Ubuntu (Lucid Lynx) and upgrade issues

Last week, I started noticing a sudden increase in traffic on my website. Curious to understand the sudden interest in my website I started analyzing the traffic patterns and found out that majority of the traffic was hitting the articles that dealt with repairing Ubuntu. I admit that I have stopped following Linux development closely for the past year or for reasons I won't go into so I didn't know that Ubuntu was planning a release on Apr 29th.

Sadly, this has been a consistent feature with Ubuntu for the last two upgrades. I have seen the issues with Ubuntu happen since Ubuntu started supporting in-place non-destructive OS instead of a destructive upgrade. The non-destructive upgrade was a welcome feature and would go a long way in making Linux a viable choice for Corporate desktop OS. However, the issues with the upgrade really make it a bit tricky.

The display card failure has been a consistent feature with Ubuntu for the last two upgrades. I have seen the issues with Ubuntu happen since Ubuntu started supporting in-place non-destructive OS instead of a destructive upgrade.

On the brighter side, the issues that crop up after upgrade are not of a serious nature but are enough to stump most folks. The OS, kernel, all services are upgraded nicely but for some reason, the display adapter configuration is not carried over successfully after installation and it reverts to a default configuration. The installation also does not carry over the configuration for display device, monitor and the screen which really is a bummer.

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
	Device		"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Under normal circumstances, the OS, if not given device details will happily work with default configuration although with reduced functionality. Somehow Ubuntu is unable to deal with it and it just displays a blank screen. You can fix this issue by remaining calm and configuring the xorg.conf file manually using the single user command line login option.

Just to try and reproduce the issues that the users are facing, I upgraded by installation of Karmic Koala using the in-place upgrade method. Predictably I also faced the display issue. However this time around Ubuntu handled the issues much more gracefully and clearly told me what is happening by popping up a message. On the next screen after clicking OK, it gave me options to handle the issue. I chose the last option and restarted X. On reboot Ubuntu understood the device correctly and configured it properly.

I really like the new graphics and the features that Ubuntu has introduced in this release. I haven't had a chance to explore them all yet. More on that to come.