My Mobo died at the end of last year and I've recently managed to resurrect my EOL 10.04LTS system with an upspec'd replacement. I needed to do this to recover un-backed up files and data, so.. that's now sorted.
I did this in a minimum system configuration, ie no additional PCI/PCI-e cards fitted, this includes my Nvidia Quadro NVS 285 PCI-e dual-head graphics card.

I was advise to upgrade for security reasons...Great! 12.04 has OpenSSL Heart Bleed vulnerabilities, 10.04 doesn't I love the irony! (No, not now, fixed it!)

Anyway, I ran the upgrade to 12.04 which seemed to go OK (I previously had to fudge the boot through a BusyBox prompt to get 10.04 to boot with the new Mobo) Now the boot seems a bit long and since I've now reinstalled the graphics card I've got both my monitors back but without any Nvidia settings to link the displays. Rats!
I've removed and re-installed the Nvidia drivers but with little joy. So...

I think I've already decided to do a clean install but preserve my /home partition, I've looked at a few posts relating to upgrade problems, but back to my question... (Finally!)

What sort of experience have you guys had with upgrades and what sort o problems have you run into. Which path gives the best and most reliable result? Is a clean install the better way to go?

Thanks for any input.

Play Bonny!

Soadyheid

In your case I would just wait a few days until 14.04 LTS is released and then do a fresh install. This way you will get a system without any cruft and another 5 years of support.

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Thanks for the advice. Other opinions appear to say it would be better to wait a month or so for all the bugs/kinks to be ironed out of 14.04 LTS before committing to it. I'll be checking Mags/forums for reviews before I decide on that jump I reckon.

Play Bonny!

TobiSGD beat me to this advise. Concerning Ubuntu 12.XX, for me it was a relative "disaster". Ubuntu 13.XX has played "nice".

Thanks for the response Guys. Probably serves me right for hiding the question half way through the initial post!
So... forgetting the version numbers...
Play Bonny!



Soadyheid

"Experts" will probably tell you a fresh install is best but I, personally, just upgrade. I upgraded a 5 year old laptop to 14.04 yesterday. Working like a charm.

1 members found this post helpful.

I did the upgrade from Lubuntu, think it was 13.10,to Ubuntu 14.04. Anyway there were no problems although it takes some time. I much prefer the 14.04 system. It has software such as Shotwell that I like and also another that you can install Camera which works well with my old cameras. So far the upgrade has worked perfectly. I have it on an ancient IBM Lenovo small form desktop vintage 2006. It does not seem to have any problems running 14.04. It seems faster than Windows XP which I replaced shortly after April 8th.

1 members found this post helpful.

I burned a live 14.04 DVD and ran it up. So far I'm reasonably impressed but especially so with it's identification of my dual head Nvidia Quadro NVS 285 video card. I was able to shuffle the screens to allow correct panning between them using the Display app only, no proprietary drivers!
Before I destroy my existing system, can someone confirm that I should be able to do the install and retain my /home directory?
(I have three partitions excluding swap, /, /usr, and /home. I'd zap the first two during the install but leave /home.) I used to do this in the past, before live CD installs and am not sure if this option is still available.

Thanks!

Play Bonny!

Soadyheid

I did a clean install of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and have been haunted by several problems including slow operation, video issues, lock-ups, reboots, programs just shutting down etc.

I downloaded and re-installed 14.04 with the same result, so I went back to 12.04 and everything is working great. My system is only a few months old and has all the latest bells and whistles, so I know it's not a problem with antiquated hardware. Plus, it works great with Windows 7 and 8.

I found 12.04 very stable but no where as fast as 10.04 (Unity desktop?). I'm seriously thinking about going back to Windows as it is far more stable and faster than 14.04 LTS on my machine.

1 members found this post helpful.

I would say that any clean install of any Linux distro will leave your /home alone. And work fine on it.

That is assuming a couple of things;

First and most importantly, obviously, that you point the installer at the current /home and instruct the installer to NOT format the partition.

Second that you move you ~./foo files (the hidden user config files for your OS in your /home/<user name> directory) to some other place. Just creating a "Hidden" directory in your user directory and moving them there would preserve them in case you can use some of them with the new install.

Before shuting down for the installation of the new OS, delete all of them in their original positions. This will mean that new, appropriate for the new OS, config files are all that are going to be in there. No possibility of conflicts.

Or you could simply use a different user name and all that would be going into that new users /home/<user name> directory. Again no possible conflicts.

Finally there is always the possibility of an installer malfunction, user error or a power outage at a bad time in the install process. You will also be partitioning and things can go wrong there too. Because of that backing up your data is HIGHLY recommended.

I can say that I have never needed to use such backups but the backup you need the most is likely to be the one you did not do. This is true if you are doing what looks like an easy version upgrade. Always back up your data.

Tasty Turkey will be much more reliable come July when 14.04.1 comes out. I really think people should wait for that. However, 10.04 has not been supported for a long time. There are many possible exploits that have been patched in the Linux kernel since that time. 14.04 will be up to date with all of that.

Heartbleed is more of a danger to you and your data from servers you connect with than it is on your box. Someone has to be making a ssl query to the system they have contacted over ssl. How many people connect to your box in this manner? You connect to a lot of servers just to get online. Many forums even use an https address by default.

If, as many people seem to have, you find Tasty Turkey to be slow in some ways, try some other more reliable distro. In my opinion most of them are more reliable than Canonical products.

2 members found this post helpful.

I used Ubuntu from 7.04 thought to 11.10 and only ever had 1 successful "upgrade" even though as a development tester for a while I always tried to upgrade I always ended up doing a clean install anyway. Widget gives good advice regarding settings etc and always keep a back up of things you cannot afford to lose.

Follow the directions located here: Partitioning/Home/Moving. Of course before doing anything, back-up your files and save your browser "favorites".

When I would upgrade Ubuntu it would always boot to a black screen.
I found out that it was a graphics issue.
I solved it by removing the AMD driver and after restarting the computer install the newer (Beta) driver.

I would recommend ubuntu 12.04. I ran it for years as a desktop without issues. I upgraded to 14.04 and it crashes and needs rebooting about once a month. We use 12.04 at my job for production servers and we can afford any os.

@davidtooke

I tried Ubuntu 12.04 but with little success. I don't know if it was my new CPU/Mobo set up or what. Plus I'm not a Unity fan.I eventually installed Mint 17 which works fine, it even picked up my NVidea dual head graphics card as well though I eventually had to install the proprietary drivers due to nouveau freezing up (see release notes!)I'm finding I quite like the cinnamon desktop as well.

Thanks for all the input!

Play Bonny!