Upgrading from Hardy

Sat Feb 6 19:04:57 UTC 2016

On Saturday, February 06, 2016 1:27 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> AFAICS you have not told us what PC you have.
> Can you tell us as much as possible about it?
> CPU model, speed; RAM; hard disk; graphics card & VRAM.

I had briefly said it at the bottom of an early email ... but not the detail you asked ... so here we go:

Let's start with how old ... I got it from Dell in January 2008.

  PC type: Dell Inspiron 531S
  RAM: 1.9 GiB
  Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ x2
  Graphics Card: GeForce 6150SE nForce 430/Integrated/SSE2
    - Vendor: nVidia 
  OS type: 64-bit
  HD:   243.9 GB

I don't know about VRAM ... how do I find that out?

> There is little point in working hard trying to install ancient releases.

Yes ... I have to agree ... My initial plan was to upgrade: Hardy -> Lucid -> Precise -> Trusty.
But I messed something up well and truly when trying the upgrade from Hardy -> Lucid, and finished up copying all my important files elsewhere,
and doing a fresh install (erasing everything) to Lucid from CD. Precise and Trusty didn't fit on a CD, so I tried booting from USB ...
Precise just seemed to hang, but it's quite possible I wasn't patient enough, though Trusty was working (I tried the fresh install, erasing everything),
but it got to a point where the screen went haywire and as far as I could see that was the end of that.
So I re-installed Lucid, and later on lashed out and bought some DVD-Rs ... and burnt a copy of Precise (and also Trusty ... but in the end haven't used it).
Then I tried a fresh install of Precise from the DVD ... and succeeded ... when I logged in, it offered the upgrade to Trusty ... so I accepted but before it got
too far, it detected that my Graphics Card with its original driver was inadequate for the 'unity' desktop of Trusty and so it reverted back to the original state,
but there was now an icon at top right, which I'd noticed with Lucid as well, which offered the installation of proprietary drivers, in particular the one for
accelerated 3D whatever, basically what the Trusty upgrade said my current installation lacked. So I activated the nVidia driver that was recommended,
and after a reboot went back and accepted the offer to upgrade to Trusty ... and I'm pleased to say this was a success.
I now have a working Trusty installation on my desktop.

Of course, I still have a lot to do ... work out all the extra software I had installed ... and apt-get it back ... but this time I'm recording every step I do,
in case I need to do it all again.

I did have one bit of nervousness ... I opened a DOC (actually .odt) file ... and then the screen went all fuzzy, but on rebooting, the system seems to have figured out what resolution setting I really should have had, and the .odt file is now as clear as a bell.

I'm one that has a million and one aliases for things, specifically one that opens up an xterm with an AntiqueWhite background and blue text ... and also uses the -T option to get a title on the top of the window ... but that's not working. I've checked the man page and that option is listed there as equivalent to -title ... but that
doesn't do anything either. Any ideas about that?

So, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm just about ready to write: RESOLVED
... but have at least one niggling issue and there will probably be more before I've finished getting all my software back.
I used to have a kubuntu setup ... but currently have the default gnome(?) setup ... haven't quite decided on whether I'll re-install the kubuntu desktop.

> If you can only boot from CD, not DVD, but you have broadband
> Internet, then use a netboot CD and install directly from Ubuntu's
> servers.
>
> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/

The netboot idea is an interesting one ... I noticed that Debian promote that (I briefly considered going down that path), but wasn't aware until your
email that it was available for ubuntu. I'll keep it in mind if for some reason, I have to try again.

> If your PC is extremely old -- say around 10+ years old ...

As you can see from above ... only 8 (possibly really 9) ... and it does read DVDs (but I wasn't sure about that when I started)
but what you are saying is that when Trusty is end of life, I may have trouble with my next upgrade.

Anyway thanks Nils, the two Colins (Watson and Law), and now Liam ... it's all been very helpful.

Regards,
Greg G
________________________________________
From: ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com [ubuntu-users-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com] On Behalf Of Liam Proven [lproven at gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2016 1:27 AM
To: Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions
Subject: Re: Upgrading from Hardy

On 4 February 2016 at 20:08, Gregory Gamble <greg.gamble at uwa.edu.au> wrote:
> I may yet buy myself a new PC ... but I'd like to convince myself a little more that I've reached that point where I need one.

AFAICS you have not told us what PC you have.

Can you tell us as much as possible about it?

CPU model, speed; RAM; hard disk; graphics card & VRAM.

There is little point in working hard trying to install ancient releases.

If you can only boot from CD, not DVD, but you have broadband
Internet, then use a netboot CD and install directly from Ubuntu's
servers.

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/netboot/

These contain just enough OS to run the setup program, get online and
fetch the rest.

If your PC is extremely old -- say around 10+ years old -- then it can
probably not run any supported modern release of Ubuntu.

However, you might be able to run 12.04 which has about another year
left. There is a special edition of this for old machines:

http://www.lxle.net/

You will probably need the old 32-bit edition of 12.04 -- it's on the
download menu.

--
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