You don't have to upgrade to Intrepid?

[Plumtreed]

I don't plan to upgrade to Intrepid, at least not right away!

My question is, do I have to go without the improvements because of this decision or will the improvements be available via synaptics.

Network Manager is one area that sounds like a 'must have'! I understand that a great deal of work has been done to improve the 'wireless' connection identification & detection. I would hope that I could just upgrade the selected parts to enhance Hardy.

Hardy Heron is supposed to be 'LTS', that is, in it for the long term!

[speedwell68]

I have no intentions of upgrading immediatley. I have got the system running just how I like it. It is 100% stable, blindingly quick and as secure as it needs to be. I can't be bothered with installing from stratch again. I might stay Hardy until the next LTS release.

[cookieofdoom]

An upgrade being "necessary" depends on the person and the hardware, really. People who didn't use wireless didn't care much about NetworkManager. People who don't need the guest account or OpenOffice 3.0 probably won't care much about Intrepid Ibex. I'll probably upgrade, just because I like to have the latest Ubuntu. Some people will upgrade because of hardware support... It'll differ a lot from person to person, though.

[uberdonkey5]

yeh, I am still playing with ubuntu, so I back up regularly and try to mess with my system to perfect it. I have only been using ubuntu 1 year but have reinstalled 4 times (for various reasons). I now keep a log of what I do to improve it (and software added).

Basically, if I am not needing anything extra I won't upgrade (indeed I even turned off notification manager on start up to gain the extra millisecond on start up). However, I will upgrade to jaunty jackalope, just cos I love the name (once I am sure it is stable), and completely reformat disk and install as new, following my guide to get it just perfect.

[Redptc]

You can upgrade to NetworkManager 0.7 now but it may be more stable and 'correct' after it gets regular use after the official upgrade is released!

[mindoms]

You can install packages from a newer ubuntu version from ubuntu backports.
just google for it.

[nick09]

No you don't need to as hardy IS supported for the next 2.5 years. You really only want the latest if you have the latest laptop or desktop available in the market. But for a +1 year old computer most likely no but maybe you need the upgrade for the hardware support.

[picpak]

Network Manager is one area that sounds like a 'must have'! I understand that a great deal of work has been done to improve the 'wireless' connection identification & detection. I would hope that I could just upgrade the selected parts to enhance Hardy.

If you want the latest Network Manager on Hardy:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=797059

[danbuter]

I guess there is a backports repo (first I've heard of it). I tend to upgrade for two reasons: One, I test alphas and betas. Two: I need Perl 5.10.

[mc4100]

I guess there is a backports repo (first I've heard of it). I tend to upgrade for two reasons: One, I test alphas and betas. Two: I need Perl 5.10.

There's an option for "Unsupported updates" in the Updates tab of Software Sources; it's the backports.

[Greyed]

My question is, do I have to go without the improvements because of this decision or will the improvements be available via synaptics.

You choose when you want to move forward since the repositories are named. You don't move off Hardy until you change the repos in your apt sources.


Hardy Heron is supposed to be 'LTS', that is, in it for the long term!

This is a misconception, and a common one. Long-Term Support does not mean new versions with one exception. It means the versions that are in the LTS are frozen at those version levels and supported on those versions for the duration of the support. The exception being security issues which cannot be backported and thus require a bump in version number.

This sounds counter-intuitive but the reasoning is simple. Newer versions might alter behaviors (or configuration formats, etc) that can cause problems. So some people want to forgo the bleeding-edge versions for stability in behavior. For example, server administrators. LTS is intended for just those people.

Now, as others have pointed out if you want the latest version of choice software but leave the rest alone and thus do not want to move to the next release of Ubuntu there is always backports.

[Plumtreed]

Another new thing! Backports....I'll have to find out more about this.

I checked out 'Software Sources' to find that mine wasn't 'ticked' so I have been going without.

I've got some exploring to do!

[kevdog]

Slightly off topic -- but Hardy is a really bad LTS -- far too many bugs even now unresolved. They really bit off more than they could chew with the release. I hoping Ibex is far better.

[elmer_42]

Well, I plan on installing from scratch once a year, and since I only upgraded to 8.04, a fresh install is in order. However, I might end up using Debian or Arch, because before I settle down with one OS I'm going to test out a few more.

[Eviltechie]

I will do a clean install as soon as it comes out. To be honest, 8.04 isn't much better than vista. 7.10 Worked better. And my web host downgraded to 7.04.

And if 8.10 isn't that great, I'm switching to fedora.

[Greyed]

I will do a clean install as soon as it comes out. To be honest, 8.04 isn't much better than vista.

I'm always amused by statements like this.

8.04 in a VM.
8.04 on a real machine which also can be booted in a VM.
8.04 on a 10-year-old laptop.

None of those could do Vista.

None of them have given me serious problems that probably were not of my own doing (like mixing KDE3 and KDE4 causing Firefox/Thunderbird to have really horrible colors).