Reverting to a previous version of Ubuntu?

Asked by george_rutkay

My wife and kids love Ubuntu Linux because of the 3D graphics that Beryl provided. They are not computer wizards by any means, just fairly average users.

This recent upgrade to version 7.10 isn't making them happy.

If I reboot from my 7.04 Ubuntu CD-ROM, can I downgrade 7.10 back to 7.04 successfully?

How can I revert back to 7.04 after upgrading to 7.10?

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Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini) said :
#1

Change `gutsy` to `feisty` in /etc/apt/sources.list and run `apt-get dist-upgrade`, but it's not a good idea. Why don't you install beryl on gutsy?

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#2

Beryl will not run on this new system, I don't know why. I had it installed before I did the upgrade and after the upgrade it just refuses to run.

Even if I un-install it and re-install it from the Synaptic package manager, it just refuses to run on this 7.10 system.

It's made my wife and kids very unhappy.

I'll try editing the sources.list file and see what happens!

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Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini) said :
#3

Beryl doesn't run because of Compiz. You have do disable it before running beryl. Also, Compiz Fusion have all effects provided by beryl and more. Have you installed compizconfig-settings-manager to enable more effects?

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#4

I logged in as Root, edited the /etc/apt/sources.list file and used the Replace function ins the Text editor to change all instances of "gutsy" to "feisty". I saved the file, then I rebooted.

Then I opened a terminal and ran apt-get dist-upgrade.

This is the result:

root@geo:/home/geo# sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Password:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

It wasn't successful it appears? How do I tell if I've "reverted" to the previous version successfully?

Oh yes indeed, I've tried Compiz (please see the two threads below for more details) and I've given up on trying to ever get this horrible program to work, it's just a total pain and completely messes my machine up whereas Beryl was far more civilized and we used it for months.

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/15642
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/15590

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#5

PS: I was curious so I rebooted from the original 7.04 CD I received from Ubuntu. It will not let me downgrade this without insisting on reformatting my drive (very stupid of the software to want to reformat just to change an existing installation).

So I'll have to try to figure this out without resorting to the CD.

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Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini) said :
#6

Sorry, before `apt-get dist-upgrade` you may type `apt-get update`.

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Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini) said :
#7

The LiveCD is not made to do upgrades or downgrades because you can (and must) do them in your installed OS.

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Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said :
#8

George, trying to upgrade and downgrade will probably leave you with a bit of a mess. 7.10 will still give you all the effects of beryl. In fact, I'd say it's an improvement over beryl and beryl is a dead project as far as I know (it merged with compiz which is included in gutsy). It will be an almost automatic setup. All you have to do is install the driver (click a box in a setup window) and then activate the effects (click a box in a setup window). I know the ubuntu devs have tried to make upgrading to a new version easy and painless but if you system is somewhat customized (like having beryl) it gets messier. The easiest thing to do is to reinstall cleanly. It took me a total of 20 minutes to reinstall gutsy and maybe another 20-30 minutes to restore my settings. I'd suggest backing up your files and doing a fresh install. The amount of time you would spend doing this would probably be less than the amount of time trying to fix this. If you reinstall I would suggesting setting up a separate partition for /home. That way you can reinstall a new version without having to mess with backing up files and recovering settings (however, you should still keep important files backed up just in case).

If you want to do the separate /home, send me an email or catch me on #ubuntu-colorado (I'm musashi there). I can't find a good how to for doing this during install with gutsy. Maybe I should write one.

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#9

After "faking" out the machine to think it's running Feisty in the /etc/apt/sources.list file, I was able to get Beryl up and running once again.

I kid you not - before editing the /etc/apt/sources.list file, I could not make Beryl run.

I have too many many many files (gigabytes of music, e-mails, web pages, photos not only for my account but for the kids and my wife as well) and I have no way to back them up so doing a reformat/clean install is out of the question, it's not practical in any way.

Compiz just refuses to run on this system. It does nothing but clog it up, make it stumble, trip, or just lay dead and dormant.

I have two Dell Optiplex GX260s running Ubuntu (the slowest one is 1.5 GHz and the one I'm typing this on is 2.5 GHz. This one has 1.25 gig of RAM, the other has 2 gig of RAM). Both has 64 meg of Video RAM built-in and both use the Intel 82845 graphics chip set.

I tried setting up Compiz on either one. It will not work on these machines which are otherwise extremely capable and strong performers.

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Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said :
#10

I would say that "faking" the computer just to get beryl running is probably not a good idea. Unless you use your computer for nothing more than visual effects, getting a stable setup is more important than getting beryl to run. Based on the problems you had upgrading and then trying to downgrade I'd venture to guess your system is less than stable. Future updates could cause things to break - especially if you are running gutsy with feisty repos. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

To say you have no way to back up your files suggests you also have no backup at all. That is not a good idea (no matter what OS you use) and whether or not you do a clean install you should still have your files backed up. Upgrading your system without a backup is really not a good idea. Without a backup I would encourage you to not make any more changes to your system (I'm not even sure normal updates would be safe) until you can get things backed up. You may never need it but if you do will be very glad to have it.

Compiz == beryl. If beryl will run on your computer so will compiz. They merged and are now the same thing. In fact, beryl is dead so moving to compiz would be a good idea. That way you will still get fixes and updates. If compiz doesn't work it's probably due to too many conflicts with beryl. In fact, compiz was always considered the more stable of the two but beryl had more bling. Now compiz has the beryl bling.

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george_rutkay (yaktur) said :
#11

But why does Compiz cause my machine to completely bugger up while Beryl still runs? Perhaps Compiz works for others? But I've never found it to work, even before this I tried Compiz and it just didnt work properly even in a new installation (formatted hard drive).

My wife and kids want the visual effects - otherwise Linux is no better than Windows to them and I can see their point. Windows doesn't offer the same graphics and visual effects that Ubuntu offers.

Like I said, they are just computer users and what they want is what motivates me. And they want the sparkling fire and 3D cube graphics, that signifies progress and technology to them!

Heck, I'd be happy with a 16 MHz B&W Mac SE/30 running System 6 with Simple Finder - I used to have one for years and until the main board died it ran great.

Thanks for the help!

Revision history for this message
Jim Hutchinson (jphutch) said :
#12

Compiz and beryl only merged a few months ago and even then the newly formed compiz-fusion was only available in Ubuntu through a manual install. It's possible that what you tried was "old" compiz rather than "new" compiz. As for the problems you have with compiz I can only guess but it may be that you are not using compiz-fusion or that compiz and beryl are conflicting. I think you would have to totally purge all remnants of beryl and then add the proper repo and install compiz-fusion if you really wanted to switch. Moving to gutsy via a fresh install would accomplish the same thing. Upgrading seems to lead to trouble so I wouldn't suggest doing it that way.