Idle speculation about clean installs

[stuart-newtoubuntu]

I was just wondering, when Dapper comes out is it worth formating and starting again with a fresh install?

Also why does Windows Xp have to be restarted after any upgrade but my Ubuntu install doesn't?

[newuser111]

i think it will worth be doing a fresh install if possible, the upgrade process is already over 800mb from breezy to dapper

[Qrk]

I always do a fresh install, because I like to get rid of the crap in my old system. I keep my documents on a separate partition, so its very easy. But it doesn't harm anything to upgrade through the net; although you may have some broken packages on your new system.

[briancurtin]

i prefer clean installs to upgrades

[WildTangent]

I would hate to do a clean install at this point...my setup is so customized, and there's things I've done that I don't remember how I did them. In short: clean install would be hell for me. But, I will most likely do a clean install.

-Wild

[mstlyevil]

I was just wondering, when Dapper comes out is it worth formating and starting again with a fresh install?

Also why does Windows Xp have to be restarted after any upgrade but my Ubuntu install doesn't?

There are less problems with broken packages by doing a fresh install. If you upgrade the kernel, you will need to restart Ubuntu also for the new kernel to take effect. Some applications require you restart Ubuntu before they will work but for the most part you do not have to restart it after installing /upgrading packages. I believe Windows almost always requires a restart because of dll files that will not function properly until it does.