Life on the Bleeding Edge: Installer Fails in Fedora and Ubuntu

Antique Ignored Ubuntu Bug

Another week, another round of tinkering and messing around with Linux doodads. The Ubuntu Koala text installer has a years-old bug, and Fedora 11 LiveCD has a showstopping installer bug. Never a dull moment in computer-land!

Antique Ignored Ubuntu Bug

I downloaded the latest Ubuntu Studio, 9.10, in hopes that I would have a better experience than the last time I tested it. Which was the first or second release, I don't remember; it was still a baby then and needing some work. I used the alternate install DVD, about 1.5GB of multimedia goodness. The alternate installer is a text installer, which for some reason sends certain pundits and tech journalists screaming away in terror, but it is perfectly functional and not difficult at all. It is not mouse-enabled, but requires knowledge of specific elements of the keyboard: tab key, spacebar, arrow keys. I suppose these are completely unknown even to some experienced typists and computer users, so I try not to judge them too harshly.

But I digress. The .iso passed the checksum test, and the DVD passed the disk check. The first speedbump in the installation was setting up networking. Still no wi-fi configuration in the installer, even though I always use natively-supported wireless interfaces. No wi-fi. Really. Is this not 2009 of the 21st century, the glorious new millennium, the land awash in wi-fi?

But it's not a showstopper since I have the fat DVD with everything on it, so I can configure networking later. The installation progresses uneventfully to the next speedbump-- it stops dead with a big scary red screen partway through the "Select & Install Software" stage with a helpful "OMG the installation failed!" message, or something like that. But wait....

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