Kubuntu 7.10 live install: a great working PAIN in the neck...

Fri Jan 25 00:20:20 UTC 2008

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Hello I've been a kubuntu user since breezy. I've got it on both my
aging p3 desktop and my AMD Turion 64x2 laptop. I like the idea of only
having to edit the sources list to point at the next release and then
just use apt-get upgrade to move on to the next stable release without
having to backup and restore all my data while I recreate my user accounts
and reconfigure all my configuration files to suit my preferences every time.
it worked fine when I moved on to dapper.  But when I advanced to edgy, my
desktop lost something... So when I was ready to upgrade it to 7.10 I decided
to backup all my stuff and do a fresh install using the live desktop cd image.

I must admit it did a great job. However it was also a serious pain in
the err "neck". My p3 desktop is a multi-boot machine. It still has
win98se installed along with DrDos and 4 linux installations. Including
functioning copies of breezy and of FC1 both of which can burn cd's
and play a cd or dvd. Functions which haven't worked reliably on the old
p3 in more recent versions of linux. Especially the sound. So I keep the
old installations available. I didn't want the installer to do anything
with any of the fat or ext2 file systems on the p3 (except to format and
install on the 15gig /dev/hdc4 partition. I didn't even want it to make
mount points for them in /mnt. I also didn't want it to mess with my
existing grub boot loader in the mbr, but I did want it to create it's own
grub boot loader on /Dev/FD0 to provide a back up boot method until I had
time to manually edit my menu.lst file. 

I'm real glad I happened to click on an advanced button where I found a
place where I could tell it to install grub to the floppy because I'd
have been frustrated if it trashed my mbr in favor of it's own boot loader.
I must admit it did a surprisingly good job of including all my linux
installations in it's own menu.lst however.  

I found it a bit cumbersome to have to edit each partitions mount point
to a blank field (except hdc4 which I edited to "/") and then wait for it
to re-examine my partitions before I could edit the next one. And then when
I was ready to continue, to have to answer a pop-up warning for each and
every one to tell me that if I didn't assign a mount point, it wasn't
going to use that partition at all. 

For all of that, once it was ready to actually do the install, it did a
great job. Though I still can't get it to use the sound card, and for
some reason, I can't put anything in the cd-rw drive without getting a
steady stream of errors. I can use the dvd-rom however, and If I must
burn something on the p3, I can always boot the breezy, fc1 or fc6
installations. 

I'm mostly happy with kubuntu 7.10. I'm thinking of upgrading the edgy
on my laptop to it. But I'm a little concerned with media notifications.
I really dislike my computer taking any action (including sending me a
pop-up input box) just because I stick a disk in a drive. I prefer to
launch whichever application I happen to feel like using when I'm ready
to use it, via cli in a bash shell and/or the run prompt. But danged if
I can remember how I stopped breezy, dapper, edgy, fc1, or fc6 from
interrupting and/or delaying my own access to it while it puts that
durned pop-up in my way... If anybody would be so kind as to refresh my
memory on how to stop that behavior with Kubuntu 7.10, I'd greatly
appreciate it...

Thanks 

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