Installing Ubuntu 20.04 desktop GNOME was not a smooth experience

[Bill Dietrich]

Hello, hope I'm not violating any rules.  I want to relate
my experience, which leads to some feature requests
(which I think go on this mailing list) and some bug reports
(which I should file elsewhere).


I have been running Mint 19.3, but wanted to change to Ubuntu 20.04.
Laptop is a cheapo Dell Inspiron circa 2011, legacy BIOS, hard disk.

Did loads of backups, everything I could think of.  Still missed a few=2 
items,
such as global settings in VSCode.  I want to install all apps fresh, 
not copy
my old home directory across.

Booted FreeDOS and updated BIOS, no problems.

Booted Win10 installer and installed Windows 10 to test my bluetooth 
hardware (which
didn't work under Mint).  It doesn't work under Win10 either, so the 
problem must be hardware.
And installing Win10 is really nasty, Microsoft tries to get you to 
create or
link to all kinds of cloud accounts.


1. Booted USB stick with Ubuntu 20.04 image on it, no problems.  Ran 
installer.
Install choices seem to be "install Ubuntu alongside Windows" or "have 
Ubuntu use the
whole disk, wipe out Windows".  I want the latter, simple.  I want one 
partition for
everything (no swap partition, no /home partition).

2. Kept getting "want to unmount /dev/sdb [the USB stick I booted from] ?".
Neither yes nor no would make it stop asking.

3. No choice or indication, under Advanced or anywhere else, of 
swap-partition vs swap-file vs no-swap.

4. Under Advanced, choice to use LVM and encrypt whole disk, but no 
choice to just encrypt each home directory, which is what I think I had 
in Mint.

5. Tried to install with LVM and encryption, got "An error occurred 
while confguring encrypted volumes.  The configuration has been aborted".

6. Went back and forth several times, tried "advanced partitioning 
tool", tried install,
got "you haven't defined a boot partition".

7. Without using "advanced partitioning tool", got some partitioning to 
start, then a message "Error informing the kernel about modifications to 
partition /dev/sda5 - device or resource busy. This means you shouldn't 
mount it or use it in any way before rebooting".  But no quit or restart=2 
button.  I kept going, bad idea.

8. Soon something (probably partitioner) crashed.  Installer said "want=2 
to report the problem ?",
and then started this standard UbuntuOne bug-reporting web page that 
required account registration and email and logging in etc.  Who's going=2 
to have access to that info in the middle of installing ?

9. Tried to shut down the system and it hung after failing to unmount a 
few things. Powered off.

10. Booted again, and this time the installer is seeing an Ubuntu system 
already on the hard disk,
along with Windows, and giving more choices (4 choices instead of the 
original 2 choices).

11. Selecting "overwrite that Ubuntu system" worked.  Install succeeded.

12. Running the new system from hard disk:
"swapon --show" and "inxi -P" both say "swap /dev/dm-2 partition, size 
976M, used 0B".
There is no /swapfile.
"lsblk -f" says /dev/sda6 is type "crypto_LUKS" and two levels
inside that there is a "vgubuntu-swap_1" which has fstype "swap".
So I guess I have no swap, and full-disk (full extended Linux partition) 
encryption ?
Am I right about these ?


So, some feature requests for the installer:

A. Although I didn't want this kind of config, I think under "Advanced" 
there should be an easy button-and-field way to say "separate / and 
/home partitions, use N GB for / and rest for /home".

B. I think under "Advanced" there should be an easy choice of 
swap-partition vs swap-file vs no-swap.  And once you're about to commit=2 
to installing, there should be some indicator of what you're going to 
get for swap: swap-partition or swap-file or no-swap.

C. I think crashes during install should have some streamlined 
crash-reporting mechanism, not involving an UbuntuOne account and 
logging in etc.

D. I think that "error informing the kernel" message should have a big 
red "restart right now" button next to it.

E. IIRC, in Advanced it mostly just said "want LVM" without any 
explanation of the implications.  Maybe I'm remembering wrongly. Would=2 
be nice to have a tool-tip or something there.  IMO the "Advanced" 
button section is not as "advanced" as using "advanced partitioning 
tool", it's more intermediate, so a little more help there would be good.

Thanks for any information or feedback.

Bill Dietrich



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