Feisty the way i like it, do i upgrade?

[mattgaunt]

Hey everyone

Im currently using ubuntu feisty fawn and its all pretty and running the way i like it, if i upgrade will it mess everything up??

Do i need to do a fresh install???

I have programs like awn installed by compiling it myself so its not installed over synaptic, and compiz-fusion has been installed using the feisty repo.

Any help / advice would be great

Matt

[Moses]

When I upgraded, one of the configuration scripts for one of the packages seg-faulted. During the upgrade process I got more than 30 dialogues saying that a package failed to install because of dependency problems caused by this.

The upgrade process (more that one hour later) told me to rerun the upgrade, because my system could be in an unusable state. I tried, but to no avail, so I risked it and restarted. I was greeted by Ubuntu's new fail-safe X at a 640x480 resolution. I think this was because the upgrade process failed to update to correct GRUB menu and enable the new kernel version (I tried Kubuntu a while back, and it made GRUB load its entries from its own partition) and the old version was not compatible with the new nVidia drivers.

I thought that removing the Kubuntu partition (I've tried KDE twice, and to be honest I can't really stand it) would solve my problems, since I have forcefully reinstalled GRUB on my Ubuntu partition. It didn't.

And my CD-ROM was broken, so there was no way to reinstall anything. I bought a new one and was amazed that a CD/DVD RW costs less than €40 (in 2001, when I bought the one that's now broken, I paid more than €40 for a DVD RW) and managed to burn the Ubuntu ISO using another computer with Windows XP. Yes, I managed! I tried three different programs. One wouldn't let me press 'burn' when I had loaded the ISO, one turned out to require a registration key, and one was a test version which only supported 'test burning'---there was a menu option to 'test' burning an ISO without actually doing it. Finally I found a utility that works like the 'Burn to disc' menu item in Nautilus.

I finally booted from the CD and installed Ubuntu. Doing it this way was much quicker than doing the upgrade, and since I have my home directory on a separate HD, I could simply tell the installer to mount this as /home/moses, and when I rebooted into my freshly installed system, it looked like my dear old system. But Rhythmbox displays the titles and artists of songs played on last.fm. And yeah, everything feels a bit smoother and faster.

I would recommend you to do a fresh install if you really want to upgrade, because I've only once had a a smooth upgrade process with Ubuntu. And it's nice to have all those packages you installed to check out removed and start anew.

[mattgaunt]

I had a feeling that would be the case

Well when i have a free cpl of hours i think ill go for the upgrade

Cheers for the reply moses

Matt