On Mon, 2011-08-22 at 12:55 -0700, Rich Shepard wrote: > Well, my friend has managed to yank xfce4's undies into a wedgie. No > window manager running so there's only one frameless window and the settings > manager will not let me invoke xfwm4. There's more that's torqued, too. So, > despite my using xfce for years how to fix this has so far escaped my > efforts and I'll get on the xfce mail list for help with that. > > Back to the distribution upgrade. It keeps telling me that 10.04 is up to > date but I cannot find a menu option to upgrade the distribution. I've a > vague recollection that the command line (when I can actually type something > in the frameless v.t.) is 'apt-get upgrade distribution.' I'm not a ubuntu > user so I don't know if that's the preferred approach. I'm hoping that those > of you who run various flavors of ubuntu will point me in the proper > direction.
The graphical way to do this is to go into Synaptic or Upgrade Manager, find where it specifies software sources, and uncheck a box that says "long term support only" or some such. (Yes, my recollection is vague, but this should help if you really need to find it on the web). My personal bias with Ubuntu is a bit extreme. I use upgrades as an excuse for regular house-cleaning: I take one last look at my secondary hard drive to make sure that none of the stuff that I haven't used for years is still of interest to me, then I swap primary and secondary, and I do a clean install of the latest Ubuntu. Then I pull data off my now-secondary drive as needed until the next time I clean house. If I were going to criticize myself for anything, it would be that with hard drive prices the way they are, I should probably archive the old one and go get a brand new primary drive. Not only does this keep the amount of old cruft in my disks to a minimum, but it lets me completely side-step all "breaks on upgrade" issues (which Ubuntu may not have problems with now, but it certainly has in the past). It would certainly be a maximal-force solution to your friend's wedged window manager issue. -- Tim Wescott www.wescottdesign.com Control & Communications systems, circuit & software design. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
