Feeling the Ubuntu-upgrade pain

I upgraded my Samsung n135 netbook to Ubuntu 11.10 today and encountered some … issues:

  • The upgrade process didn’t disable the powersave schedule, which suspended my computer and the ongoing upgrade
  • After the upgrade (which took hours to complete), the screen flicker problem I already knew proved to have become worse, to the extend it rendered my system unusable. A blunt “rmmod samsung_laptop” stopped the flicker (actually powersaving trying to change the screen brightness).
  • While trying to install the “Linux On My Samsung” deb’s from the ppa:voria/ppa repository (which amongst ohter things contains theĀ samsung_backlight kernel module that solves the flickering) I encountered serious networking issues which eventually proved not to be caused by the upgrade, but by dns-problems at my ISP. After changing my network config to use Google’s public DNS instead, I was able to install “Linux on My Samsung”-debs.

So here we are, working on what seems to be a stable, usableĀ  “Oneiric Ocelot”, having learned some new stuff and having a couple of new gray hairs to prove it. And now: sleep!