[tlug] Ubuntu Trusty (14.04) issues

[Bruno Raoult <braoult@example.com>]

Hi,

The upgrade from Saucy (13.10), itself being an upgrade from Raring (13.04) was the worst catastrophe ever for me.

To start with, I upgraded from Gnome Classic.

First, after reboot, Grub refused to work (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/1289977). I am happy to have a second PC (Mac) where I could burn a boot-repair CD (http://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/files/). I suggest everybody to keep a copy of boot-repair (there are different others bootable disks which will do it, the important is to have one).

Second, Nautilus was crashing all the time (a few minutes at best). Too disturbing, so I added LXDE flavour, and tried the LXDE desktop.

Not good:
1) No compose key (but Japanese input - ibus/anthy - was still working). I was able to input あいうえお but not àéèê etc...

2) Gnome terminal would not give a prompt (but lxterminal and xterm did).

3) Multimedia keys stopped working (very disturbing, especially for volume, if you can find no way but unplugging speakers - which is long if it is midnight and your family sleeping).

4) ctrl-alt-backspace would do nothing. No way to logout then. as ctrl-alt-t did give a terminal with no prompt, this is too much.

I found a solution for the compose and ctrl-alt-backspace: "setxkbmap -option compose:ralt" was allowing me to use my right alt key as compose key, and "setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp" did do the job.

Of course, I did not want to input them at each login.

So I added in ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart the 2 following lines:

  @setxkbmap -option compose:ralt
  @setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

ctrl-alt-backspace did work, but not compose.Eventually, I made the compose key using a system-wide file (/etc/default/keyboard), having the XKBOPTIONS line looking like:
   XKBOPTIONS="compose:ralt"

So Gnome and LXDE were not working. I don't want kde version, nor Unity.

So I added XFCE:

- Still no terminal with ctrl-alt-t

- ctrl-alt-backspace stopped working again, and ctrl-alt-del looked like a "lock screen" (but with the old Xscreensaver). So No way again to logout or reboot with a keyboard shortcut. I would prefer to have a ctrl-alt-l to lock screen. All of this is not acceptable.

- Compose key was fine, as well as ibus/anthy

- Sound is still messy (global sound is different from apps sound).

So I wonder what to do. Retry with a fresh install? The problem is all these files changed weeks after week on the system itself (example: fail2ban, Google postfix, www, encrypted disks, etc...). My guess is that I would go for a 1-3 days work to get something working. If I want to cleanup also my home directory, this will be very long too (creating a new one). This unfortunately needs a new uid, as cron cannot manage correctly 1 uid with 2 users for some stupid reasons. So many things to take care about, that I have no more motivation anymore.

I have full daily backups, so I will find everything. But having 145 directories in my home (I use 10 max), not knowing what is useful and for what (not speaking about subdirectories, such as .config or .gconf, which alone have 615 files (regular I mean, potentially important).

I don't have motivation to start it again, and put back the hidden configuration files as soon as I discover them (it will take 6 months or 1 year, and even never sure nothing has been forgotten).

If I do, what would be your advice?

br, desesparate today :)

--
2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2.