Kernel panic - not synching

I'm about as big a booster of Ubuntu as you can find without being actually part of the Ubuntu team. But from yesterday till today I've found myself cursing Karmic Koala. The reason: as of yesterday afternoon, after an update, the Wubi install of Ubuntu 9.10 on my HP Mini 2140 just stopped working.

In more gory detail: after going into Grub, I would get the following message:

Kernel-panic - not syncing : VFS : Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,8)

Was I upset? You betcha! I had some important files in that partition that I had not backed up yet.

Read more »

A critical Karmic Koala review

Via Slashdot, a critical review of Karmic Koala. So far my own experience has been with a clean Wubi install on an HP Mini, largely positive excepting a minor annoyance about GDM login options; therefore I can't comment as yet on the upgrade experience, especially one involving graphics cards with proprietary drivers.

More on this in the forums.

Karmic on HP Mini 2140

Current verdict: so far so good.

When I tried to install Jaunty Jackalope on the HP Mini 2140, I ran into some snags even at the Wubi stage. As I had other things to do back then, I put off fiddling with the problem. Then I decided to have another go at it with Karmic, and voila! It works.

Some initial hitches:

• Wifi didn't work out of the box. The HP Mini 2140 uses a Broadcom chip (the BCM4322, to be exact.) To fix this problem I had to install proprietary drivers.


• As sometimes happens with new Ubuntu installations, the sound (for both speaker and mike) are set to mute. After reviewing the Sound Settings, I fixed the problem.


• Gnome login themes don't work. I still have to read up on the new configuration, though for the moment that's not a priority.
  

All in all, enough new things to puzzle out but not altogether frustrating. I still like Jaunty's overall look, though.

My first look at Ubuntu 9.10

Unlike other folks on the bleeding edge, I waited until Ubuntu 9.10's official release before trying out the software. For some of you, this may already be old news. Regardless, here's my first look at Karmic Koala, running as VirtualBox guest.

Read more »