Ubuntu - Version 9.04

[Cruncher Pete]

The latest version of Ubuntu - version 9.04 is released and is available from here:
Kubuntu and Edubuntu versions also available from the site.

[Mike Mitchell]

Here's the link I use for Kubuntu too. Although it has left me somewhat confused, the download I used was from Optus but they don't appear on this list. You will need to scroll down to some place called Ocean or something, apparently someone things Australia is there.

If, like me, you are with Exetel I think the Optus site is the best choice until the Exetel mirror servers have Kubuntu load on them.

Buy the way, Cruncher Pete, nice topic. 

[WikiWill]

I clicked the button to do the upgrade on my 8.10 Ubuntu box, and it has crashed and burned...  It stopped part way through with a fatal error to do with missing kernel dependency, and has dropped offline during reboot.  When I get physical access I will see what the recovery options are, otherwise it's "back to the ISO" time :(

Don't let this scare you though.  I'm sure you will be fine :D

[Mike Mitchell]

During the boot you should be asked if you want a menu, ask for it, select recovery without the GUI but with networking. Then run apt-get using the dist-upgrade option. You may need to do that a few times to get everything you need.

I also suspect that the upgrade from 8.n to 9.n should be done after closing the GUI and logged in as root in single user mode.

[WikiWill]

Thanks for those tips, Mike. Yeah I had a little chat with myself - I have never tried an upgrade in the GUI before, but there was a nice little dialog box offering juicy upgrade goodness, and I convinced myself that everything I've learned about OS upgrades could finally be proved wrong...

This is a dual boot box so I am back on Win2008 until I collect enough useful advice like yours to try again. Maybe later tonight.

The only effort I spent on the 8.10 version was compiling nmap and installing BOINC so I can fall back to a fresh install if needed.

[Vajras]

i'm running v8.10 as a dual boot installed thru wubi - i've now been offered v9.04 thru software update as v8.10 was offered before.

but i had probs before when updating from 8.04 to 8.10 and reverted tbaxck to v8.04 before finally going with wubi last month - i now have v8.10 correctly.

does anyone know if v9.04 will update correctly with wubi as its initial installer as opposed to a clean install (i've ordered the CD)?

[Mike Mitchell]

Vajras,
That's the sort of problem that made me drop back to the CLI and do the upgrade from there. I've had nothing but trouble when X tries to upgrade while running. Which is bloody infuriating considering the Linux image itself can be updated while it's running - even if it does sometimes require a reboot afterwards.

When I had that problem with updating from 8.04 to 8.10 I just did an init 1 or 0, which ever it is, and ran sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade repeatedly until the install finished. Running sudo apt-get install seemed to have some impact in both Kubuntu 8.04 to 8.10. Which the documentation did suggest should be the case.

With the upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 I had more success running sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get dist-upgrade using the -m and -f options when the process stalled. But there is no reason why they could be used anyway. The command apt-get dist-upgrade has internal smarts and only downloads what can be handled on one pass and only the part of the upgrade that's needed next, so running the two commands repeatedly is expected use.

There were also a large number of packages that wouldn't install during the upgrade to 9.04 and I found that if I select something that looked critical, say like libc6, then ran sudo apt-get [-m | -f] install libc6 kdebits kview then the install would pick up many dependencies and, I think, other packages that were near enough now.

What I found confusing was that some of the newly installed packages would then be removed latter, deselected, reselected and installed again. Occasionally the second install would be a latter version of the package but not always.

NOTE: [-m | -f] means either -f or -m, they may work together but I haven't tried it.
NOTE: It helps a you lot if you always put more than one package after the install option. 

[Vajras]

Many thanks for that Mike - yours is one of the clearest upgrade info explanations that i've seen for a long time - espec with the flags - well done and esp for taking so much time to write it all out

+1

[Mike Mitchell]

You're welcome. Now I just hope it all works as advertised. 

[clownius]

Time to put this on my server methinks :)

[Cruncher Pete]

For what its worth, I tried a clean install of Ubunto 9.04 on one of my machines. I gave up after many tries as I could not get a higher resolution than 640x480 even after installing NVIDIA's latest version for a 9800GT. It seems that the install has no option like in 8.10 for a proprietory card and you need to download it directly from NVIDIA.  Knowing me, I probably installed it incorrectly... :cry2:

[clownius]

The alpha and beta i played with did let you install nvidia drivers via the package manager.  It was Kubuntu though

[Cruncher Pete]

Thanks Clownious, the Gremmlins got to my system yesterday.   Today, I reinstalled again and no problems. :coolgleam:

[Cruncher Pete]

I just discovered something new in Ubuntu 9.04 called Computer Janitor..  I have no idea weather it will be usefull or not but it is new. This application helps you find and remove software packages you might not need anymore.  It also suggests configuaration changes that might benefit you.  Available from >system > Adminsistration > System Janitor...

[kashi]

Nice find Cruncher Pete. I'll check it out when I finish building my new machine.

This is not a included in Ubuntu 9.04 but while on the topic of cleaning unneeded items there is a program called Bleachbit that is able to clean out things like cache, cookies, logs, temporary files, etc. I haven't used it myself yet but it sounds like it could be useful. There is a version for Ubuntu 9.04.

Bleachbit