[Xubuntu] "Recomended updates" turn my pc to sludge

DeepBlue

I'm running Xubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on an old Dell Dimension 8250 with 256 Mb RAM (Rambus RAM so it would cost most of the price of a new PC to upgrade memory).

Anyways mostly it runs fine for my needs. After applying the latest "recommended updates" however the performance took a major nosedive and doing anything on the PC seemed to be like trying to run through a pool of glue with barbells tied to your feet.

I did a re-install of the OS and this time didn't install the recommended updates and the PC is flying again .
During the partition stage of the install the installer tells you what OS you have installed e.g. you have XP installed so do you want to install Xubuntu on a separate partition etc.
This time it told me that my existing installed OS was Ubuntu and not Xubuntu. Wtf?

Ubuntu runs like molasses on my PC. Surely "recommended updates" shouldn't be installing components that make your PC perform worse than before you installed them.
I thought it was just M$ that did that .

Dartz

Depends...

It can happen if it installs the update poorly, either a bad config file, or some app that has turned itself on that normally isn't. Check to see what's actually updated.... and what was in the last update, it might be obvious if you google it what's causing the problem after the update.

Also... it's says it sees Ubuntu installed, because it *is* Ubuntu.... the kernel and the basic guts of the OS is the exact same, only the layer on top is different.

DeepBlue

Dartz wrote: »

Also... it's says it sees Ubuntu installed, because it *is* Ubuntu.... the kernel and the basic guts of the OS is the exact same, only the layer on top is different.

Except that it normally says Xubuntu installed when I've come to the partition section previously when re-installing the OS or installing a different distro.

Dartz wrote: »

Check to see what's actually updated.... and what was in the last update, it might be obvious if you google it what's causing the problem after the update.

When this happened first I went though the history in Synaptic and tried to revert each newly updated package back to the previous version using Package->Force Version.
That was tedious and when I got to the python2.6 package it seemed that it was going to uninstall half of xubuntu with it if I reverted it so I went the re-install route instead.

I've set Update Manager to only notify me of the security updates and I've unticked the option to notify recommended updates.

pickarooney

Wouldn't it be easier to do it the other way around - install the updates one by one until it starts treacle-cycling again?
The last round of updates killed my sound card and openGL support on Xubuntu karmic. I needed to reinstall and since then it's been impossible to get a working display with the proprietary nvidia drivers. It's a lousy version, all things considered.

DeepBlue

pickarooney wrote: »

Wouldn't it be easier to do it the other way around - install the updates one by one until it starts treacle-cycling again?

Perhaps but there's the risk that, after finding the update that's causing the problem, it might not be possible to downgrade it.

When I tried that the first time I came to python2.6 and tried to revert it back to the previous version only to get prompted that if I did so it would affect tons of other packages.

I seem to see a lot of complaints about Karmic but versions 8.10 and 9.04 introduced a stuttering bug on video playback on my machine which isn't there with Karmic.
I'm going to leave things sit as they are for the moment and only apply the security updates.

bnt

I find that debfoster is good for figuring out what unnecessary apps are installed. It identifies installed applications that are keeping other apps and libraries installed, and gives you the option of keeping or pruning them. I've used this, seen something I didn't recognise, looked it up, and went "prune" e.g. there are lots of installed bits related to scanning (xsane etc.) and printing (cups etc.), which could go because I don't scan to or print from my netbook.

Also: deborphan can be used to identify stray libraries that have no reason to be installed.