I update my Hardy beta installation on my laptop to the latest packages about once a week. The experience so far has been like blowing seeds off a dandelion and reciting “It boots… It boots not… It boots… It boots not…” Currently, I’m on “It boots not”. I wonder which I’ll be on when the last seed blows off on April 24th?
This sort of thing doesn’t encourage one to be a beta tester. I’m glad they leave older kernels installed…
I’ve been doing the same on my MythTV box (which is dangerous, good chance the family will get upset if they can’t watch TV). So far I’ve not had it fail to boot. I have gotten one kernel so far where the sound didn’t work, which was fixed in the following kernel, and one where the DVD drive didn’t work (also fixed in the next one). Like you said, they leave the old kernels, so switching back to the previous one until the next one to try came out was easy to do.
I’ve had similar experiences with the Hardy upgrade myself, though not even using a laptop. First I had to use an older kernel because the new one is panicking with my USB wifi [1], which also means downgrading my xserver so I can use nvidia drivers. And hibernate doesn’t seem to work anymore. At the moment, my verdict is “fewer regressions than last time” [2]. Does that count as progress?
If the response on bugs like these continues like it has done in the past [3], I’m not hopeful. Oh well. I’m going to listen to ‘Every OS sucks’ [4] to cheer myself up.
[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/220013
[2] http://lukeplant.me.uk/blog.php?id=1107301679
[3] e.g. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/130998
[4] http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2514730680283477734
Although I haven’t seen crashes or boot problem with the beta install this time, I am concerned about Firefox 3 Beta’s performance in Ubuntu. Everytime I try to type in a URL, it gets stuck and busy for a few seconds and becomes unresponsive! I hope they get it worked out soon. Hickups like these are normal for beta software but adding it in Hardy wasn’t a wise decision.
Otherise, acting as a casual “user”, I just love the desktop they provide. Wunderful.