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Top tip, power users – upgrading Ubuntu may knacker your Linux PC

2014, scratch that, 2015 will be the year of Linux on the desktop

Canonical says it is working to fix a problem that's crippling some Ubuntu PCs after they've been upgraded to the latest version of the Linux distro.

A spokesperson for the company told The Reg it is aware of a "small number" of "power users" are seeing their PCs crash following the move to 14.04.

Until there's a fix, the spokesperson said: "Users who find themselves in this situation can recover by means of booting from a live CD or USB stick and reinstalling the boot loader on the master boot records of all their fixed disks."

The problem is hitting those moving from Ubuntu 13.10, aka Saucy Salamander, which was released in October last year, to Trusty Tahr 14.04, which has just been delivered.

According to one Reg reader who has been in contact – and those manning Ubuntu forums, see here and here – the upgrade breaks the GRUB bootloader, rendering the machine unbootable.

It's not clear how many Ubuntu fans are copping this particular problem. However, our reader remarked the only reason more people haven't reported this bug is that most have been locked out their systems all week.

Ubuntu 14.04 was released on 17 April. It is a Long-Term Support (LTS) release, meaning Canonical will be supporting this distro for five years - all the way to 2019. ®

Bootnote

At least this bug didn't make it into Um Bongo 14.04, as it was reported and fixed before the release: holding down the enter key for a few seconds unlocked the screensaver by crashing it.

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