8.10 end of life: I guess I have to migrate now *sob*

[josephellengar]

I would like to pay honors to 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, the best OS that canonical has ever written, and say that I am very sad that it has reached end of life. And I would like everyone, including the honorable Ibex, to know that the Karmic Koala will never have the same place in my heart. :sad:

[WinterRain]

What's wrong with Lucid Lynx? Works great here. Lucid FTW!

[ttshivers]

What's wrong with Lucid Lynx? Works great here. Lucid FTW!

Yeah. I just upgraded from 9.10 to Lucid Lynx and everything is working fine. Don't be afraid to upgrade.

[josephellengar]

I prefer stability. Just have had too many problems when upgrading quickly. I'd never upgrade without giving a release at least a few months to mature.

[WinterRain]

Yeah. I just upgraded from 9.10 to Lucid Lynx and everything is working fine. Don't be afraid to upgrade.

Well, clean install here. Actually, I was running lucid for the past month already, but I just can't help clean installing once the final release is out. I'm set for the next 6 months now.

[josephellengar]

Well, clean install here. Actually, I was running lucid for the past month already, but I just can't help clean installing once the final release is out. I'm set for the next 6 months now.

Yeah, but its so much trouble to do a clean install every six months and keep your settings the way they are.

[Rasa1111]

I prefer stability. Just have had too many problems when upgrading quickly. I'd never upgrade without giving a release at least a few months to mature.


I think thats how Im gonna "roll" also. lol

Karmic (me first real Ubuntu OS), works soo perfect for me,
Ive never had another OS that worked so great,
I dont want that to change, really.. lol

plus.. my attempts at playin with the 10.04 cd's were unfruitful anyway....
im happy i am happy with karmic. lol :)

[NightwishFan]

After updates releases can get quite a few fixes. Try Jaunty or Karmic if you want.

[chessnerd]

I prefer stability. Just have had too many problems when upgrading quickly. I'd never upgrade without giving a release at least a few months to mature.

I can understand/respect that. However, I don't think of Karmic as the "stable" one between the two. Jaunty always was great for me, and I'm not glad that I upgraded my laptop to Karmic. If you want a really stable system that will be supported for the next few months I'd go with Jaunty as long as it works with your hardware.

I'm going to be installing 64-bit Lucid on my laptop when the download finishes and I'll be glad to be done with Karmic. I am concerned about the Xorg memory leak and Intel chip-set issues, but Karmic regularly crashed on my hardware so it can't be worse (I hope).

[conradin]

Your hardware looks like it will have no trouble meeting system requirements. Actualy 8.04 was the last perfect version in my mind sound drivers and ATI support started getting iffy in 8.10 as I recall. No big deal Im planing on retaining 8.04 in several of my older workstations. No one is forcing me to upgrade.

[josephellengar]

Your hardware looks like it will have no trouble meeting system requirements. Actualy 8.04 was the last perfect version in my mind sound drivers and ATI support started getting iffy in 8.10 as I recall. No big deal Im planing on retaining 8.04 in several of my older workstations. No one is forcing me to upgrade.

Yeah I upgraded to Karmic. Seems to work pretty well so far. Even snappier than *sniff* Ibex.

[NightwishFan]

8.10 was my favorite release. Great artwork and performance.

[Merk42]

Yeah, but its so much trouble to do a clean install every six months and keep your settings the way they are.

Separate /home partition

[solitaire]

Yeah, but its so much trouble to do a clean install every six months and keep your settings the way they are.

I'm always fiddling with settings and installing and removing stuff, so a clean install every 6 months is great! ^_^ lol

Only settings a really need in my Firefox bookmarks and passwords. other stuff gets changed to much for me to keep! lol ^__^

[WinterRain]

Yeah, but its so much trouble to do a clean install every six months and keep your settings the way they are.

I respectfully disagree. Even with the slow servers today, I was able to clean install in 2 hours. And I'm talking about installing many apps, tweaks, personal preferences and such. Is 2 hours too much every 6 months? I don't think so. To add to this, if you can't afford a couple hours every 6 months, what are you doing wasting time in the forums?

[chessnerd]

I respectfully disagree. Even with the slow servers today, I was able to clean install in 2 hours. And I'm talking about installing many apps, tweaks, personal preferences and such. Is 2 hours too much every 6 months? I don't think so. To add to this, if you can't afford a couple hours every 6 months, what are you doing wasting time in the forums?

Some of us aren't as fortunate.

It took about 20 minutes to download (via torrent) and 15 minutes to burn the disk at a slow write speed. It took me about 40 minutes just to back up my 10 GB of files to my flash drive and I'm expecting about 1 hour 30 minutes for the install. After that I'll spend another 2-3 hours or so configuring Lucid, removing unneeded packages, checking for and fixing bugs, installing applications, and adding my personal files back.

That adds up to over 4-5 hours for the install. I probably won't get to bed until 2 AM EST.

Plus, I have three computers that run Linux. I can't spend 12-15 hours every 6 months doing a full reinstall! However, this will probably be the last time that I upgrade one of my desktops at all... It's a "Franken-puter" that I made by combining three machines together and the parts are mostly from 2001. Specs are 1.8 GHz P4, 512 MB RAM, and 60 GB of HDD and I don't plan on upgrading to any non-LTS releases with it again. Two years from now, it might be out of service.

[josephellengar]

I respectfully disagree. Even with the slow servers today, I was able to clean install in 2 hours. And I'm talking about installing many apps, tweaks, personal preferences and such. Is 2 hours too much every 6 months? I don't think so. To add to this, if you can't afford a couple hours every 6 months, what are you doing wasting time in the forums?

Yeah, it's maybe 40 minutes to download, and half an hour to write/install, but then it gets a lot worse:
remove bloat (10 minutes)
install applications from synaptic (at least 90 minutes)
set up custom scripts (30 minutes)
install non-repository software (1 hour)
customize gnome/track down previous theme, icons, etc (1 hour)
Migrate files (1 hour)

Etc. Once I get everything, it's at least six to eight hours, if not more based on the release. Plus, a separate /home partition is great, but only covers about half of what I need, after firewall, custom applications, other security settings, installed packages, etc. It just doesn't cover everything.

Yes, though. I problem am slower than most at this. Or "deliberate" as I prefer to say.

[NightwishFan]

It is very wise and efficient to just make a separate /home partition or data partition.

[WinterRain]

It took me about 40 minutes just to back up my 10 GB of files to my flash drive and I'm expecting about 1 hour 30 minutes for the install.

That's where I save a lot of time. I keep all my files on a separate drive to begin with, so the only things I have to backup is whatever small files are on my desktop, and my .mozilla/.opera/.thunderbird config files. That's about 30 seconds. And, I have a blazing fast computer, and the base install from a usb drive only takes 4 minutes. So for me, it makes sense to clean install.

I don't trust the upgrade process at all. Ask any tech, and they will unanimously agree that the preferred method is to clean install any OS. Any time you overwrite existing files, there's a greater chance of something going wrong. Very soon you will see threads popping up like mad, such as: "sound/network/video no longer works after upgrade. HELP!"

I prefer not to take that chance. If it works for you, consider yourself lucky and buy a lottery ticket.

[chessnerd]

That's where I save a lot of time. I keep all my files on a separate drive to begin with, so the only things I have to backup is whatever small files are on my desktop, and my .mozilla/.opera/.thunderbird config files. That's about 30 seconds.

Well my laptop doesn't have a second drive and I've maxed out the number of partitions so this isn't an option. (I even have to use a swap file instead of a swap partition.)


I don't trust the upgrade process at all. Ask any tech, and they will unanimously agree that the preferred method is to clean install any OS. Any time you overwrite existing files, there's a greater chance of something going wrong. Very soon you will see threads popping up like mad, such as: "sound/network/video no longer works after upgrade. HELP!"

I prefer not to take that chance. If it works for you, consider yourself lucky and buy a lottery ticket.

It's never worked well for me either. Tried to upgrade my Jaunty install to Karmic just a couple of days ago on my old desktop with the thought that I might then just upgrade to Lucid after that. It broke Xorg (and probably other stuff if I would have been able to look around).

I was going to reinstall Jaunty, but I decided to install the 10.04 RC instead. That way, the experience wasn't a total waste of time...

[WinterRain]

Yeah, it's maybe 40 minutes to download, and half an hour to write/install,
Took 10 minutes via torrent for me while I got a sandwich and cup of tea, and 2 minutes to put the iso on thumbdrive. 4 minutes to install the base system.

remove bloat (10 minutes)
I'm not sure I know what you mean. If by removing bloat, you mean removing unwanted apps, that doesn't speed up your computer, it will just free up a couple gigs.

install applications from synaptic (at least 90 minutes)
How many apps do you install? 80? I installed a ton of apps in 20 min when the servers were a bit slow today.

set up custom scripts (30 minutes)
Don't use/need custom scripts.

install non-repository software (1 hour)
Are you on dial-up?

customize gnome/track down previous theme, icons, etc (1 hour)
Lack of planning there. Keep all those things handy on a separate drive.

Migrate files (1 hour)
I keep all my stuff on separate drives. No need to migrate.

With a bit of thought and preparation, you could cut that time in half. But hey, whatever floats your boat. Good luck.

[WinterRain]

Well my laptop doesn't have a second drive and I've maxed out the number of partitions so this isn't an option.

You could also consider getting a 16/32gb thumbdrive. They're pretty cheap now.

[chessnerd]

You could also consider getting a 16/32gb thumbdrive. They're pretty cheap now.

I've got one (16 GB). That's how I moved 10 GB of files over to my flash drive :P. It just took 40 minutes to do because of how slow the write speed is on large flash drives. I also have a 1.5 TB USB HDD that I use to make backups, but the backup of my Ubuntu install on my laptop was two weeks old so I needed to whip out the Cruzer.

[Khakilang]

8.10 was my first experience with Linux. Than to 9.04 and now 9.10. Soon I will upgrade to Lucid Lynx. I still have use for the 8.10 particularly on older machine. So it still not dead after all.

[ssulaco]

Im planing on retaining 8.04 in several of my older workstations. No one is forcing me to upgrade.
I hear ya.

[Ebere]

What's wrong with Lucid Lynx? Works great here. Lucid FTW!

What is FTW! ???

[Ebere]

removing unneeded packages

Would you mind telling me what process you go through to remove unwanted packages ?

I am afraid to remove anything for fear of breaking something else.

[Ebere]

You could also consider getting a 16/32gb thumbdrive. They're pretty cheap now.

Cheap is relative.

Give me one for 5 dollars, that is cheap...

But 50 dollars, now that is too big a chunk out of my fixed income.

For others, 50 dollars may be chump-change.

[chessnerd]

Would you mind telling me what process you go through to remove unwanted packages ?

I am afraid to remove anything for fear of breaking something else.

I'd be happy to share my method. I can't say its flawless, but it usually doesn't break stuff and it hasn't crippled my system yet. (Sorry for the incredible length)

First, I decide what I want to get rid of. For example, I'll use the Evolution Mail Client. This is a good example because many Evolution libraries are required by other programs. The trick is to only remove the ones that aren't used by something you need. Then, I open up Synaptic.

In Synaptic I search for what I want, ie Evolution, and then organize it using the leftmost option ("S") so it shows only installed packages. From there, I take a look.

First, I remove the package with the name of the program (in this case evolution) by right clicking the and then wait to see if a window pops up. If it does, that means that something "depends" on that package being there, ie if you remove that package, the other ones will be removed as well. Evolution doesn't have this, so it's okay.

If that's all there was, then great, click "Apply" and I've removed it. This isn't the case with Evolution, but it is the case with some packages like Tomboy. Also, if there are any with a "-gtk" or "-kde" then these go too, they are just the GUI files for the application and won't be useful after its gone :).

Next, I look for a package with a "-common" or "-core" after the name of the program (in this case, evolution-common). This will usually bring up a window, so I look through all the packages carefully to see if anything being removed is something I still want. If every package seems to be related to what I want to get rid of, which in this case it is, I'm good, I click "Mark" and all of those things will be removed.

After that, I look through the rest of the installed packages and try to remove the ones related to what I'm trying to purge the system of, reading all the dialogs that pop up to make sure I'm only removing what I want. If I'm unsure of what it is I read the description, and if it sounds important I ignore it and move on. In the case of Evolution there are a lot of packages, but I push through and just ignore every package that comes up with a huge list of stuff because that one is obviously important. The ones that only have one or two things I read and see what they are.

The key in these steps is to read what comes up in the dialog. If you see anything unrelated to what you are trying to get rid of it is best to leave it alone.

After I Apply the changes, I close Synaptic and open a Terminal window to run sudo apt-get autoremove, which cleans up the now unused packages. But I still make sure I read what is being removed from there. Then sudo apt-get autoclean and sudo apt-get clean.

There are still some problems with this method. For example, evolution-data-server is used by several other applications, but they don't depend on it, so removing this causes problems. However, this method will free up hard drive space and can free up RAM depending on what is removed.

Some things that I regularly remove are:

*Evolution
*Empathy (before that, Pidgin)
*Ubuntu One
*Bluetooth and BlueZ packages (my laptop and desktops don't have Bluetooth)
*Tomboy Notes

These are pretty safe to get rid of if you don't want/need them, and as long as you pay attention to what is getting removed it shouldn't crash your system to remove them. Whats more dangerous is removing unneeded graphics drivers and such, that can break Xorg. Also to catch more stuff, I watch what is updated in the Update Manager and, if I notice something that I don't think I need, I'll go in and try to remove it via Synaptic.

Just make sure you don't remove too much stuff at once, otherwise you won't know what broke your install.

Is there a better way? Probably, but I haven't thought of it. If you do break anything using this method, simply try reinstalling the packages you removed (if you forget, Synaptic keeps a list of everything you do under File > History).

If this doesn't work, the Forums are here or you can private message me and complain and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. (However, I actually am going to be gone all next week so that might not be the best idea.)

Hope this is helpful.

[WinterRain]

What is FTW! ???

Here you go. (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=FTW)

[MaxIBoy]

Jaunty is thought by many to be the best Ubuntu release ever. I never really used it too long, but it did seem to work great.

Although I am really liking the Karmic-based Mint 8.

[Ebere]

I'd be happy to share my method.

Hope this is helpful.

Exactly what I was hoping for !!

Thank you very much !

:)

It could be days or weeks before I actually dive into this, (of course, I could try at three inna am, tonight. LOL), so no worries. I won't be bugging you will all kinds of stupid questions.

Well, not right away, anyway. LOL

[NCLI]

I would like to pay honors to 8.10, Intrepid Ibex, the best OS that canonical has ever written, and say that I am very sad that it has reached end of life. And I would like everyone, including the honorable Ibex, to know that the Karmic Koala will never have the same place in my heart. :sad:

Actually, Intrepid was probably the least stable version of Ubuntu (http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0AhT2q9EW-seKdDBYV2ZXZ3FKcFl4Q0dBWjFHOFUtb2c&hl=en_GB&output=html). Guess you were lucky :-P