Why so difficult to upgrade??!!??

[mariuxx]

Hi,

I have two Linux boxes, one on the internet, with content i'd like to keep, the other at home which I can erase without significant loss.

The one at home, to take what should be the easiest first, is running 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

A nice looking, but to me worthless webpage (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/KarmicUpgrades) says it's just to click the right buttons on the desktop, specifically the 'upgrade' button in update manager. But that wont work, as I have to upgrade to next version only, not to the latest. Anyway, no upgrades should be done with this tool without applying all updates to the current version, but my version (9.04) is not supported anymore, so it cannot be updated.

To make matters worse, there is no cd drive on that computer, but it looks anyway like the easiest option to go and spend money on an attachable cd-player and perform a clean install from cd.

But what to do with my internet box, which runs some version 8.xx, i have only ssh access, and I like to keep data?

Seeing all the posts about these issues, I can't understand why this must be so difficult:(:(

Ah, so I can see from my profile that the box on the net is 8.10 :)

[snowpine]

Hi Mariuxx,
I understand your frustration, however please understand that your difficulties stem from continuing to use these releases past their well-publicized "end of support" dates (April 2010 for 8.10 and October 2010 for 9.04). Upgrading from a supported Ubuntu release to a supported Ubuntu release is usually very easy.

Anyway you need to follow the "end of life" upgrade instructions. It requires a few extra steps but should get the job done: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades

Going forward you might consider the "long term support" releases (currently 10.04). These are released every 2 years and supported for 3 years. A great choice if you don't need/want frequent updates.