I have been a fan of Ubuntu ever since I discovered how stable it is compared to Microsoft. At the moment I have Ubuntu 8.10 and am wondering if it's time for a newbie such as myself should think about upgrading to 9.04 now that most of the bugs have been sorted out. I know I could stick with 8.10 for some considerable time yet but my natural curiosity has started to itch, and the only thing that stops me from scratching and upgrading is a fear of losing all of my work, and all the hassle and time of reinstalling 8.10 again.
So the big question is; Is it safe for a person such as me (tech Moron) to take that leap and upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04?

Thanks in advance

Wait till 9.10 comes out next month.

Thank you for replying
Normally I wait for at least 1 year for the experts to iron out all the bugs and then download ... are you suggesting that 9.10 will become available bug free? From what I read on the forums, each new distro has problems for at least 6 to 12 months after release and I am not technically capable of fixing things when the proverbial poo hits the fan. The reason I mentioned 9.04 was because of that very reason ... most of the bugs and glitches will have been fixed (I hope)

From your posts it looks like you want a rock solid stable distribution and that is your most important requirement above all? If that is true, in that case you are using the wrong distro. Ubuntu is not bug free. It has never been. I doubt 9.10 will be either. For rock solid stability I would suggest using Slackware, CentOS, Gentoo Stable branch, Debian Lenny or FreeBSD.

Valid reasoning. There is no right answer; it is a matter of how you value and balance the pros and cons including the work involved in changing. See this LQ post for some of them. Many people do a pilot installation in a virtual machine and-or-or install dual boot, especially when upgrading a system that people rely on for day-to-day work. It helps if you keep your data (/home and maybe /srv and var) on separate file systems that can be mounted on both versions although this approach does not work when there are differences configuration files-and-directories, for example in ~/. There are "smart" ways like that to ease the transition but no silver bullets.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Make sure that all issues that might apply to your hardware are sorted. If not, stay away from it because you will not enjoy the experience.

Hi,

I agree 'If it ain't broke don't fix it'! Another caution would be 'measure twice cut once'.

But if you must then be sure to backup anything that is valuable before doing anything with your system.

I will consider all that you have said .... thank you.

Good advice taken on board
I'll check out Slackware 13.0 and see if that suits my needs ... thanks.

Hummm! Lots to think about there ... I promise no knee jerk reaction although I will do some research to see if I have the best operating system for what I require ... thanks for your reply.