I understand that it is usually considered better to do a clean install, but also that Ubuntu's upgrade handling is very good. Given that upgrades are something that, for the most part, Ubuntu handles by itself, and clean installs involve both more user time in the setup and the usual install problems, I am inclined to try first to upgrade. If this is not a good idea, please advise.

However, I will be going from 5.04 to 6.06. Given that there is 5.10 in the middle, should I upgrade to 5.10 first, then move to 6.06, or can I go straight to 6.06?

Also are upgrades handled by Synaptic as an update or is there a separate upgrade method?

TIA

It's my understanding, that as "the 'buntu's" are debian based i.e. a meta distro, it should be Ok to change all the repositories listed in your /etc/apt/sources.list, so that they reflect dapper/6.06 sources and then just run the apt-get update.

One of the blokes at my LUG, used to be on the debian developers list (might still be, but AFAIK not actively "developing"), he was often heard to expound the debian benefits of .

You might also be better placed to confirm that by checking this out at either the Ubuntu forum here at LQ or at the official ubuntu forums.

In any case, if you have a seperate /home partition, you should then just be able to run the upgrade and provided that you have an old disc available, if it did go "pear shaped", then you could just re-install the earlier version and stage it.

Hey, what the hell, why not just do the upgrade twice i.e. change all you sources so that they relect breezy, then do once it's finished the update/upgrade, change the sources to dapper and run it again. Of course, thats dependant on your connection because running it twice would use twice the bandwidth.

Personally I can't see why you should need to do that though - it SHOULD just update/upgrade the packages that need it - though from 5.04 to 6.06 thats gonna be most of the distro!

regards

John

p.s. Oh and don't forget, unless any personalisation that you've done i.e. themes/icons/etc etc are actually available from the packages a seperate /home then you might have to re-install them as well, though with luck they will still exist as dapper packages and just upgrade/update

You should be able to use just the 6.06.

If you can find a site that has all of the upgraded packages online (a repo), you could point synaptic (apt-get) at it and download from there.

Otherwise, just download the install disk, and go from there.

... beat me to it.

I wasn't aware that debian was considered a Meta distro, but in reality, as long as all of the upgraded packages are in the 6.06 repo, just point apt-get to it, and have fun.

In fact, I think you'll find, that if Odyssey1942 changes the /etc/apt/sources.list to this onethen it should provide just about any available package (ha! plus the kitchen sink ). It's rather, erm, "exhaustive". I found it on digg.com, but could just have easily to it from the source-o-matic at ubuntulinux.nl

regards

John

man, that's a HUGE list
gotta have everything in there.... Amazing!

Wow! What a fabulous bunch of replies! Thank you all.

Errmmmm..., now I have to figure out what all that means. I have only just installed 5.04 from a CD which my brother gave me some months ago and I did not realize until after the install that there was already two updates since that one. In fact I have done very little tweaking (like themes, etc) as I am happy with most of the stuff as it comes. Really liking what I see so far and hoping to get my head around some of it so I can walk and then run.

There is no Windoze on this computer-straight Ubuntu! Ggoing for broke and this from a 25 year (+/-) Windows vet.

done to date:

-with forum help managed to get a driver for my monitor downloaded and installed and working to obtained desired resolution
-upgraded Open Office to 2.0 (synaptic)
-upgraded Firefox to latest (can't remember v #)
-installed Thunderbird (or did it come installed?) but have got it working to retrieve all the mailboxes
-simultaneous to this post, am trying to get my USB memory device installed/mounted? so that I can use it. (There is a working USB printer so part of the USB works OK.)

Reason for mentioning all this is to ask if I will lose all the progress so far in the upgrade process, and if so, how to "save" the relevant bits so as to facilitate their re-implementation? Perhaps 6.06 comes with the latest Open Office and Firefox already included, so it will be a matter of saving documents, bookmarks, the monitor driver, and the email settings, and what else?

Posting this now as I try to digest all the great info you have provided above and likely will have a question or two on the replies later. As you can see I am a complete newcomer to linux so your replies at the most elementary level will be most appreciated.

basically all you do is change your /etc/apt/sources.lst to the great list above. Then all you do is apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade.

it should update all of the files on your PC. In Arch (the distro I use), all I ever have to do is Pacman -Syu, and it will upgrade all the packages on my machine (pacman is like apt-get).

That will give you the newest version. It'll upgrade all software packages (like openoffice, and firefox), to whatever version is newest, it shouldn't upgrade if you installed a .deb and the version you isntalled is newer. (IE, if you installed firefox 1.6, and ubuntu 6.06 comes with 1.4, it shouldn't overwrite your installed version.

It also shouldn't mess with with your fstab either (for your USB drive)

fantastic. thanks a ton. will be at the location of that computer tomorrow and will attempt the upgrade then and post results here.

The number of posts over in the Ubuntu forum on how "uprading" this way borked machines is incredible. I didn't believe it and used the "dist-upgrade" method and trashed mine too. Well, I wouldn't say "trashed". I could get off everything I really needed and did a proper install from DVD. Runs great now. I hope you're luckier than myself and the legions of others that have come to grief this way.

Yes, it is a "great" list. But if you'll look closely, most of those repos are NOT official and supported. I would use that list, in fact mine is quite like that, but comment out repos you don't actually need "right now".

Dragineez, Thanks for your cautionary post.

By commenting out, do you mean add a " # " before the line with the "not" desired URL's? (Sorry for these questions, but this is the first time I have tried to deal with matters like this.)

How would I determine which I would need and which not? I know I don't want the games and supose that the bunch with the line:

uniklu-testing: packages not ready for general use!

and those described as bleeding edge

would be ones that I might not want to install as a general principle of keeping things down to the stuff that I would use and keeping the upgrade stable? But how would I determine what the other ones do, e.g.,

Seveas’ packages and Cipherfunk multimedia packages?

Right on both counts. Precede the line you want to comment out with the # symbol.

Comment out anything that is not official, is development or testing, or referred to as "bleeding edge". I would recommend commenting out the xgl aigxl and compiz stuff as well. Really cool technology and I highly recommend it - but wait until you have a stable box first. Then experiment with it.

Now that I look more closely at that list, it's even easier than that. Comment out anything that does NOT have a GPG key.

[QUOTE=Comment out anything that does NOT have a GPG key.[/QUOTE]

Now that's what I call clear and consise advice. Looks like a good starting place to me. Thanks.

I gather that there is nothing in Linux that compares to the Windoze "Restore" command? I have ordered a 6.06 install CD just in case it goes pear-shaped.

Even if it all goes wrong, you will still be able to boot to a CLI and back-up from there.

Is CLI command line interface and by "back-up from there", are you saying that you can indeed revert to an earlier state?

If you save your sources.lst file, you could just rename your backup as the sources.lst, and use apt-get to reinstall the other packages.