On Sat, 2011-01-08 at 18:22 -0800, Jonathan M Davis wrote: > On Saturday 08 January 2011 14:34:19 Walter Bright wrote: > > Michel Fortin wrote: > > > I know you had your reasons, but perhaps it's time for you upgrade to a > > > more recent version of Ubuntu? That version is what comes with Hardy > > > Heron (april 2008). > > > <https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/meld> > > > > I know. The last time I upgraded Ubuntu in place it f****d up my system so > > bad I had to wipe the disk and start all over. It still won't play videos > > correctly (the previous Ubuntu worked fine), the rhythmbox music player > > never worked again, it wiped out all my virtual boxes, I had to spend > > hours googling around trying to figure out how to reconfigure the display > > driver so the monitor worked again, etc.
Personally I have never had an in-place Ubuntu upgrade f*** up any of my machines -- server, workstation, laptops. However, I really feel your pain about video and audio tools on Ubuntu, these have regularly been screwed over by an upgrade. There are also other niggles: my current beef is that the 10.10 upgrade stopped my Lenovo T500 from going to sleep when closing the lid. On my laptops I have two system partitions so as to dual boot between Debian Testing and the latest released Ubuntu. This way I find I always have a reasonably up to date system that works as I want it. Currently I am having a Debian Testing period pending 11.04 being released. > > I learned my lesson! Yes, I'll eventually upgrade, but I'm not looking > > forward to it. > > A while back I took to putting /home on a separate partition from the root > directory, and I never upgrade in place. I replace the whole thing every > time. > Maybe it's because I've never trusted Windows to do it correctly, but I've > never > thought that it was a good idea to upgrade in place. I never do it on any OS. > And by having /home on its own partition, it doesn't affect my data. > Sometimes, > config files can be an issue, but worse case, that's fixed by blowing them > away. Of > course, I use neither Ubuntu nor Gnome, so I don't know what the exact > caveats > are with those. And at the moment, I'm primarily using Arch, which has > rolling > releases, so unless I screw up my machine, I pretty much don't have to worry > about updating the OS to a new release. The pieces get updated as you go, and > it > works just fine (unlike Gentoo, where you can be screwed on updates because a > particular package didn't build). I always have /home as a separate partition as I dual boot between Debian and Ubuntu from two distinct / partitions. But I always upgrade in place -- but having the dual boot makes for trivially easy recovery from problems. Debian Testing is really a rolling release but it tends to be behind Ubuntu is some versions of things and ahead in others. Also Ubuntu has non-free stuff that is forbidden on Debian. Not to mention the F$$$F$$ fiasco! > Of course, I'd have got nuts having an installation as old as yours appears > to > be, so we're obviously of very different mindsets when dealing with upgrades. > Still, I'd advise making /home its own partition and then doing clean > installs > of the OS whenever you upgrade. I have to agree about being two years behind, this is too far to be comfortable. I would definitely recommend an upgrade to Walter's machines -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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