Change is not always good
 

Recently, I upgraded from Mandriva 2008 to Mandriva 2009. Suddenly my wireless stopped working. It hit me what bothered me about Linux in general. Upgrading from one edition to another is often a crapshoot. You have no idea whatever your wireless will stop working or whether hardware support for your components will be dropped (well, one can read the release notes, but who does that :D)

The problem is what I really like to have is the hardware drivers to remain the same while the software is upgraded, and the OS just get security patches. In most Linux distro, application tend to be tied to the release. So if MyLinux 1.0 has Office 2.0, you can't get 3.0 unless you upgrade t the next version of MyLinux. This mean you either have to upgrade your OS and risk stability issues or learn to compile your own.

With desktop, you can probably stick with something like CentOS or SLED that has a very long shelf life. With laptop, you're stuck with the bleeding edge unless you have a particularly old laptop.

Change is not always good, I want some of the things to change (apps) but other things to stay the same (drivers).

Paul

I hear you, man. At the same time, I feel it necessary to point out that this is something that other distributions excel at, better than others. Debian (I can't speak for Ubuntu, although it has the same mechanisms) allows you to do a "dist-upgrade", which is supposed to work, but has only ever broken any system I have tried it on. To upgrade major versions though, I usually just change the repository APT references, and run an "upgrade" (not a "dist-upgrade"). It's a bit choppy, and requires the tiniest bit of tinkering, but I usually can get it to work.

What you could try doing is changing the repositories that MDV2008 looks at, and change them to the MDV2009 repositories. I have never tested this, as I have not used Mandriva in eons, but in theory it should work (with some minor tinker-age).

I've never had any problems upgrading with Debian on my laptop. I can't say anything about other distros though.

Most Distros have a package management system which has updated versions available. Much of the time you can just update the app without doing a full system upgrade. I never do a full upgrade unless i'm wiping my drive for some reason. I use Gentoo, and it always lists the the most recent versions of packages. if an version of an app has not been tested in gentoo, it's masked out. but i can bypass that and install anyway :) and then there is source. if you REALLY want the most recent version, go with source files. its usually not to hard to compile and install.

Sounds to me that during the upgrade it will also upgrade the kernel which might have broken the support for your wireless card. Next time upgrade packages on your system but don't upgrade the kernel itself. And just because you have a laptop doesn't necessarily mean you have to have the most bleeding edge software or updates. Treat it like any other system, if it's working, why bother updating unless there's something within an update that you want or need.

Yep. The same that you have no idea whether your Windows Xp drivers for your printer will work or not on Vista, that is, unless the manufacturer is nice enough to support the migration.

As an example, on the ubuntu download page you can see:

So, you are going to get security updates for those up to that that, at least, without needing any major update. I am no so knowledgeable about ubuntu, but as far as I understand, that means no major changes in your kernel/toolchain/compiler nor system libraries. That also means that the API should be stable, so the programs that work on that version will continue to work across all updates.

That also means that to get any major update you will have to manually upgrade (and that's your choice) to the next major release (9.x or whatever that will be).

If you like having more fine grained control, use something like Gentoo. But be prepared to read, get your hands dirty, and read more again.

As long as you don't update your kernel, you'll be fine. However, if you use propietary external drivers that are not included in the kernel, the things is a bit more complicated.

Yes and No
 

Yes, I can avoid these issue by not upgrading to the next major revision. The issue seems to be backported application. To get next version of your software, you may be forced to upgrade.

As for the windows / Vista comparsion. Windows often do something similar when they do a SP patches, which usually add new features and often cause problems. On the other hand, drivers on windows rarely change, so you may end up using the same OS for ages (there are still W2000 machines around). On the other hand, I dislike windows because it does not allow bare-metal restore to a different machine.

And if there is Live version why not use the Live version first as a test case before installing.
So you have a idea about the support of youŕe hardware