A problem setting up Ubuntu

[Alexandra Zaharia]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 1:21 PM, <valhalla2100 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am having trouble re-installing Ubuntu.  There is an installation
> from over a year ago.  I did not use it for a while and forgot the
> password.

You can recover your password quite easily.

As the system boots up, in the grub menu press 'e' on the option
designing the kernel you're booting. Then, in the following screen,
move up/down to get to the line starting with "kernel". Once you have
it highlighted, press 'e' again. 'e' stands for edit. Go to the end of
the line and delete "ro quiet splash" (or "ro splash", or "ro quiet",
whichever may apply to you) and add "rw init=/bin/bash" instead, press
enter to exit from the editing mode and now, still having that
"kernel" line selected, press 'b'. This will boot you to a root bash
prompt. Just change the password from there:

passwd john

to change john's password or

passwd

to change root's password.

> Can someone give me information on how I can get rid of the old
> copy of Ubuntu (and maybe all that I installed since then)?
>
> I see that there is a version 9.xx.  Have not been able to read any
> postings on it.  Should I use that instead of version 8.10?  It might
> not matter since I don't see any advantages of using Vista instead
> of XP.  I just want to be able to use applications and access the
> internet.

> Someone told me to do a new install.  I have done this a few times
> and after the intallation and restart I get only the original listed on
> the selection screen (and Windows Vista, which I am trying to get
> away from using).

Install 9.04 over the 8.10. "Over" means on that exact partition.

Really, it depends on you whether you want to keep the 8.10 or if you
want 9.04 installed over it. Read the changelog[1] and the known
issues/release notes[2].

On the other hand, you can't know what suits you better if you haven't
tried the new version yet. You can't say you like tomatoes more than
potatoes if you never ate potatoes.

For me 9.04 was good for the Wacom enhanced support. If I would have
had a Intel graphics chip, though, I'd have probably had problems with
it. Then again, I insisted to upgrade to 9.04 from 8.10 which obliged
me to switch from KDE (Kubuntu) to Gnome (Ubuntu). In *my* view, the
9.04 Kubuntu is plain awful. And the list can go on.

[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/904overview
[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/904