upgrading never works... why bother?

[elustran]

Granted I've only ever done this twice, but both times I've upgraded ubuntu, it seems like it's been more trouble than its worth. The first time I rather quickly saved what needed saving and did a clean install. This time around I thought it might be less troublesome to fix whatever problems might crop in in an upgrade rather than try to get everything I wanted back on a clean install. I think I may have been wrong. New problems that weren't there or noticeable before keep on cropping up.

I was wondering if anybody has actually had a good upgrade experience.

[cb951303]

I believe the best way to upgrade is to use a different partition for /home
and then fresh install

[Archmage]

It deepends. If you have made many tweaks in your system that you would lose if you install new or install a lot of packages, etc. than upgrade is the only option, because else it would take ages till you have your system back.

[sloggerkhan]

I always just do a new fresh install but keep my /home partition and backups of any important customized configuration files.

[cb951303]

It deepends. If you have made many tweaks in your system that you would lose if you install new or install a lot of packages, etc. than upgrade is the only option, because else it would take ages till you have your system back.

installing new packages is not much of a hassle since we got synapctic.
those tweaks are probably why upgrade doesn't work properly :) because with every new dist-update we get newer versions of software which are not guaranteed to be compatible with older versions' configuration files etc...

[prshah]

Upgraded from 6.10-7.04-7.10-8.04 all trouble free.

I have a smooth unbroken line of upgrades. Never a hassle, and each new version fixes something; in 6.10, intel graphics chipset support and ntfs was a hassle; in 7.04, intel graphics works out of the box, in 7.10 ntfs fully working, in 8.04, bluetooth works better, etc.

The only problem I ran into was a power interruption on one desktop while the 7.10-8.04 upgrade was in process. Managed to recover it following instructions from the recovery console.

Have now upgraded (at last count) 18 machines from 7.10-8.04, all trouble free. But then again, I dont have any funky hardware, all entry level systems with intel chipset integreted graphics and/or SiS.And all these upgrades were with the alternate CD, not live downloading.

[bulldog]

Did an update once and had a broken system,never mind the time it took.
Now I only do a fresh install,which is much quicker for me.

I have a hdd with several 10GB partitions and one swap 2GB and a /home 200GB.
I install the new ubuntu on a separate 10Gb partition,leaving the 'old'one as it is.
I use the same swap and /home,only you must use a different user- and pasword,because otherwise you will be mixing things up,which you definitely don't want to do.
If the new install is working as it should,I copy all what I need from the 'old'ubuntu to my new install.
I can use the old install as a backup so I have always a working ubuntu.
You can imagine what you can do when the next ubuntu arrives,this way you have always two ubuntu's installed.