Share with us your Noble Numbat installation/Upgrade Experience

[qyot27]

I always fresh install, but this time I was moving my /home partition to its own NVMe drive, so I had to use gparted in the normal Live session to copy/paste the partition into the new location and delete the old partition once I'd verified things were okay. While I was at it, also expanded / on the old drive and created a small (~32GB) btrfs partition to experiment with as a shared partition with Windows 10. That went smoothly, but it wasn't really part of the install process.

I can't remember if Ubuntu Budgie had moved to the new installer with 23.10, but I experienced no issues at all assigning my normal manual partitioning (all normal ext4 partitions). The only weird thing was the logo change, as I hadn't seen it announced anywhere (and didn't see anyone mentioning it afterward, but I stopped checking after a week or so).

[john-newton04]

Been using Ubuntu on and off since Warty (4.10). This was probably the smoothest install and working Ubuntu of any flavor - and also smoother than any other distro I've used over the years. (Even beats ChromeOS Flex.)

[Tadaen_Sylvermane]

I recently migrated both my desktop and server from Debian > Ubuntu. For both I did a chroot installation from the Debian side of Jammy. Then following the Debian method upgraded through each interim release Jammy > Kinetic > Lunar > Mantic > Noble. I'm pleased to say that both machines seem to be doing perfectly. Everything is working. No errors to speak of. Just a few minutes ago I saw the first error on my desktop, a timeshift error. I clicked send and that was that. It's running in the background now. Both are attached via my few licenses to Ubuntu Pro and I intend to leave them installed on Noble till the next LTS, or beyond. Depends on my mood.

I can't find a Gnome Shell theme I'm happy with. I'm trying to avoid PPA's and such if possible and keep my installation as pure as I can. I'm using only a very small number of Flatpak packages, Firefox + whatever is default through Snap. And everything else is either apt or manually compiled and installed to /usr/local to keep the system core clean.

I'm quite pleased at the stability thus far. With a few exceptions Ubuntu release upgrades have always been crap shoot in general for me usually on the negative side. In this case I effectively release upgraded 2 machines a total of 4 times each with nary a whisper.

Well done.

[BBQdave]

Had Debian 12 loaded. Decided to try Ubuntu 24.04 and WOW!

Fresh install was fast and smooth Loaded my data and I'll set to go.

I like that you can select a basic install, and later load the applications you use. Personal preference: I like that you can adjust colors and function with the DE. I have a background with multiple greys and selected sage for the highlight color. Very nice

Applications are fresh, sometimes a challenge with Debian. Ubuntu is very responsive and fast.

Ubuntu 24.04 is loaded on my travel machine and meets my needs perfectly

[Dennis N]

As mentioned in post #7, I Wanted to install Ubuntu 24.04 in an existing LV. This is impossible using the new Ubuntu Desktop Installer. As mentioned at the end of post #7, I hoped an in-place upgrade from an existing 23.10 would bypass this impossibility.

Today, while using my Ubuntu 23.10, the "upgrade to new version" notice popped up (exactly 4 weeks after the 24.04 release date). I accepted the upgrade offer.

Total time from "start the upgrade" to "restart" was 17 minutes, without any problems encountered.

Reboot and success! I now have Ubuntu 24.04 LTS installed, replacing Ubuntu 23.10 in its LV.

No additional time needed for customizing or installing software. Everyting from 23.10 is still there and working as I left it.

[TheFu]

While an upgrade is an option, this method always leaves some "cruft" behind as different subsystems are replaced.
Last time I attempted to "upgrade" a system, it took 2.5 hours. Since then, I've wiped and done fresh installs, then restored backup settings/data and loaded the prior packages into the new OS. A few packages would be missing, but for the most part, the new system would be "mine" and feel like mine in under an hour. Worst case, I might need to reload the OS in a month to clean out some cruft that the restore process included, but that only happened once across 15 systems, so the restore to new OS does generally work. Er ... mostly.

If the upgrade works as fast as you experienced, that would be surprising, but a pleasant surprise. I suspect that my refusal to use non-LTS releases unless absolutely necessary (usually a hardware thing), could be why my upgrades take longer. A system that's been used for 3 yrs is likely to have more cruft than a freshly installed N-1 release that is immediately migrated to the new LTS (N).

[Dennis N]

this method always leaves some "cruft" behind as different subsystems are replaced.

As a final step, the Software Updater does offer to remove unneeded packages. This may just involve running apt autoremove, I'm not sure. It's a "keep all" or "remove" all option (no pick and choose). I always opt to remove all the unneeded packages.

The 17 minutes is correct as the elapsed time between those two points. I timed it so I could report it.

[#&thj^%]

It still leaves a few things as cruft ie:

sudo apt autoremove --purge
[sudo] password for me: 
REMOVING:                       
  libatm1t64*  libpthread-stubs0-dev*  libunibreak5*  libwireplumber-0.4-0*

Summary:
  Upgrading: 0, Installing: 0, Removing: 4, Not Upgrading: 0
  Freed space: 1,340 kB

Continue? [Y/n] 
(Reading database ... 312546 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing libatm1t64:amd64 (1:2.5.1-5.1build1) ...
Removing libpthread-stubs0-dev:amd64 (0.4-1build3) ...
Removing libunibreak5:amd64 (5.1-2build1) ...
Removing libwireplumber-0.4-0:amd64 (0.4.17-1ubuntu4) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.39-0ubuntu8.1) ...

But I'm still picking through left-overs from the upgrade method, though it dose not seem to be as large with my previous upgrades left behind.

[Dennis N]

It still leaves a few things as cruft

Well, I know that in the last step, 108 'obsolete' packages were removed. These were optional removals. I assume the updater just runs apt autoremove.

Also, at the start of the upgrade, is says 145 packages are going to be removed during the upgrade; 265 new packages will be installed. These are apparently not optional actions.

So 145 + 108 total packages removed, and 265 - 145 - 208 = -88, so 88 net fewer packages than I started with.

Running apt autoremove on the new 24.04 system, just 1 package is to be removed: mailcap

[#&thj^%]

The point I was trying to convey is, It's getting better but still leaves a certain amount of old ".conf" behind and few others.

Clean Install is just that, "squeaky clean" no cob webs left to discover.....Just Bugs. LOL

Also your comparison between 23.10 to 24.04 is minimal anyway, like TheFu going to LTS to LTS leaves more than you would think,