I decided to check out Breezy Badger the latest version of Ubuntu linux. First I thought I would try the in place upgrade from Hoary to Breezy by altering /etc/apt/sources.list to the Breezy repositories and then running sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. First all seemed to be well and then towards the end of the update it bombed out with loads of package failures. Well I wasn't too bothered as I've come to expect this sort of thing.
I downloaded the iso for the breezy install and burnt it to disc so I could do a fresh install. When installing everything went o plan except when the installation ejected the CD and rebooted I only ever saw the install go up to 24% before it crashed out saying there was a problem with the packages.
I tried this 3 or 4 times and then decided to fix it myself. I rebooted back into the shell and using the wonderful apt-get I installed xorg and gnome manually. This pulled in everything I was missing and shored up the broken install quite nicely.
Once I had done this I had the basis of a working system and from there everything seemed ok. Firefox seemed a little broken kept doing a dissappearing act everytime you downloaded something! To fix that I uninstalled and re-installed it.
Now I'm wondering has anyone else seen their install flake out badly after the reboot? Maybe my hardware is a little long in the tooth? (Compaq E500)