upgrade or clean install?

[anechoic]

I've waited to upgrade until Koala settled down a bit but haven't decided whether or not to attempt a fresh install or an upgrade

I want to upgrade from 9.04 -> 9.10
my drive is partitioned into '/' and '/home/mystuff'

I back up regularly via Jungledisk and BackInTime
and plan on dragging both my '/home' and '/' directories onto a drive just to make abs sure I have everything - in case things go south

I've also created a 'all markings - full state' from Synaptic so I have an up to date list of every app installed on my hard drive

but want to know if anyone has experienced any difficulties in doing an 'upgrade' from 9.04->9.10

any gotchas or weirdness or secret handshakes I should know about?

[raymondh]

I prefer a clean install.

Since you have a separate /home, and if you decide to clean install.... just remember:

1. Mount and format root (/)
2. Mount but DO NOT FORMAT /home
3. Use the same username and password to minimize permission errors.

well done on having a regular back-up =D>

Raymond

[snowpine]

I prefer a clean install as well. However, since you have good backups, you could try an upgrade first, then if something goes wrong, you could try a clean install at that point. :)

[Linuxforall]

If possible, clean install is always the best way.

[oldfred]

I also recommend clean install.

If you have space on your drive you can try both or keep the old install partition for the next version. Just create a new / partition for the new install of 10-20GB and mount existing /home without reformating.

[cybrsaylr]

I also recommend clean install for all the reasons listed above.

I have also found that usually a clean install is quicker than the upgrade option.

[gadolinio]

In some of the ubuntu documentation pages, i read that they recommend a clean install.