"reinstall," by which I mean "completely destroy."

WOOOOOOOOOOW

'k now get this

ubuntu 16.04 live disc has a repair/reintall option, it'll replace the OS and reset all OS settings but try to keep installed apps and definitely keep user data

LIKE A FOOL I TRIED THIS HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA FUCK ME

FIRST thing it does: mount the old OS drive and delete all the old OS files.

SECOND thing it does: unmounts old OS drive

THIRD thing it does: tries to remount old root (which it mounted before, I note) as ext2 file system. BUT if it's NOT ext2...

THE WHOLE THING PUKES AND DIES AFTER COMPLETELY DESTROYING WHATEVER REMNANTS OF AN OS YOU HAD ON THE PARTITION.

HEY IF YOU'RE GONNA DIE IF NOT EXT2 YOU MIGHT CONSIDER CHECKING FOR EXT2 BEFORE DELETING THE ENTIRE OS.

oh you wretched piece of shit

ubuntu 16.04 installer.

sees the /home partition.

thinks it's ext2.

it's not, but I go eh, it can mount it from the live view, it'll figure it out.

can't mount it as ext2, won't work. INSTALLER HANGS BECAUSE IT'S CRAP.

reboot.

installer still thinks it's ext2. tell it no, it's ext4.

INSISTS UPON REFORMATTING, NO OVERRIDE, THUS MISSING THE ENTIRE POINT OF THIS WHOLE FUCKING EXERCISE.

i hate you SO FUCKING MUCH ubuntu

i have no idea what to do.

I'm sitting here, stuck. I have no studio, I have things I'm SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON THIS WEEK, I have NO trust in Ubuntu, I have NO idea what I should be doing next - except that's not true, the next step is "SURE HOPE MY BACKUP IS GOOD" and go ahead with formatting.

But EVERY. SINGLE. STEP. I've let Ubuntu take has been massively destructive. EVERY ONE. Not ONE thing has worked right. I have no idea what it will do next and no confidence that it, fuck, I dunno, won't wipe the Archives partition or the Windows 8.1 partition that HEY GUESS WHAT I CAN'T RECREATE SINCE MICROSOFT WON'T LET ME, or WHO THE FUCK KNOWS WHAT.

This is grotesque.

check this shit out

How the FUCK is this shipping code? Seriously. Every attempt to deal with Ubuntu this week - starting with its mysterious inability to see PARTS OF my audio interface, leading to a massive upgrade fail to 14.04 (that I was able to fix), and then to a completely destructive failed upgrade to 16.04, has led to more and more monumental failures, and now we’re at the point where a freshly-made 16.04 LIVE DVD can’t even fucking see FILESYSTEMS consistently.

(That’s /home. It’s an ext4 filesystem. If I let installer get it wrong and try to mount it ext2, it fails and hangs the installer. If it tell it it’s ext4, it insists upon trying to format it and destroy all my data. FUCK YOU UBUNTU.)