Farewell, Ubuntu

[Ralph Janke]

George Borusiewich wrote:
> I first tried linux with Ubuntu 6.04, dual-booting with Win XP. I was 
> delighted. Ubuntu auto-detected all of my hardware with no difficulty. 
> When 6.10 arrived, I switched to that, then 7.04, then 7.10, all with no 
> difficulty. I then installed 8.04. Disaster! No sound. I fiddled around 
> for a couple of weeks (I'm a newbie) with no success. I posted a report 
> to ubuntu-ca and asked for help. I received one reply from someone who 
> expressed puzzlement, but offered no suggestions. I checked some 
> websites to see if I could find a solution, and found 2 other poor souls 
> suffering from the same problem. One suggested that Ubuntu 8.04's switch 
> from "pulse audio" to "alsa" was the problem. I switched my 8.04 
> installation from "alsa" to "pulse audio", but still no sound. I posted 
> another report to ubuntu-ca with an update on my efforts, but received 
> not one reply. I then waited patiently for Ubuntu 8.10, knowing that the 
> problem would be corrected. It was not (I downloaded and installed 8.10 
> alpha 6). Grasping at straws, I installed Ubuntu 8.04 Satanic Edition. 
> No sound. The maddening thing is that I repeatedly reinstalled 7.10 and 
> got sound every time. Since Ubuntu is debian-based, I tried Debian 4. 
> Too geeky (I didn't even install it). I heard that Linux Mint is 
> Ubuntu-based, so I installed Linux Mint 5 (which is based on Ubuntu 
> 8.04). No sound, but in my opinion, Ubuntu cannot hold a candle to Linux 
> Mint 5 in terms of elegance and simplicity (try it). Unfortunately, 
> Linux Mint 4 (which I assume is based on ubuntu 7.10) does not have a 
> 86x64 version. Therefore, I am temporarily running ubuntu 7.10 until I 
> find some other linux distribution which will work. I have just 
> downloaded Mandriva 2009, but haven't had time to try it. I looked 
> through the 2008 edition of "Ubuntu Unleashed" (which covers 8.04 and 
> 8.10) but it offered no help at all. Parting is such sweet sorrow.  
> George Borusiewich
>
>   
Have you ever posted the specs of your machine on
http://answer.launchpad.net ?
That is the official support tracker for ubuntu related issues, and
while the answers
are given solely by volunteers, in most cases issues are solved, or
prepared in such
a way that adequate information is available for the developers and a
good bug discription
can be forwarded. You can also search there and see if there have been
answers to
similar questions as yours.

Alternatively, you could go to the #ubuntu channel on IRC on freenet.
There are people that might
also be able to help you.

I would hope you would at least try the support tracker. Listening to
your description it is
very likely to be a kernel issue. Therefore, if this is really the case,
it would be really important
to find out if there is a kernel patch available for this problem, so
that we can implement it.
However, this is not a specific Canadian problem, and therefore it would
help to add the knowledge
gain from your problem to our common pool, in order to help everybody
who might have this problem.

Thanks for your support in this matter,
- Ralph