Ubuntu

Downgrade Ubuntu 10.04 to 9.10 without cd ?

Asked by clubslipknot

Hi dudes :)
I really like Ubuntu and I used it for like an year or so.
I was with version 9.10 and I upgrade it to 10.04 and here comes the problems. My PC is kind a old and now I have a lot of problems with games, flash-movies etc ect... I've search ways to downgrade from 10.04 to 9.10 but I only find a way with a CD with 9.04 and my problem is that my cd-rom don't work :( Is there any way to downgrade from 10.04 to 9.10 without CD ?

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Tom
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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Downgrading is neither supported nor encouraged. You must clean install to use an older release.

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#2

Hi :)

If you could borrow an external or even an internal cd/dvd-drive from another machine then it would be a lot easier. This might be an opportunity to move the /home folder to it's own partition so that you can keep the data&setting safer but share them between different installs. That would also help by allowing you to dual-boot different versions of Ubuntu more easily
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving

If you could get to a command-line and give us the output of

sudo fdisk -l

then we might be able to help you with the moving and with the dual/multi-boot install of 9.04 or something. There are various guides for doing the basic install but this would wipe your data&settings if you are not careful about keeping /home safe

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromLinux
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation#Installation%20without%20a%20CD

Note that although this guide is specifically for dual-booting with Windows it is essentially the same for just adding another install of linux to an existing system
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

Please let us know
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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clubslipknot (sp868) said : 		#3

silver@Silver:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for silver:
sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ca58f

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 2550 20482843+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda2 * 2551 30400 223705093+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 1 240 1927737 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 241 2550 18555043+ 83 Linux
silver@Silver:~$

Well 10x dudes but I was looking for downgrade without cd... looks like there is no way... 10 anyway :)

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Best Tom (tom6) said : 		#4

Hi :)

Wow, that's an unusual set-up! Did you do the partitioning from inside Windows or were you trying to follow Chris Smart's article about Logical Volume Management? I guess you already knew that hard-drives read/write speed is faster at the front of the drive and managed to resize Windows to give you room at the start! :)) Does Windows still work? Can you boot into Windows?

If you can boot into Windows and defrag it, perhaps even resize it down by 20Gb of the end of the drive? I know that the slow area but for a data partition it doesn't matter. If you want to give Ubuntu a larger data area then make that end partition larger. After resizing Windows from inside Windows boot back into Ubuntu and install gparted

sudo apt-get install gparted

I assume you are using Ubuntu rather than Kubuntu? If you are using Kubuntu then install "qtparted" instead of gparted. With other versions of Ubuntu apart from Kubuntu the g one is still best, it's just Kubuntu that needs K or Qt packages instead of G ones. K for Kde. G for Gnome. Please can you give us the output of

uname -a

free -m

Use either GPartEd or QtPartEd to make the end partition an "ext3" or "ext4" rather than Ntfs. However, i think it might be best as a Primary Partition rather than an Extended one. If you still do use Windows quite a bit then there is an opportunity to make the /home partition an Ntfs one and make it considerably larger so that Windows can share the data partition too.

My plan is to
1. move your entire /home folder to this end partition to keep your data&settings all contained inside that and separate from the / partitions at the start of your drive.
2. Then resize the Ubuntu partition at the front of your drive to make it only about 5 Gb
3. Create a new partition of about 10 Gb leaving us some space for further experiments later.
4. Install Ubuntu 9.04 or even better Xubuntu 10.04 or Lubuntu to the new 10Gb partition without using a Cd and making it share the /home and swap partitions.
5. set the default boot into Xubuntu/Lubuntu/Ubuntu9.04 & generally tidy up bits and bobs

The guide for step 1 is
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving
but we can help you with that. The guides for step 4 are
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromLinux
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation#Installation%20without%20a%20CD
but again we could help you with that. Is there any chance of using a usb-stick of over 1Gb? If not don't worry, i think the 1st guide has an interesting way worth trying instead :)

This will end up with you having a multi-boot system defaulting into the faster lighter install but still giving you the option to try out the existing 10.04 or Windows if either of those options appeals.
Please let us know which type of thing you want to try out here!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Revision history for this message
clubslipknot (sp868) said : 		#5

Thanks Tom, that solved my question.

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said : 		#6

Hi :)

I am interested to know if you tried Lubuntu. It hasn't got official support yet but a couple of people in the Answers Team are also in the team developing it so i wondered how well it worked on your machine if you tried it. Hopefully Lubuntu might get official backing soon.

Also wondered if you tried Xubuntu 10.04 and whether that was any better or about the same? It should be a bit better.

Lol, i guess i was really wondering if you made your own plan and how it went. I think most linux users would take any advice as the starting point and then morph it from there, or perhaps try something completely opposite or different lol
Anyway, congrats and regards from
Tom :)