Downgrade to 20.04 LTS

[Aaron Rainbolt]

On Sat, Oct 8, 2022 at 5:38 PM Jay Ridgley <jridgley2 at austin.rr.com> wrote:
>
> Good evening,
>
> Are there any real pit falls to watch for In doing a downgrade from
> 22.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS?

Sadly, yes, there is, namely, downgrades aren't actually possible.
While it is possible to downgrade individual packages, Ubuntu only
makes room for *upgrading* from one release to the next. Downgrading
is entirely untested, unsupported, and likely to be fraught with
problems if you try to do it manually.

The only ways to downgrade Ubuntu are to either restore a full Ubuntu
system from a backup, or to back up your data, wipe the disk, and
install an older version of Ubuntu, then restore your data from
backups. More than likely, if you have backups, you probably only
backed up your data, not the entire Ubuntu system, so it's quite
likely that you'll have to go with the second option (reinstalling
Ubuntu from scratch). However, there may be a better solution than
doing a downgrade. Read on.

> With the problems I have encountered I think I would be better off
> running 20.04 until I get some sort resolution for my problems.
>
> Major ones I have discovered:
>
> 1. GnuCash not longer works as it did
> 2. An application that uses FUSE does not function as it did before,
> however, there may be a fix for that via installing libfuse2.
>
> While 2 MAY be solved via that approach. The problem with GnuCash is a
> show stopper! I have to have my bookkeeping system running correctly,
> and it does not and I have NOT gotten resolution from the GnuCash folks
> thus far.

Rather than doing a full reinstall of Ubuntu in order to go back to a
previous version, you may be able to install virtualization software
on your system (such as virt-manager), then install an older version
of Ubuntu into a virtual machine. You can then move your GnuCash data
into the virtual machine and use GnuCash there. It may be somewhat
more cumbersome to use, but it should act as a good stopgap while you
wait for a bugfix to be issued for GnuCash. Once GnuCash is fixed
(which it hopefully will be), you should be able to move your data
back onto the physical system itself and have everything work.

I would personally recommend filing a bug against GnuCash in Ubuntu.
You can do that by opening a terminal (which can be done by pressing
Ctrl+Alt+T), then type "ubuntu-bug gnucash" and press Enter. Ubuntu
will collect information from your system and upload it to Ubuntu's
bug tracker, then provide you with the ability to describe the bug in
detail so that developers and volunteers can look into the problem
further and help resolve it. When you file the bug, please provide the
following details:

* Exact steps on how to reproduce the bug
* What you expected to happen
* What happened instead

If you're worried about possibly damaging your data in trying to
reproduce the bug, you can feel free to tell us what you expect will
reproduce the bug here on the mailing list, and someone here can try
to reproduce it. Then we may be able to file the bug for you and get
it fixed.

Very sorry to hear that your upgrade has gone awry. Hopefully we'll
figure out a fix for this issue sooner rather than later, and get your
system functioning the way it should again.
-- 
Aaron Rainbolt
Lubuntu and Ubuntu Member
https://github.com/ArrayBolt3
https://launchpad.net/~arraybolt3
@arraybolt3:matrix.org on Matrix, arraybolt3 on irc.libera.chat