I hate technology

Please forgive this rant, but I just encountered multiple problems when trying to install an OS on the oldest PC in my stable, a ThinkPad T420.

It had Xubuntu 24.04 on it. Ran well (upgraded to an SSD and 12 GB of RAM years ago) and I should have left it alone….but the alleged security improvements in 26.04 made me want to try it once the RC came out. I used to always do a clean install but upgrades have gone so smoothly for a long time that I decided to upgrade from 24.04. Big mistake.

Once on 26.04 something went screwy with the new Rust stuff. Terminal would not recognize sudo, even though both sudo and the new sudo-r (Rust) were installed. I tried a few things I found online but no luck. So I decided to clean install 24.04 and return the system to the way it was pre-upgrade.

Then I ran into the first issue, which I had read about but never experienced: The (X)Ubuntu installer hung forever after it finished the install, did not show the “installation is complete; please restart to complete it” screen. I tried waiting 30 minutes, I tried pressing Enter till my fingers were numb, then I tried a hard reboot, hoping the 24.04 welcome screen would appear….but no luck.

Next I said to heck with Linux and tried to install Tiny 10….then I discovered another problem I had read about but not seen before: The installer went into a restart loop after it reached the “Your computer will restart in 10 seconds” message. After it restarted it went back to the start of the install process. Found lots of info online, tried things such as pulling the USB stick, resetting boot priorities, changing Bios settings, etc. No luck.

I tried both Rufus and Etcher for the Xubuntu install attempts. Tried both 24.04.3 and 24.04.4, and both dd and iso. Used Rufus for Tiny 10 and also tried Win 10 LTSC. No luck.

Found more info on issues with installing Linux on a T420—possibly related to its lack of Secure Boot, as the last generation to ship with Win 7 installed. Found that strange, since I had no problems installing Mint or Xubuntu on it before.

Shoulda left 24.04 run till EOL….but it’s crazy that I ran into so many problems for the first time that I had only read about before: Issues with Rust, with installing Linux on T420-era ThinkPads, with the Ubuntu installer bug and the endless loop of the Win 10 installer. Will try again tonight and I’ve gotten my money’s worth from this puppy even if it never runs an OS again.

But frustrating. I am not a tech expert by the standards of this site, but it’s been more than a decade since I had any real trouble installing an OS.

I hate technology.