Linux installation snags

[Kevin Cozens]

D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> Ubuntu 10.04 LTS came out fairly recently so I've been installing it
> on boxes for family members that don't like frequent upgrades.
> 
> I've bump into a number of tricky problems.

Two other problems you may run across are Pulse Audio and Upstart.

Pulse Audio on my machine took a set of audio hardware that worked 
perfectly under Alsa and broke it. It gives me all kinds of problems now 
and then with high CPU loads, and/or stuttering audio.

Upstart has changed the boot process to make a machine appear to boot 
faster. It doesn't seem to follow the concept of runlevels any more. The 
main problem with that for me is no longer knowing how to boot to 
runlevel 3 (ie. no X) if I run in to problems with the video card device 
driver.

The main problem with the move to Upstart is that it delays running of 
some processes during startup including the running of fsck. If you have 
your user partition (ie. /home) on a separate partition from root, your 
machine can boot and give you the gdm login screen but the system can be 
(unknown to the person about to login) still running fsck and the user 
partition may not be mounted. A user tries to login and gets a white 
screen and the system appears to hang.

This latter problem is barely acceptable problem for those of us who 
know our way around a Linux box and can easily recover without having to 
do another reboot. Its not acceptable for your average user who will 
wonder why their computer is suddenly broken.
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