3 ms·

Download new version in KDE's update tool. Same as doing apt-get dist-upgrade as far as I know. It was certainly offered to me. In the end I reinstalled regula

Download new version in KDE's update tool. Same as doing apt-get dist-upgrade as far as I know. It was certainly offered to me. In the end I reinstalled regular old Ubuntu, because there are no real alternatives, and it's at least marginally less in need of grandma-hard maintenance. (I still had to go into Grub's hidden boot menu and fiddle with the boot flags to get it to work - Ubuntu's installer doesn't do nomodeset by default, even though many brand new graphics cards will boot you into a black screen without it).

vetinari 11y ago
In Ubuntu, apt-get dist-upgrade does not upgrade to new release. It has just "smart" dependency resolution. I'm using it to upgrade kernels from command line, because normal apt-get upgrade won't upgrade them. If you want to upgrade entire distribution from a command line to a new one, you have to run 'do-release-upgrade'. I was asking what you clicked, because at least in the main/normal/unity version, the upgrade isn't offered to the user. I was wondering why and after a bit of googling, I've found that statement about waiting for 16.04.1 before flipping the switch. About alternatives: if your grandma can live without bleeding edge packages and third-party ppas, I think that Centos is a good alternative. Once installed, it will run for years. There's also Fedora, which looks nicer and more polished, but you have to go through pain of upgrading at least once per year (basically just like non-LTS Ubuntu). GRUB: nomodeset disables KMS, that's why it is not default. Do you have an Nvidia card?
- vintermann 11y ago
  Well then, I didn't know that about dist-upgrade. But either way, I have used the graphical update tool's "A new version of Ubuntu is available", and it always did a proper upgrade. I assumed the Kubuntu version would do the same (and indeed, it certainly tried). Yup, a GTX 980 Ti. Surely for the installer nomodeset is a sensible default - once the Nvidia drivers are installed it doesn't matter, but it's tricky to get the drivers without a functioning display. I'm not actually looking for something for my grandma, of course. And I can usually recover my system when stuff like this happens, as long as I have a different online connection and a few hours to spare. I just hate doing it.
  - vetinari 11y ago
    > I'm not actually looking for something for my grandma, of course. And I can usually recover my system when stuff like this happens, as long as I have a different online connection and a few hours to spare. I just hate doing it. Well, me too. I have an HTPC (2009-ish box with Atom and Nvidia ION) running minimal Ubuntu installation, and that means that updates are always exciting (i.e. there is X server, but no display manager, no desktop environment and no gnome/kde/whatever config tools, the only X client is kodi run as an upstart service). Boy, how I hate upgrading that... Usually only after kodi stops supporting the version I'm running. Last time (12.04->14.04) the problem was that the kernel in 14.04.2 installer was too new for the nvidia driver (304) in the repo. Next upgrade (hopefully no sooner than next year) I'm going to learn at least how to change upstart service into systemd service. On the other hand, the Ubuntu machine that my parents use (literally definition of grandma and grandpa :) ) updates smoothly and it really is just pressing the button.

vetinari 11y ago

In Ubuntu, apt-get dist-upgrade does not upgrade to new release. It has just "smart" dependency resolution. I'm using it to upgrade kernels from command line, because normal apt-get upgrade won't upgrade them. If you want to upgrade entire distribution from a command line to a new one, you have to run 'do-release-upgrade'. I was asking what you clicked, because at least in the main/normal/unity version, the upgrade isn't offered to the user. I was wondering why and after a bit of googling, I've found that statement about waiting for 16.04.1 before flipping the switch. About alternatives: if your grandma can live without bleeding edge packages and third-party ppas, I think that Centos is a good alternative. Once installed, it will run for years. There's also Fedora, which looks nicer and more polished, but you have to go through pain of upgrading at least once per year (basically just like non-LTS Ubuntu). GRUB: nomodeset disables KMS, that's why it is not default. Do you have an Nvidia card?

vintermann 11y ago
Well then, I didn't know that about dist-upgrade. But either way, I have used the graphical update tool's "A new version of Ubuntu is available", and it always did a proper upgrade. I assumed the Kubuntu version would do the same (and indeed, it certainly tried). Yup, a GTX 980 Ti. Surely for the installer nomodeset is a sensible default - once the Nvidia drivers are installed it doesn't matter, but it's tricky to get the drivers without a functioning display. I'm not actually looking for something for my grandma, of course. And I can usually recover my system when stuff like this happens, as long as I have a different online connection and a few hours to spare. I just hate doing it.
- vetinari 11y ago
  > I'm not actually looking for something for my grandma, of course. And I can usually recover my system when stuff like this happens, as long as I have a different online connection and a few hours to spare. I just hate doing it. Well, me too. I have an HTPC (2009-ish box with Atom and Nvidia ION) running minimal Ubuntu installation, and that means that updates are always exciting (i.e. there is X server, but no display manager, no desktop environment and no gnome/kde/whatever config tools, the only X client is kodi run as an upstart service). Boy, how I hate upgrading that... Usually only after kodi stops supporting the version I'm running. Last time (12.04->14.04) the problem was that the kernel in 14.04.2 installer was too new for the nvidia driver (304) in the repo. Next upgrade (hopefully no sooner than next year) I'm going to learn at least how to change upstart service into systemd service. On the other hand, the Ubuntu machine that my parents use (literally definition of grandma and grandpa :) ) updates smoothly and it really is just pressing the button.