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Oct. 13th, 2011 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhia_starsongWell, I did something rather stupid last week. Ubuntu had been having problems for about a month with the main part of their update server; I think maybe someone had hacked it. Anyway, I decided to move from the LTS (long-term support) release to the newest one. I should have known better, really; a while back I did this, and it didn't end well. This time, the 'upgrade' not only messed up my screen resolution, it also got rid of all my drivers for the wireless card and the ethernet connection. So, Catch-22, I couldn't get the drivers because I couldn't get online because I didn't have the drivers.
I took the laptop over to the store that fixed it back in December (when Dell proved exactly how absolutely useless they are) and had to leave it there over the weekend. It turned out that the problem couldn't be fixed without a fresh install. Fortunately, the guy had fixed a long-standing problem I've had where the stupid thing wouldn't correctly automount USB devices, which has meant that I've been unable to use flash drives, my (very nice) external hard drive, or my iPod. So, I asked him to back up my files and re-install the LTS release. $150 bucks later, I have a fresh install, working USB mount/unmount, and several updated packages that I had been wanting but didn't have the skill to install successfully on my own. (I really need to take the time to learn the basic BASH commands and stuff one of these days.) Lesson learned: don't get impatient and move from LTS until there's another LTS release. It never works out.
I took the laptop over to the store that fixed it back in December (when Dell proved exactly how absolutely useless they are) and had to leave it there over the weekend. It turned out that the problem couldn't be fixed without a fresh install. Fortunately, the guy had fixed a long-standing problem I've had where the stupid thing wouldn't correctly automount USB devices, which has meant that I've been unable to use flash drives, my (very nice) external hard drive, or my iPod. So, I asked him to back up my files and re-install the LTS release. $150 bucks later, I have a fresh install, working USB mount/unmount, and several updated packages that I had been wanting but didn't have the skill to install successfully on my own. (I really need to take the time to learn the basic BASH commands and stuff one of these days.) Lesson learned: don't get impatient and move from LTS until there's another LTS release. It never works out.
