9.04 clean install vs. upgrade

[rosswmcgee]

The clean install is something I have always thought best, but it requires time to get all your bells and whistles just so. The two 9.04 upgrades from, one an 8.10 clean install and the other from 8.04 to 8.10 to 9.04 all went so well and everything is working, why bother with the clean install? Or am I just lazy?

[lovinglinux]

It seems to me that most problems reported in the forums are from people who has upgraded instead of installing fresh. But I think success also depends on your hardware and what you did on your system along the way.

Since I was using Hardy before and I did a lot of noob things along the last 8 months, I decided to fresh install. I did a backup of my home partition, but I only restored some specific configuration files that were critical. The rest of the stuff I configured again, just to get a pristine system.

One thing that helps a lot is that I keep a journal with all important procedures I make to get complicated stuff working, so when I upgrade I have a recipe of important things to do. This makes the fresh install much more simpler. Nevertheless, almost everything was working out-of-the-box, except for lirc. But making lirc work was also complicated on Hardy.

[ndefontenay]

On my laptop I used ndiswrapper to work around the wireless card.
I knew there was driver this time for it therefore I chose a fresh install.

Oh and being in Thailand it would take 2 days (black on white in the upgrade window) to complete!!!! I downloaded the CD on a torrent, burned it and made a fresh install. Way faster lol.

I think fresh is better. Backup your documents, backup your screensaver. There's just a few minutes of downloading skype and stuff like that left afterwards.

I have got to find out how to make a list of the applications I want to feed to the package manager. This way I wouldn't have to search for them, I would just tell!

[dox_drum]

The clean install is something I have always thought best, but it requires time to get all your bells and whistles just so. The two 9.04 upgrades from, one an 8.10 clean install and the other from 8.04 to 8.10 to 9.04 all went so well and everything is working, why bother with the clean install? Or am I just lazy?

First, the ext4 partition.

Second, I backup the configuration, and it was something like 18Mb... So, I get it is worthy to do aclean installation.

[lovinglinux]

OI have got to find out how to make a list of the applications I want to feed to the package manager. This way I wouldn't have to search for them, I would just tell!

To replicate your packages selection on another machine (or restore it if re-installing), you can run this

dpkg --get-selections > ~/my-packages

This will save a file called my-packages in your home directory. Make a backup of it, install the fresh release, then restore the file "my-packages" to new home partition and run this code in the terminal:

sudo dpkg --set-selections < my-packages && sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

It will download and install all the programs for you, except those that you installed manually, if they are not in the new repository. I did this with Jaunty and a lot of packages I installed manually on Hardy were available in the Jaunty repos. So I didn't search for many applications after the fresh install.

[northandersen]

So did u get it to install clean? I also would just like to load Ubuntu on my laptop. However it won't boot from the CD. I loaded the files into another partition but don't know of any commands to run it from there.

I don't want anything else on the laptop....just Ubuntu.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Peter

[Yannick Le Saint kyncani]

I have got to find out how to make a list of the applications I want to feed to the package manager. This way I wouldn't have to search for them, I would just tell!

"deborphan -a", or gtkorphan for a gui

[s3lekta]

"deborphan -a", or gtkorphan for a gui

sorry, does this method show me what i want to re-install if i use that command above to generate a list?

thanks

[bj218]

To replicate your packages selection on another machine (or restore it if re-installing), you can run this

dpkg --get-selections > ~/my-packages

This will save a file called my-packages in your home directory. Make a backup of it, install the fresh release, then restore the file "my-packages" to new home partition and run this code in the terminal:

sudo dpkg --set-selections < my-packages && sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

It will download and install all the programs for you, except those that you installed manually, if they are not in the new repository. I did this with Jaunty and a lot of packages I installed manually on Hardy were available in the Jaunty repos. So I didn't search for many applications after the fresh install.

Thanks to all I did an upgrade and lucked out everything is working great. I sure appreciate all the help this is a greate
forum.

[ACGilbert]

Lovinglinux,

Would the technique you posted work if upgrading from 32-bit Karmic to 64-bit Karmic?

Thanks for your time,
AC



> To replicate your packages selection on another machine (or
> restore it if re-installing), you can run this

> Code:

> dpkg --get-selections > ~/my-packages

> This will save a file called my-packages in your home
> directory. Make a backup of it, install the fresh release,
> then restore the file "my-packages" to new home partition and > run this code in the terminal:

> Code:

> sudo dpkg --set-selections < my-packages && sudo apt-get
> dselect-upgrade

> It will download and install all the programs for you, except > those that you installed manually, if they are not in the new > repository. I did this with Jaunty and a lot of packages I
> installed manually on Hardy were available in the Jaunty
> repos. So I didn't search for many applications after the
> fresh install.
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