[ltp] How safe is ubuntu 11.10?

[Jeffrey L. Taylor]

Quoting Steven J. Owens <thinkpad@darksleep.com>:
> Folks,
> 
>      I have a thinkpad t520 with nvidia/optimus, Intel Core i7-2720QM
> Processor (2.20GHz, 6MB L3), 8 gigs of memory and all the trimmings.
> 
>      I've been running ubuntu 10.4 LTS because I found the main ubuntu
> release to be a pain - too frequently the dist-upgrades caused odd
> hardware problems.  Nobody mentioned the problems _before_ I upgraded,
> but after I ran into them and did a lot of googling, I'd eventually
> find that they afflicted other thinkpad owners.
> 
>      However, for various reasons I need to upgrade to a more recent
> release.  For once, I'd like to find out - *before* I jump out the
> window - about hardware gotchas.  Anybody know how to check for this?
> 
>      I'm also considering upgrading to 11.4, instead of 11.10, because
> I've observed in the past that the hardware issues I mention above
> tend to take a few months to get sorted out...
> 

The advice I heard from others is do not upgrade to 11.10, do a clean install.
Ubuntu moved a bunch of system directories around.  You can work around this
problem by creating symlinks from the old location to the new one.

Also, try a live CD first.  A lot of users, especially advanced users detest
the Unity desktop.  During the installation, it tells which package to install
to switch to the Gnome desktop.

I did a clean install of 11.10 on my wife's Dell XPS M1330N (which came with
Hardy Heron pre-installed).  She wants the newer Flash and other updates, but
doesn't want anything to change.  Unity lasted 1 1/2 days. She hated the color
scheme (ORANGE in your face), the UI, that it was different, etc.  I'm working
on making it as close to Hardy Heron as feasible.

It went fairly smoothly, except I tried to do the installation with immediate
updates over WiFi and ended up with an unusable system.  Do the updates while
connected to a wired connection.

Hopefully someone else can fill in the Thinkpad specifics.

HTH,
  Jeffrey