The problem is that some people don’t buy the pro version because they prefer a lighter system. If they introduced a way to make a voluntary contribution, many of us would support the project and there would be no need to put the pro version behind a paywall.
Considering this is advertised as experimental at the moment, I think you've troubleshooted far enough. Kudos for that!
In my experience, upgrading to a new version is either a smooth ride or a troubleshooting nightmare. Even on Windows, I've never been very lucky with these things. That's why I personally prefer to install from scratch, and use that as an excuse opportunity to do a little clean up on files, apps, etc. that I might no longer need.
While is not shown as prominently as the link to the Pro version, but there's a link to "Donate" in the website. You can use this to make a small contribution:
And as for installing a lightweight system, the Pro version does have an option in the installer to download only the essentials, instead of all the extra software that not everyone might need. It could be even more granular, and I hope they include this in the future, but it's nonetheless a great way of keeping things light.
Hmm ... seems to have a Problem with the gnome-shell Package ... Do You have any Third-Party Gnome Extensions active? If yes, try it with disabling them.
My upgrade (17.3 Pro to 18 Pro) failed on this:
Fatal Error: { GDBus.Error:org.aptkit.TransactionFailed: error-dep-resolution-failed: E:Internal Error, pkgProblemResolver::ResolveByKeep is looping on package libkf5widgetsaddons5:amd64. }
There's a lot of dependencies on that package and I assume that there will be unintended and unhappy consequences if I remove it. Is there a way to narrow down the issue rather than use the shotgun approach?
I got this as well, except nothing about a system administrator. This happened on the first 2 reboots, so I left it and tried again - each time, it displayed this error, but then went on to load Thunderbird, Deja Dup and Rambox, then froze except for the mouse.
ZenZen, Yeah...But I didn't give up on 18 with my Old PC...The Ubuntu/Zorin Frankenstein installation (Which I didn't even realize it had become somehow) no way of course could upgrade to Zorin 18 (I tried many variations). I did try a clean install with Zorin 18 but my old video cards (I tried 4 different old ones) just don't get along with Either Wayland or Xorg. I finally was able to get a completed clean install done with 18 even though it was frozen while installing. However the video with my old cards (Wayland and Xorg) was completely unstable. Clearly they've changed something that requires newer hardware as I did not have any problems in 17 with video. The Video would freeze with 18 within a few minutes everytime after boot. Then it dawned on me that hey if Ubuntu is installed why not see if I could upgrade Ubuntu. Yep...Installation with ubuntu from CLI was painless with only having to answer the occasional question. However I found once completely upgraded to the latest Ubuntu 24.3.5 I think it also was completely unstable and video would freeze with both Wayland and Xorg. My hardware is just too old for the new video drivers it seems. So for now I've restored my 17.3/Ubuntu Frankenstein version which runs stable and I'll use it until it's no longer supported. Funny stuff is that my Windows 25H2 runs without issue on the old video cards...Oh well...Thanks to NickS and Zor for helping out.
It's good that you were able to rethink things. I think there's a way to install those drivers on those older cards, and I get the impression that Zorin Ubuntu scans for drivers within Windows somehow. In fact, I can access the Windows 10 drive as a mounted drive. My computer has an AMD A10 with an integrated R7 GPU, so it's not that different from a typical office desktop, and I think it's similar to your HP, so keep looking. You might need the latest Mesa card, but I think that's for gamers. Otherwise, try Mint.
Which graphics cards do you have? It could help to install an older kernel, e.g. kernel 6.8, with mainline tool.
If the computer runs poorly on Zorin 18, another option would be to stick with Zorin 17. It will be supported until 2027.
Being a much smaller market share, hardware manufacturers don't spend much time and effort in supporting their products under Linux. The drivers that exist mostly come from contributors that have to guess their way around how things work i.e., reverse engineer it.
Anyway, Z17 is supported until 2027, so you should be fine for a while at least. Maybe then you can try to upgrade again, or go with another alternative distribution.
I followed the document to do the upgrade the other night and there were no issues during that part, except for the reboot after a white screen saying something is wrong please contact your administrator came up.
What I did to fix it, which I am not sure was correct was ctrl+alt+F2 to go to a console screen, logged in, then ran sudo apt update, followed by sudo apt upgrade and a bunch of packages upgraded.
Once completed I rebooted and was at the normal gui screen and everything seemed fine, except when I ran the software updater it through some warning that I don't recall and gave me the option of a partial upgrade.
So far everything seems fine, but I don't know if I trust the upgrade 100% and I am debating if I want to do a reload.
The expected output from this command if everything went well is nothing at all, as these are the repositories for the previous version of Ubuntu. Try that again changing "jammy" with "noble", which should return a few lines.
To check for the kernel version, run uname -a.
And finally, go into Settings and check the About section to see if everything is reported as expected. This isn't a guarantee that everything went well as there may be some other packages that aren't updated properly, but that would be a good sign.
Keep an eye for weird bugs and glitches; if something went wrong it shouldn't take long for these to surface.
