Raoul Duke wrote:
> After a disastrous attempt at upgrading Ubuntu to Hardy Heron, my computer stalled (after restarting) at the loading screen, then show me what wasn't working. So I had to do a clean reinstall of Gutsy, wiping out all my data in the process (because I still haven't had the courage to try moving my /home/ directory to a separate partition).
>
> Things are working alright for the most part right now, but I have two nagging problems.
>
> 1) After logging out, I'm taken to a blank screen with no login prompt (and yes I do have KDM installed). Basically, everytime I want to get back into my system, I have to do a hard restart.
>
> 2) One of my first tasks upon completing the installation was to reinstall GNOME. This also went without much headache, though I can't for the life of me figure out how to get the window borders/controls to work.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help.
>
Raoul,
do your self a favor (now that you've lost all your data doing a
reinstall): Put /home on a separate partition!
I've played with linux for a while now, and it seems all the distros
have dumbed down partitioning to the point that all you see now is two
partitions, / and swap. (Am I the only one who remembers a standard
linux install having 5 partitions?) If you keep /home on a separate
partition, you can blow away install after install, and never lose
documents, application preferences, email, bookmarks.
Save yourself aggravation down the road, and give /home its own partition.

--

Veritas vos Liberabit,
David Burrows

On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:21:58 -0700, David's Inner Geek wrote:

> Raoul Duke wrote:
>> After a disastrous attempt at upgrading Ubuntu to Hardy Heron, my
>> computer stalled (after restarting) at the loading screen, then show me
>> what wasn't working. So I had to do a clean reinstall of Gutsy, wiping
>> out all my data in the process (because I still haven't had the courage
>> to try moving my /home/ directory to a separate partition).
>>
>> Things are working alright for the most part right now, but I have two
>> nagging problems.
>>
>> 1) After logging out, I'm taken to a blank screen with no login prompt
>> (and yes I do have KDM installed). Basically, everytime I want to get
>> back into my system, I have to do a hard restart.
>>
>> 2) One of my first tasks upon completing the installation was to
>> reinstall GNOME. This also went without much headache, though I can't
>> for the life of me figure out how to get the window borders/controls to
>> work.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for any help.
>>
> Raoul,
> do your self a favor (now that you've lost all your data doing a
> reinstall): Put /home on a separate partition! I've played with linux
> for a while now, and it seems all the distros have dumbed down
> partitioning to the point that all you see now is two partitions, / and
> swap. (Am I the only one who remembers a standard linux install having 5
> partitions?) If you keep /home on a separate partition, you can blow
> away install after install, and never lose documents, application
> preferences, email, bookmarks. Save yourself aggravation down the road,
> and give /home its own partition.

I like to keep a separate /home partition and at least two system
partitions. That way I always have a fully-configured installation at
all times for getting important work done, and another where I can play
with other distro's or install the latest Ubuntu version and take my
time getting it fully configured to my liking before switching over.