'm a big fan of Ubuntu Linux. Of all the flavours of Linux out there it's one of the most user friendly with a huge range of software and nearly everything works "straight out of the box" (except there's no box).

Upgrading is a snap. Usually, you just click on the "Upgrade now" button in the Update Manager and wait for it all to download and install itself. I've done a couple of upgrades now and it's all been sweet.

So I really didn't think that there would be any dramas. Just click and leave it to download while we have the wedding happen and automagically it would be no longer 9.04 but 9.10.

But this time of all the hundreds of thousands who did that, I was the one with the rogue problem. The problem was quite severe- it would not recognise my password, or rather it would recognise it but wouldn't do the next thing which is to acccept it and log me on.

Tim and I spent hours trying to track down the exact problem, unsuccessfully. In the end I had to use a "live CD" to boot, then use that to back up as much data as I could onto a portable hard drive before doing a complete "fresh" install. That means it is inevitable that some things have been lost but mostly I saved my data. And now I've nearly got all my settings and programs back to "normal" so it's all good.

And Ubuntu 9.10 itself- brilliant! Everything just looks so darned good! Fonts are nice, colour scheme is great. Gnome is itself a great desktop. I haven't even changed the wallpaper or the colour scheme yet, which I normally do soon after any install. 

The only problem I keep running into is the Ubuntu version of Open Office does not support databases, whch is a must for me. There's probably an extra package somewhere that is optional but I havne't found it. I downloaded the original version put out by openoffice.org.

Anyway, now the trauma of the faulty upgrade is over, 9.10 is a great release.

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