On 10 December 2008 16:55 Lucy wrote: > 2008/12/10 Dan Attwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > My advice would be don't upgrade and take advantage fo the long term > > support. > > Unless there is some new feature that she really needs or other show > > stopper. > I would take a look at the new features for Intrepid and see if > there's anything that your mother in law really needs or wants, and if > not, I'd also not bother upgrading. I'd guess that she would > appreciate the consistency rather than new features, if everything is > currently working okay.
At the risk of "me too", can I thoroughly recommend this approach. Whilst the 12-18 month lifecycle is suitable for hardcore users who can upgrade and maintain their own systems, the vast majority of users should be on an LTS release IMHO, for the following reasons: * Version upgrades break familiarity and break users' learned routines. If your mother-in-law has learned to do something in a specific way, upgrading to non-LTS releases may frequently break her knowledge and put her off Ubuntu. Version upgrades often provide entirely new ways of doing things, which are often poorly documented. Take the Intrepid network manager changes, for example. Inexperienced users typically learn how to do things "by rote"/"parrot-fashion", as a sequence of mystical unfathomable rites rather than as an understood procedure. * Version upgrades break configurations. It only takes a configuration which is only slightly outside the norm, for things to stop working. * Legacy hardware which relies on proprietory drivers can have its support withdrawn, such as the withdrawal of NVidia GeForce2 support from Intrepid. Although this can be solved with open source drivers, the fact is that most Ubuntu users use proprietory video drivers; in which case an LTS release will shield you from such problems. * Non-LTS releases cannot be upgraded out-of-sequence. Whilst 6.06LTS can be upgraded to 8.04 LTS, a non-LTS release must be upgraded in strict sequence 7.04->7.10->8.04->8.10->9.04 . This means you are committing yourself to TWO full distro release ugprades every year. That's clearly not suitable for an inexperienced user. My advice is to stick with Ubuntu 8.04(.1) LTS until the next LTS release is out, which is 2-3 years away. Frankly I think Ubuntu should follow their parent Debian's lead, and call the LTS releases "stable" and the non-LTS releases "unstable". Anything with a support life of only 18 months isn't stable IMHO. -- Andrew Oakley _____________________________________________________________________ Higher Education Statistics Agency Ltd (HESA) is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England at 95 Promenade Cheltenham GL50 1HZ. Registered No. 2766993. The members are Universities UK and GuildHE. Registered Charity No. 1039709. Certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 27001. HESA Services Ltd (HSL) is a wholly owned subsidiary of HESA, registered in England at the same address. Registered No. 3109219. _____________________________________________________________________ This outgoing email was virus scanned for HESA by MessageLabs. _____________________________________________________________________ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
