Should I upgrade?

[madmanbob]

Having been a long time user - not an expert, of Ubuntu, I am now in a dilemma. My wifes PC runs 9.04 only, mine runs the same but with a xp dual boot. They are both the 64 bit versions. I have two separate hard disks in mine and Grub sorts the booting out.
My wife has a lot of very important stuff on her PC and I am not sure if I shoud use the 9.10 CD that I have downloaded to upgrade either machine.
I would not have a real problem if I could not get into windows for a while, but am not sure if I would be able to sort any Grub issues out in the longer term.
Should I go for it?

[Bucky Ball]

How stable do you need your machines? I would leave it for six months personally but I need to have my machines stable. Tweaking the grub could be the least of your problems.

Lot a people are having problems with Karmic. A few are having none. Both could change with future updates.

[dhavalbbhatt]

Just back up your important files and you should be OK. The thing with Ubuntu is that every install is different and can't say how it will go with your hardware. Either way, there is no harm in trying it out. At least use the LiveCD once or twice before installing it - that will give you an idea what to expect after installation.

[jhenager]

The key phrase is 'important stuff'. I had no problem running the upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10, but this machine doesn't have any critical data on it.
You can always use tar to make a full backup of your system to a USB drive and restore if necessary. Actually, if you have important information that would cause you distress to lose, you should do that anyway.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087&highlight=tar+backup+restore

[therabyte]

I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 and now I m having trouble with everything, can't play movies, unbearable boot times, among other problems.

And most important, I hardly see any benefit from the upgrade.

Keep 9.04!

[claymater]

My upgrade went fine... But if you are worried, just leave it.

(and if you upgrade make sure to do it via CD)

[donato roque]

If stability and continuity is important, i'd say wait until the grub 2 issues have been addressed. Ubuntu 9.04 is still in my machine. No rush really. It's supported until October 2010. In the enterprise where your particular concerns are at the forefront, they usually are the last to upgrade to a new os.

[madmanbob]

Thanks people. Perhaps I should leave it for a few weeks first.
I have run the 64 bit live cd on my PC and it all seem to run OK. The thing that I was worried about is would I have to do all the work again to get things like Google Earth, printers, and X-plane running, or would these things still be there from 9.04 after the upgrade.
The wifes PC is quite hard to back up as she has thousands of photos, and some are 7 Mb! I had considered putting another hard disk in hers and doing a clean install on that with the same username and password. My thinking is that she would then have access to all her stuff on the "old" disk with no problem.
jhenagersaid use .tar, but as I said, I am a dabbler and don't even know where or what .tar is!
Thanks for the pointers so far.

[dhavalbbhatt]

Thanks people. Perhaps I should leave it for a few weeks first.
I have run the 64 bit live cd on my PC and it all seem to run OK. The thing that I was worried about is would I have to do all the work again to get things like Google Earth, printers, and X-plane running, or would these things still be there from 9.04 after the upgrade.
If you are doing just an upgrade, these should remain after the upgrade. However, if you are doing a fresh install, the installation process will format your hard drive, and you will not have any of your previous settings.

The wifes PC is quite hard to back up as she has thousands of photos, and some are 7 Mb! I had considered putting another hard disk in hers and doing a clean install on that with the same username and password. My thinking is that she would then have access to all her stuff on the "old" disk with no problem.
jhenagersaid use .tar, but as I said, I am a dabbler and don't even know where or what .tar is!
Thanks for the pointers so far.
Mounting a different drive should be no problem at all. In fact you can even automate that (you will have to edit the fstab file (you can search the forums on how to do that). With regards to "tar", think of it as a zip/compression program.