How many of you are putting off upgrading?

[SoylentSteak]

I upgraded to Karmic the day it came out and regretted it. The boot was slower, Firefox used an insane amount of resources, I keep getting crash messages and a few days later the whole system crashed. I reinstalled Jaunty.

I'm going to wait a while and see how things work out. If worse comes to worst, I'm going to skip Karmic altogether and wait for Lucid.

[JustinR]

Although it took me about 3 weeks to get karmic working correctly, its a fairly good OS. The boot is actually pretty fast for me, around 28 seconds (Windows Vista takes around 4 minutes). I do agree though - firefox has locked up my system a couple of times - its hard for me to multitask with it without my computer freezing for a couple of seconds. If you want to save yourself some time, stick with 9.04 - and wait for the next release.

[lisati]

Tried running off a memeory stick. The graphics didn't play nice on my laptop. Software Center crashed on my desktop, as did the error report. I might wait a while.

[SoylentSteak]

I've heard the devs have a habit of using the release right before a LTS to iron out bugs so the LTS will run more smoothly. Is that, perhaps, the case with Karmic? My first Ubuntu was Hardy and it was the best working one so far.

[ninjapirate89]

I'm waiting until Lucid most likely. I installed in Vbox and I'm not impressed with the changes.


I've heard the devs have a habit of using the release right before a LTS to iron out bugs so the LTS will run more smoothly. Is that, perhaps, the case with Karmic? My first Ubuntu was Hardy and it was the best working one so far.

Hardy and Jaunty have been my favorite two since I started using ubuntu.

[Irihapeti]

I was going to wait for the next LTS, but got curious and decided to play with Karmic. It's installed on a couple of machines as a test system only. Hardy is still my main OS.

[Exodist]

I am waiting for Debian Squeeze :D

[poohman]

Upgraded already, and had only problems the first week or so, once they were sorted out, I am slowly beginning to like it.

[jacobs444]

i have an older pc, so it is very well supported. Older as in 2004 model.

[Neezer]

I'm waiting...I have an hp dv6 with all the sound issues that come with it. I got Jaunty working the way I wanted to, and I can't see the benefit of upgrading and going through the hassle of getting my sound going again....In fact, I did an update today, and had to fuss with some things to get my sound working again.

I'll probably stick with Jaunty for quite a while.

[slakkie]

I'm already running new development version, so I can't put off my upgrades.

And I upgraded my Debian to unstable a couple of days ago. Upgrade, upgrade upgrade :)

[dearingj]

I've heard the devs have a habit of using the release right before a LTS to iron out bugs so the LTS will run more smoothly. Is that, perhaps, the case with Karmic? My first Ubuntu was Hardy and it was the best working one so far.

It is the case with Karmic. There are some major changes in Karmic, mainly getting rid of HAL and replacing it with DeviceKit and udev. I alpha tested Karmic on some of my computers because of these changes.



The LTS releases should be the main releases for new users and companies. That means they should not only be stable from day one, but should have high quality documentation, books, and support both commercial and free. One way to accomplish this, I think, is to consider the last release before the LTS a QA release. Between Karmic and Lucid, there should be as little change as possible. Documentation written for Karmic should require only minor changes in order to be applicable to Lucid. One of the key strengths Microsoft has (especially for Win XP), is that everyone knows someone who knows all the secrets and workarounds since they've used it for some time themselves. (I can still do blind support of XP over the phone even though I haven't used it in a year -- I cannot do that with Hardy). If we consider Karmic a QA release to Lucid, we'll have a lot of users who can help their neighbours once Lucid is released. It will also give less technical users more confidence when recommending Ubuntu. We really need that in order to reach the crucial tipping point.

[Grant A.]

Everything works fine for me. I think people need to wake up and realize that Ubuntu releases are made for computers manufactured in the year that it came out, and maybe a couple years back. Seriously people, quit trying to install Ubuntu on godforsaken 5 year old machines that haven't seen an upgrade since their inception! Ubuntu is not made for these type of machines, and it's totally your fault for upgrading without even thinking about reading up on the release notes or launchpad bugs!

And back-ups people, make back-ups! Would it kill someone to use partimage once on their Ubuntu install before upgrading and complaining?

[kevdog]

Im so dang lazy I haven't upgraded since 8.10 -- just too dang lazy. Anyway from what I'm hearing not too many new features in these releases I can't add myself with a little compiling. Its a wait for LL for me.

[SGAZ]

I tried 9.10 on a machine for a friend and it had gdm problems with the Intel graphics chip so I dialed it back to 9.04 and all is well.

I'm going to run 9.04 on my own box at least until 10.4 comes out. 9.04 is working great and I haven't seen a compelling reason to bump up just yet. This will probably be the first upgrade since 7.10 that I've passed on.

[chessnerd]

I've already put Karmic on my computer and it's given me no more issues than Jaunty did. Sure, the screen brightness fix was harder to figure out and Grub 2 was confusing at first, but in the end everything worked out okay.

This thread furthers my belief that Karmic is the Windows Vista of Ubuntu, and the versions before and after it are making this look even more Windows-like.

Jaunty is a lot like XP in the sense that many people seem to like it and some, after trying Karmic, are downgrading back to it so they can return to something that they know works and is familiar to them. I also really liked Jaunty and thought it was the best OS Canonical has put out since Hardy (which could be thought of as Windows 98 in this scenario).

Karmic is much like Vista because it is having early issues that are making people worried about putting it on their computer. It also has a lot of new features (Grub 2, Software Center, etc.) that don't seem to quite make up for the issues that come with them. Also, things like Grub 2 can be confusing to people and make them want to just to back to the simpler Grub Legacy of Jaunty.

Lucid is looking to be the Windows 7 here. It will have a lot of the features presented in Karmic, but will have all the kinks of those worked out, plus improvements on those features, and new features as well. Also, as an LTS release it is going to have a lot of work go into its stability as well.

However, you need to remember that it was less than a month ago that Karmic came out. I think it's a bit too early to call Karmic a dud just yet. Give it a few weeks and some more updates may come along that fix most of the problems (much like SP1 did for Vista).

[etnlIcarus]

Haven't upgraded or done a fresh install yet but that's mostly out of laziness. Same thing goes for that XP reinstall, I've been meaning to do for months.

[NaOH]

I've been trying to get 9.10 running since the official release date and have had no such luck. In fact I've got a lot of disdain for this release. Two things I consistently use: Eve Online and VMWare Workstation. Eve does not run with an active network connection (well documented issue) and VMWare guests run like they're all on Pentium II's.

Having tried the *.32 RC kernels they resolve both these issues, BUT stability goes out the window: random crashes with no discernible consistency or pattern; true lock ups, (no numlock response, hard boot required).

I can't and won't wave a finger being a lowly end-user here, but I'm going back to 9.04 and not looking back (or forward?). I find no gain worth sacrificing two primary uses. Good luck ironing out. For what its worth all issues I've encountered are definitely kernel-related. If it weren't for the random crashes the latest and greatest kernel would have me sitting right with this release.

[ugm6hr]

Have been routinely skipping releases for a while.... I'm just too lazy to reinstall every 6 months.

6.06 -> 7.04 -> 8.04 -> 9.04 -> 10.04

Been serving me well for some time... So I think I'll wait.

(OK, there is a small white lie in there - I did use 7.10 for a few months after messing up my 7.04 which required me to reinstall and prompted a separate /home partition on my main laptop)

[etnlIcarus]

I'm just too lazy to reinstall every 6 months.

Same, except I usually upgrade the in-between releases.

[cariboo]

I upgraded on my laptop and media center pc and did clean installs on three other computers, then upgrade one to Lucid. Only one of the systems has a problem, sound being muted on a reboot. That should be resolved tomorrow as I've been to busy to do anything about it so far.

[gn2]

LTS for me, I won't be using 9.10 at all.
Still not sure if I will continue using Ubuntu after 10.04, will have to wait and see.

[slakkie]

I upgraded on my laptop and media center pc and did clean installs on three other computers, then upgrade one to Lucid. Only one of the systems has a problem, sound being muted on a reboot. That should be resolved tomorrow as I've been to busy to do anything about it so far.
Gnome or KDE?

[the_guv]

LTS for me ...

.. that's a shrewd viewpoint for the average user.

For my guide the Karmic Koala Bible, I tested with both a fresh install and an upgrade, on a souped up HP Workstation:-

Upgrade. Various driver issues, most notably with graphics, and a sluggish PC after, but maybe this was to do with filesys upgrade. Painful.

Fresh install. Went like a dream, including upgrading to Ext4 (I guess no real issue tho on a format/fresh install). Only problem was it left my wireless behind and I had to jiggle that. (Tx Ubuntuforums.)

From my limited experience, playing on just 2 machines, I'd say to backup /home and whatever else, then go for a clean install. With Ubuntu, this is such a quick procedure.

For sure though, looking forward to the LTS in April, and will be interested to see the upgrade performance without switching to a new filesystem.

[madnessjack]

I put off upgrading because i wanted a good laugh listening to people self-harm over it.

But then I upgraded and it worked. Fairly old Compaq machine and all. Grub is a little slow but i'm sure it can be fixed if i could be bothered. For me, it's faster and far smoother than Jaunty. :)

[RandomJoe]

I've put 9.10 on several systems, no real trouble except for the one I tried upgrading - total disaster. But then I have *never* had any success doing a version upgrade! Not sure why, but something always goes horribly wrong.

For the machines with fresh installs, everything has gone well. My hand-built C2D tower, a P4 desktop that is a MythTV backend, Asus Eee with UNR, and a file server machine (this is the one I tried upgrading, as I had done absolutely nothing to "customize" it aside from configuring Samba). After fresh install, all worked just fine. In fact the Eee worked better than it had with 9.04, wireless is more stable and quicker to connect, and the camera worked OOTB.

The only machine causing me any grief now is the Mac Mini I recently got. And even it works just fine - *if* I only use a single screen. But I got it for a media machine, and when I connect the projector to the second video port X refuses to cooperate - gives me 640x480 on the LCD monitor no matter what I put in the xorg.conf file. Really stinks. But not - strictly speaking - an Ubuntu problem. (OS X, of course, flawlessly sees both displays and sets them correctly.)

[jonnywombat]

I have installed Karmic on 5 machines of varying age and capability and specification, all without a Karmic specific problem.

Of these 3 were upgrades and 2 were fresh installations.

On my personal laptop I am running karmic and lucid in dual boot.. Lucid seems ok to me too, but I'm looking forward to it breaking soon.

[Ji Ruo]

I've held off. Jaunty is working fine for me and reinstalling would mean a lot of setting up and downloading. I think I will do installs of Ubuntu and Kubuntu karmic once I have got my head around all of the new changes that have been introduced, and done some research on the common problems that others have had.

[SR_ELPIRATA]

Didnt wait for the upgrade, but I remember reading that upgrading could be problematic so I've always done a clean install. Moved to 9.10 the same week it got out, and a week later I was back at 9.04 :)

An audio problem which couldnt be solved was the culprit. You cant have an HTPC without flawless audio, so I'm back to flawless audio in 9.04.

ELP

[NoaHall]

I upgraded today, made sure I disabled the nvidia driver before hand, turned installed, install nvidia driver, everything is running great. Graphical benchmarks have at least twice better results now.

[speedwell68]

I ugraded when the RC came out and Karmic has been flawless from that day to this. IMHO it is the best Ubuntu to date. I upgraded my Wife's netbook to UNR 9.10 on the day of release and that has performed perfectly and last week I finally got round to upgrading my laptop to Karmic. The only problem I have had is with the ATI drivers on my laptop, but then they have never worked properly, without a fight, since Edgy 6.10. I have to do my Uncles laptop soon and I am not expecting any issues with that either.