On 18/12/09 22:43, Dave Sones wrote: > There are quite a lot of serious Ubuntu experts out there that > would never dream of trying an upgrade. They ALWAYS do fresh > installations and claim it's the only way to get a trouble free > migration to a new version.
It's true that building an install routine that works with all hardware out there is impossible to get 100% right, and that making it work with every configuration of existing software is a significant level of impossibility higher. So a fresh install will always be more reliable simply because it's much easier to get right. That said, my desktop at home was installed with Ubuntu 5.10 and has been upgraded release-by-release (and usually to a pre-release about a month before release), and has been largely trouble-free (occassionally I've had a failure to start the graphical interface but its always been fairly easy to fix with a little experience or forum support) and over the past couple of releases I've had no problems at all (if that's not asking for 10.04 to go wrong I don't know what is!) My work desktop was installed with Ubuntu around 7.04 when Windows decided I didn't need the contents of my hard disk any more and corrupted everything, and that's been upgraded release-by-release (about a week after each release) and I've had no problems with that one either. I also have a number of server installs which have been upgraded over several releases (although not to 9.10 yet), generally smoothly. So I'm a little torn if anyone asks me for advice on this one. A fresh install is much easier to predict and therefore much more easy to get right, but my experience of upgrades is that of having few problems. If it helps, I install very little that isn't in a repository (so nothing from source or non-deb binary installs), but I do not restrict myself to Ubuntu repos. As a comparison, I have attempted Windows version upgrades in the past (nothing since around Win2k) and they've always caused more problems than they're worth, so I had little expectation from the Linux equivalent and have been pleasantly surprised. I'd be interested to know what more recent Windows upgrade procedures have been like (comparing 2009 Linux technology with Pre-2000 Windows technology isn't fair), although here probably isn't the best place to get an unbiased response! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG _______________________________________________ Peterboro mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/peterboro
