Went to add Kubuntu 10.04 to my old laptop - couldn't do it. Won't boot from USB, and internal CD/DVD drive reports errors. (Discs are fine when read from external DVD drive, or on other systems.)

I discovered the read errors when choosing install Kubuntu, having booted the disc. i.e. (1) It boots the disc that far, but never gets past the splash screen due to read errors / hardware failure. (2) There is already more than one option (run live without installing, install) on the initial menu - adding one more is an extension of current practices, not a new practice.

Consulting the installation documentation: (1) There is no (longer) a diskette boot option / process [to boot diskette then hand over to external usb] - perhaps understandable so. (2) There is an option for tftp boot. However, it is ... non-trivial.

So it occurs to me ... why not have, in essence, a tftp boot option / vm which I could fire up on a different computer, and then boot this current computer against it.

Assumption: The user is intelligent enough to temporarily disconnect any existing DHCP server from the loop. Be it via crossover cable, or only having these two computers connected to the switch at the time.

IIRC (my system currently dual boots Windows XP Pro and Debian), to install Debian originally, I had to take the disk out of the laptop (PITA), and put it in another computer, boot with the debian install. Once the initial load had happened and the computer shut down for the first reboot, I placed it back in the laptop and got on with my day. This TFTP process would avoid all that nonsense.

It would also assist those helping Mom, Dad, neighbour, whomever, with older hardware. i.e. Reduce the barrier to entry not only for Mom, Dad, neighbour, whomever, but for the person helping them.

Alternative: Update the installation documentation to accommodate this situation with an equivalently fire and forget solution. e.g. Link to a vm/iso download.

Several researchs shown that Ubuntu has about 1% or less of users, but are they right about this?

Another case is when we do a fresh installation of Ubuntu and has to configure everything we like from zero.

Backing up the MBR before installation using the "dd" command can save a lot of trouble in case of boot problems.
Why not offer an optional MBR backup before installation?(would require backup media like a USB key for example of course)

If there are several partitions already, it could backup all start sectors. This is easier for people who have no idea where their boot partition is.

In general, it would be nice to have a GUI utility to backup/restore MBRs.

If you think people would panic and stop installing if they see such an MBR backup dialog, just deactivate it by default.
A simple checkbox or GUI utility on the LiveCD could be used by users that want to play it safe.

edit:
As indicated by Warbo, a very easy solution would be to automatically create the MBR backups and those that care about them would just have to save them on an external device. :)

I want to install Ubuntu Linux to an external USB hard drive using the Ubuntu Live CD, but the hard disk must be portable and persistent keeping the linux file system

I hear ext4 file system support is going to be available in the next Alpha build of Jaunty (yay!). All the improvements (faster filesystem check, faster deletion of large files, more reliable journaling, MUCH higher file and filesystem size limits, etc.) sound good, but the migration sounds annoying. First there's enabling (by hand-modifying the fstab) ext4 feature support, then there's some procedure (unclear from my 15-minute perusal of online sources) to convert existing data structures to their ext4 versions.

In Ubuntu Maverick, you have to do a complete reboot of your computer to be able to run Ubuntu. This is often annoying, because I often re-install ubuntu every 2-3 months.

I always seem to come up with creative install methods to setup my ubuntu system. For my desktop, I have upgraded release after release. For my boss's laptop, I used a creative windows then ubuntu installation path using debootstrap, because I could neither boot from usb stick nor from cd (I did get Ubuntu installed, and that is _not_ the problem). Unfortunately, it was basically impossible to reproduce a vanilla install this way.

However, I always wonder what's different from my current install to a vanilla install, but I'm loath to do a clean install - burning to a cd and everything is just too much of a hassle. Instead, I'd like to see a way to show the differences (missing packages, superfluous packages, configuration changes, etc.) between my current setup and a vanilla setup, so I can see what's missing, different, etc. But it has other advantages as well:
- it helps find configuration changes made by 3rd party software
- it helps find changes made by a trojan or virus
- it helps with finding/diagnosing bugs (due to configuration differences, or due to bugs in the upgrade path)

There are often common, known issues with certain hardware or software that can make a new users' experience of Ubuntu unpleasant. Since these are known problems, with known solutions and many of them are easily diagonalizable, we can prevent new users from running into them.

Example: I ran into some trouble installling Ubuntu on my Dell laptop this week. GRUB got completely messed up and made it impossible to boot into either Windows or Ubuntu. Now an average user would just panic and never use Ubuntu again. Thankfully, I remember reading about the problem before and so I checked online to find an easy solution. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1343851 This could easily have been prevented had I know Dell DataSafe would mess up GRUB.

Example 2: Some hardware is known to cause trouble and a new user tries to install Ubuntu on that hardware.

Grub2 is too complex and has design problems that make multi-boot management into a monster if multiple Linux and Windows systems are installed.

The biggest design error is that it "belongs" to the last OS installed, whereas it should be completely independent. If another OS using grub2 is installed (added), all user changes are lost. If another OS based on legacy grub1 is installed, grub2 booting is lost, boot to any ext4-based OS is lost, and possibly all multi-boot capabilities are lost. If Windows is installed, of course all multi-boot capabilities are lost.

I installed Ubuntu as always:

1. Downloaded a file (this time it was: http://releases.ubuntu.com//lucid/ubuntu-10.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso ) and burned a disc.
2. I tested Ubuntu.
3. I runned installer and mounted partitions as always:
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1 (ext4 as / w/format)
/dev/sda2 (swap)
/dev/sda3 (ntfs as /media/sda3 w/o format)
/dev/sda4 (ext3 as /home w/o format)
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1 (ntfs /media/sdb1 w/o format)
/dev/sdb2 (ntfs /media/sdb2 w/o format)

I made a mistake when I wrote /media/sdb2, because that partition was deleted. I wrote /dev/sdb2 instead. I saw that later into /etc/fstab file.

I think it happened when installer showed the message "deleting unuseful operative system files".

Now I'm recovering lost files. :(