Ubuntu 10.04 installation fun

Although now I use Windows most of the time, here and there I feel the need to update Ubuntu on my computer. This time I’m curious mostly about OpenShot video editor. I had Ubuntu 9.10 installed in Virtual Box and there was obviously no problem with upgrade from inside the OS itself. I have 8.04 on my computer and I’m curious how long will that take. 🙂 Finally I have one more 8.04 on wife’s notebook and because that one refused to boot properly with GUI I decided to try different way – install the new Ubuntu from CD over the old one. I don’t need any data from there after those two years anyway. 😉

Download and burn was painless, I put the CD into that notebook and booted from it. There was some warning that the initialization didn’t went well, but after OK I went to GUI where I could investigate (so the previous dialog said), but I carelessly went on. Installation wizard took me to partition table and I could decide if I want to install Ubuntu side by side with my Windows (I had 1 EXT3 and 2 NTFS partitions) or to use the whole disk – or use advanced option. I decided for the first option thinking that it will not touch the partitions. Probably naive. Resizing process started on 0% and after ten minutes of fear it finished on 0% and aborted because it couldn’t resize the partitions (probably NTFS? I don’t know). I tried to open 40G and 100G NTFS partitions from Places menu – no response. “Whatever!” I said to myself and restarted the computer. Windows booted, 100G partition was fscked and everything was fine in the end – what a relief.

Encouraged by this success (=no data loss ;-)) I went for one more try – and of course again without backup. You know… my trust in Ubuntu was shaken a bit, but it did no harm after all. So far. So I wanted to explore, how to get over that partition problem and replace the old 8.04. So I booted from installation CD again – this time it went to the GUI without any warning dialog. Strange, but nothing I haven’t seen many times before with many different products, right? Things just change in time. 🙂 Install, partitions dialog. This time – out of options – I went for manual selection and specified the root partition and of course that I want to format. Everything seems to be going nicely from then on – at least so it seems when I blink at the notebook screen next to me.

When I rethought my initial try – as I always try to find the problem, and why not start with blaming myself – I realized the possibility, that the installer wanted to add 10.04 to 8.04 and Windows XP and leave them all side by side. Of course stupid from my point of view. The description maybe was clear enough – I don’t remember it now. Maybe I just read it wrong and it would be obvious when read properly that 10.04 will be added and 8.04 will be preserved as well (along with Windows XP of course). In any case I was still missing simple dialog: “This will be your new partition table… blabla… proceed?” I’d definitely go back from there and rethink my procedures.

Still I have to say that Ubuntu is as good as it always was and probably getting better all the time (it should, right?). I’m happy that no data was lost and my systems are nicely upgrading on the background while I’m writing this or it’s done already on my wife’s computer. Life is just beautiful. 🙂

Bottom line: There is missing a clear path how to replace older Linux, be it Ubuntu or whatever else. Something fast, clear, nice for lame user without selecting / partition in advanced mode (not that complicated, but still). One question: “Do you really want to replace this BlaBla Linux? All data on that partition will be lost. Your Windows XP will not be affected. Proceed?” That is the thing I’m missing as an upgrade option.