Comment 28 for bug 528981

Everyone is welcome to the fruits of my pain with this problem. I was hoping to get the problem solved before Lucid so I could use a completely standard Lucid install, but my hopes were dashed and I have to target Maverick instead.

The current stock Lucid kernel is just stable enough on my system that I am able to perform an installation as follows:

1) Download the mainline kernel files (you will need 3 for your system) and put them on some kind of media that you can access without a graphical system.

2) Use the Alternate Install CD to install a Command Line Only system.

3) Reboot after installation, login to your new system, and IMMEDIATELY mount the media with your mainline kernel. The easiest way to do this is something like "sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt" (and replace sdc1 with the location of your media).

4) Install the mainline kernel: "cd /mnt" and then "sudo dpkg -i *.deb"

5) Reboot the system.

5a) If you know how to do it, edit your /etc/apt/sources.list to enable the CD-ROM (or use apt-cdrom). Otherwise, you need a decently fast Internet connection from here on.

6) Now install the full system, using whatever method you prefer. Tasksel has been bombing out on me, so I would recommend either "sudo aptitude install kubuntu-desktop" or "sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop". Replace kubuntu-desktop with the variant of Ubuntu you prefer.

7) The mainline kernel will automatically be the first kernel that GRUB sees, so you will always boot into mainline unless you hold down the Shift key at boot time and manually select another kernel.

This method is not perfect, but it DOES give me a working Lucid system. I had to skip Karmic completely because the mainline kernels at the time didn't work for me. The biggest drawback is that this method pretty much requires a fast Internet connection, so if you don't have one then this is not the method for you.

A piece of advice: if you get the read-only filesystem indicating corruption at any point before you boot into the mainline kernel, you should probably go ahead and reinstall rather than wasting time by trying to fix the broken installation.

You should be aware that the mainline kernel still has issues with Intel 852/855 video, so if you have this chipset you can still expect frequent hard lockups, but fortunately your entire filesystem will not be corrupted any more when that happens. Don't blame Ubuntu for these problems though, because Ubuntu appears to have about the only reasonably functioning solution of any major distro at the moment. The Intel video problem is an upstream headache, and they are beating their heads against brick walls trying to solve it. More information is in Bug 541511.

You should also be aware that the Lucid version of ndiswrapper does not work with 2.6.33 and later kernels, but this has been solved for Maverick. If you need ndiswrapper for any reason, then the mainline kernel may cause heartache for you. More information is in Bug 582555.