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I have ubuntu server 12.04 installed on vmware vsphere 5.1 latest build. I just went to upgrade 12.04 to 12.10 and it served up a graphics card limitation warning before allowing install. How do I manage this issue in vsphere 5.1?

do-release-upgrade warns me:

Your graphics hardware may not be fully supported in Ubuntu 12.10. Running the 'unity' desktop environment is not fully supported by your graphics hardware. You will maybe end up in a very slow environment after the upgrade. Our advice is to keep the LTS version for now. For more information see wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/UpdateManagerWarningForUnity3D Do you still want to continue with the upgrade? Continue [yN]

The wiki link states

Outdated hardware not providing required level of OpenGL support, Too new hardware without driver support yet, Obscure hardware without 3d support, Virtual machines, Binary drivers required but not installed

This is definitely virtual machine issue in my case which needs resolution.

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Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Ubuntu Server with graphics limitation warning? Are you running a GUI on it? What is the exact message and what application is giving you this? (e.g. do-release-upgrade command?) –  gertvdijk Jan 17 '13 at 22:05
Why do you need to run Unity on a server? It's a desktop environment. What is the purpose of this server? –  gertvdijk Jan 17 '13 at 23:33
New to Linux. Its a web server. I don't have the expertise to work from the command line. I need some GUI. Can I get rid of Unity and use another GUI to work around this upgrade issue? Thank you in advance –  C Calabrese Jan 17 '13 at 23:55
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up vote 0 down vote accepted

As I understand you really prefer a GUI to work with Linux on your server, being a novice user. Unfortunately, in Ubuntu 12.10, 2D-only support for Unity has been dropped and performs very slow on non-3D capable hardware. In a virtual machine this is even less useful, as you're not after the nice eye candy, I suppose.

I would recommend either:

  • Stay with 12.04. It is an long-term supported release and will not lose Unity-2D.


  • installing another desktop environment that is lightweight. I would go for either LXDE (aka Lubuntu) or XFCE (aka Xubuntu). You can install this alongside of Unity first: sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop, then change it in the login screen, try it out, and finally: How can you remove Unity?

    From there you would be able to upgrade without issues. I would recommend trying out these desktop environments first in a Live environment (Lubuntu/Xubuntu ISO booting in one of your VMs) before actually installing one.

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