Decided to up upgrade my HP Pavilion DV9000 with AMD processor from Ubuntu 10.04 o Ubuntu 12.10. However, we soon found that Ubuntu 11.10 was as far as we could go because of the nVidia video drivers.

When Ubuntu 11.04 first came out we attempted and upgrade and it was a disaster. The UP DV9000 AMD video and audio were not commonly used on laptops and drivers had not been written at that time. We had planned to leave this laptop on Ubuntu 10.04 forever (or until we could get another laptop). So we reinstalled 10.04 and the custom drivers, and went on our merry way.

Our other laptop that we use as a multimedia system was running Ubuntu 12.04 and we decided to upgrade it to Ubuntu12.10. The upgrade was smooth and effortless. That's when we decided to attempt a 12.10 upgrade on the HP DV9000.

I simply went into synaptic updates and clicked the upgrade box and clicked submit. Answered yes, yes, yes, and in about an hour it was done. I told it to keep the old config so that my 3rd party drivers would work, and they did. Of course we had to upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10, then 11.04, 11.10, 12.04 and 12.10. It took several hours but most of it was "click click click" then go do something else until it was time to kick off the next upgrade.

However, when we arrived at Ubuntu 12.04, we experienced major video issues. It appears that the nVidia drivers were not ready for prime time, not just on Ubuntu, but on all of the latest Linux distros. This left us with two options: 1. Run the computer with 2D graphics (not acceptable) or 2. Install Ubuntu 11.10.

We opted for the Ubuntu 11.10 total install. The install was uneventful. Click Click, then wait an hour or so.

Only four things

1. I had to reinstall openssh-server so that I could run putty to remotely administer the computer:

ctrl–alt–t on your keyboard to open Terminal

sudo apt-get install openssh-server 

2. Deal with the GSTreamer Bug:

64 bit Ubuntu:

sudo mv /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so.bak

32 bit Ubuntu:

sudo mv /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/gstreamer-0.10/libgstvideoparsersbad.so.bak

Wine did not upgrade during the process. However, when I started Wine, it recognized the new operating system and it updated itself.

3. Wine:

Wine upgraded it self the first time we tried to use it. No big deal. It took about a minute.

4. Evolution Mail and Calendar: