Failed Ubuntu 22.04 Upgrade, fault is likely with Nvidia GPU

Ubuntu
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I think, those who do not promote Linux as the one and only thing one should use as an operating system do not have this responsibility, because they usually pick what works best. If Linux would work better and not be constantly broken, riddled with bugs & security issues, it would easily be the most popular operating systems on the entire planet.
However, those who promote Linux as if it were a viable or even better alternative to Windows etc., need to stand up to their claims and should make these things work, before claiming Linux is perfectly fine.

For example, most people I have seen on this forum, who pretty much never complain about Linux and say that it works perfectly fine, are literally just checking mails & open the browser with a single tab open. Wow. Of course, Linux is enough, if you only do this. Though, if you try anything more advanced with GUIs, then you often hit a road block really quick.

I would also assume you are doing almost nothing on your machine either, except using some programming languages, Docker, Warefox and such things. However, if you would try to establish truly advanced setups, I’m betting my Linux opinion that you are going to ditch Void as quickly as possible and won’t ever look back, because Void is too tiny and unpopular (which means, that there are not enough resources that explain how it works and not enough people who you can ask for help and not enough tutorials about how to do something on Void).

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I hope you are wrong, but I am having a bet each way… I still keep,and use Debian… and also Solus and Devuan. Solus is great for VirtualBox.
Yes I like simple low level things… not complicated hookups. That is why Void suits me… it is like that.

I cant find any use for advanced GUI setups. I dont play games. I am not into audio. I do use X displays across machines. I do draw graphs and figures. I have been into image processing. What is all this advanced stuff that I am missing out on, and why do I need it?

I must be one of those people who say “linux is perfectly fine”… for me
Free software is a huge advantage over windows for what I need. I dont want to be paying for compilers or os licences. Nothing I do these days is urgent or prioritized… I can afford to fix issues. If it takes me a couple of months to configure a new install it does not matter. It was different when I was working… I used to manage computers for the research group… mixed in with my own work . It was busy but I never fell into the trap of buying propietary software to get some priority job thru. Once we escaped from IBM and Control Data, we never went back, and were never tempted by Microsoft. Having control of our own facility was too precious.

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Obviously, you don’t need it. Though, there is a minority of power users with extra demands (like me). Those extra demands cannot be met, when picking the “wrong” hardware or expecting the “wrong” feature.

I have a fairly recent NVIDIA graphics card and a multi-monitor setup. Well, I think that’s already enough reason not to use Linux GUI.

Setting up a multi-monitor setup like this on Linux will either take ages or it won’t work at all. On Windows it is literally a matter of plug & play. No issues. No problems. It’s a dream. Just plug it in and go.

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I have worked on a Linux box with 2 monitors… a long while ago, it was SunOS. And we had CP/M machine with dual monitors and a vector processing unit, used for image processing. It was fairly simple, we used to stream a video image from a microscope onto one monitor, and use the other for control. It was before the days of digital cameras… it was analog video and we used a framegrabber card to capture images.
So I do see what people use multimonitor setups for.

I have an nvidia card… a fairly low level one… never had the slightest trouble with any linux. But after what I hear, I think my next one will be amd.

Some of the things I do push the computer to its limits, but not displays, more memory and floating point arithmetic. Linux really is fine for that… it has a larger address space than windows.

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Even someone like me, who has modest demands and a limited number of programs, hit a wall of impossible frustration just replacing a video card and doing a normal, “everything is OK” upgrade.
Can ANYONE, even the light-weight users, say that Linux works without disaster for two years? I ran XP for ten years, and only a minor disaster. In 6 years of Linux, I have had several.

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I can claim that . 10 Years with FreeBSD and never missed a beat.
Then 5 years with Debian and same … I just used it
Last 2 years I have a more complicated multiboot setup with Debian, Void, Solus , and Devuan. They all work and update without major issue.
And I have an Nvidia card.

You are just unlucky Cliff. You cant blame Linix for not protecting yourself with backups.

What I do for insurance, apart from backups is

  • keep a second computer with just Debian… just as a working fallback facility
  • I have 2 hdds… I put grub on both of them. I control grub on one disk with Debian, and on the other disk with Void. So if one disk fails, I can still boot and operate

You need to look at strategies like that . If computer is important for your work, a bit of redundancy can help to stabilise things.

Regards
Neville

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Now, that is unfair and it does not fit the situation at hand, at all.

First of all, a backup restores the old system. So, all the upgrading was void as soon as a backup is restored.

Second of all, what’s the point of a backup, if things did not work in the first place? A backup is only useful, if it restores a previously working state. If things did not work to begin with, the backup is useless.

Third of all, Windows users barely make backups and most of the time everything works fine.
With Linux, you are forced to take frequent backups, because the system is so unstable, every day hell could break loose.
Why can’t Linux just be stable enough so backups are rarely needed, if at all?

I think with that sentence you expressed, which I quoted above, you fell into the trap of never ending defence of Linux, not for real reasons but for the sake of defending the idea behind Linux.

However, here we are talking about what Linux is de facto doing, not what Linux fans wish it would do. :wink:

Why? Why is that necessary? Is Linux so broken and shitty, it cannot work on its own without a babysitter? With Windows for example, you rarely need a babysitter.

Why? Why is that necessary? Is Linux and its most popular bootloader too stupid to handle generic real life situations? Never had trouble with dual booting Windows, before.

Why? Why is that necessary? Why can’t Linux just work?

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I thought the original system, worked with the original video card
and
@cliffsloane used timeshift, which is not really an adequate backup at all.
and
he forgot to do the timeshift
OK @cliffsloane , I might have been a bit hard there, I apologise for that

You cant criticize redundancy. It is the only choice for ensuring a way out if things go horribly wrong.
You can get away with a single linux system for years, but it is higher risk of total collapse than having 2 linux systems. Same applies to Windows.

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No, its not that, its insurance against disk failure. Being able to boot off 2 disks helps
also
I am trialling what is is like managing grub from a rolling release distro.
That is quite different from having grub controlled by a nice stable thing like Debian

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Because @cliffsloane has a need for a work tool that is reliable. He needs to setup some safeguards.
Its not about Linux, its about protecting oneself

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The only protection that would have worked would have been to create an entire ISO image of the whole partition. Does anybody go that far?
All other protections would STILL have forced me to waste hours doing what I never have to do in Windows.
Tinkering is OK, but the wholesale replacement of an installation is asking FAR too much.

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Yes, that is what Clonezilla does. It does not use.iso, it uses .img, but same thing.
Lots of People use Clonezilla, including me.

Neville

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It is about Linux, when it’s necessary to do immense amounts of safety annoyances only for Linux.

Again, we are talking about what Linux is de facto doing, not what Linux fans wish it would do, in theory.

The question was, if anybody goes that far. Obviously, people do, because Linux GUI is inherently broken. If it wouldn’t be that broken, it wouldn’t be necessary to babysit Linux, because it’s too stupid to survive simple upgrades.

I cannot even remember the last time a Windows update caused me issues. I know a few people who have problems with Windows updates, because they update like once every 3 years and then wonder why it won’t update smoothly. All others, who update frequently, have no trouble at all. I don’t even back up anything specifically before Windows updates, because they will work.
If I would do the same on Linux GUI, I would’ve probably lost already terabytes of data… Thanks to Linux.
So – it is about Linux GUI being inherently broken.

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There is a big difference between a routine upgrade and a cross-release upgrade. That is why people go to rolling release… you get your drama in small regular doses instead of all at once.
Windows is effectively rolling release. Its time the major Linux distros moved to it too. The best example is MX… it is the most popular distro because it has a superior release model.

When you say Linux is broken, you really mean Ubuntu is broken. There are other better distros.

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There is only Windows Update on Windows. All updates are included. Big and rare ones, as well as frequent smaller ones.

No, I’m saying Linux GUI is broken, in general. I use Linux everywhere and it works fine. It’s GUI-less.
However, using Linux GUI is shit on every distribution I tried.
In fact, I mostly used Debian GUI on and off over the years and it was always utter shit, no matter how much work & effort I put into it. It never could handle my “new” (in the Linux world “new” means, something is already a couple of years on the market…) hardware. Not only the graphics card, but pieces of the motherboard, etc.
Everyone knows that moment, when you set up your Linux GUI and then you notice that Bluetooth or Wi-Fi isn’t working. These are childish issues, which pretty much never happen on Windows.

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I’m perfectly fine with Debian MATE. I don’t find it broken nor shit.
I use it daily, I do like it. And I do stuff more than just open mails and browse the web. :wink:

This is a problem with the manufacturers. Most of them provide drivers only for Windows, Linux is neglected by them. So, the community has to do something to be able to use that hardware, of course that takes some time. The problem is that 95% of desktop(like) computers come with Windows preinstalled.
So the manufacturer looses only 5% potential market via neglecting Linux.
If that was 40%, they’d do care for proper Linux drivers :smiley:

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OK, GUI … meaning the video hardware and the software to go with it… yes that is messy.

Bluetooth or Wi-Fi isn’t working.

That is less of an issue than screen is not working. I think Cliff would be happy at the moment if we could just fix screen.

Trying to do an install with WiFi rather than ethernet is quite an issue.

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Yes that is the root cause of the issue.
We need to work on getting more users… as you say, that would solve it.

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I get that. Though, I would cautiously assume you have pretty standard and not “too new” hardware, don’t you? :wink:

Precisely. I cannot blame manufacturers, especially small ones, who cannot afford developing a driver for an additional operating system, just so a minority may perhaps use it. If there were a big enough Linux GUI end-user market, manufacturers would produce drivers for Linux, too. It’s a devious circle. Not enough users, not enough market, not enough support, which leads to not enough users, etc…

I mean GUI, like, everything that has a graphical user interface on Linux. Everything. Whether it is X11 (Wayland isn’t that popular, yet) or app GUIs – they are all shit on average. Some are really good, yes. Won’t deny that. However, on average, most are shit. And the best GUIs on Linux are only that good, because they could copy the GUI from Windows, when they offer editions for Linux and Windows. :smiley:

Wi-Fi not working is death row for a majority of home end-users. It’s a deal breaking situation for most users, if that feature does not work!

Won’t happen, if things stay as shitty and there are still Linux elitist freaks, who say stuff like “CLI is enough, people should just learn it instead of complain about bad GUI”. Some of them even visited this forum…

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Perhaps I have missed some of that. I always use ethernet, even for printers.
I did have an issue once with a rather new Realtek ethernet card. I had to download some drivers and add a kernel module. Then after a couple of Debian upgrades, it just worked, and I could forget about it.

I did have bluetooth issues recently. Interestingly, it worked in Void , but not in Debian, on the same hardware. Like I said, a bit of duplication helps.

Never had WiFi issues, but I hate configuring it.
Never had motherboard issues.

There are a few manufacturers who produce PC’s with Linux preloaded.
Can we presume that these offer a way to avoid the GUI issues?
They are mostly rather expensive.

Some years ago I had a custom build of a PC, and because they knew I wanted to use Debian, they preloaded Debian and tested it, as well as the usual Windows. So that is one way … dont buy off the shelf stuff, find a cooperative custom builder.