This is more of a philosophical question more than technical. I am thinking to the future when 8.10 comes out. I have a 7.10 system configured and working to my liking except for my Brother MFC240c scanner which is a little flaky (USB issues I think - it does work OK on Fedora 9).

I have played with 8.04 some and a little disappointed. For example samba was installed by default on 6.10 and 7.10 (at least I do not recall having to manually install it on several machines I have setup). Not so with 8.04. shares-config was installed but not on the 8.04 menu. I had no idea what the utility was called so I had to look at a 7.10 machine and build a launcher for it on 8.04. I have found the same issue with several other neat items which were on the 7.10 menu and not on 8.04. So I got to thinking...

If I take my 7.10 install and keep all the programs updated including the kernel and gnome - how would that compare with 8.10 when it comes out? Would 8.10 simply be a different selection of pieces and parts or is there something "magic" which makes one release distinct from the prior release?

TIA,

Ken

The release numbers just denote the snapshot of the packages in the tree at that point. Upgrading to the latest release updates your current packages and installs any new dependencies, brining it right up along with whatever release you updated too. That is the beauty of the Debian package system, being able to automatically handle things like new dependencies or obsolete packages.

All of your configuration would naturally carry over as you are just updating software and not reformatting anything. In the same vein, you could simply copy your user configuration (or indeed, keep your entire /home directory between the installs) to the latest release and do it that way.

Thanks MS3FGX. I had a feeling that a Ubuntu release was as you described. Which I guess raises the question of "support". 8.04 LTS is supported for 3 years (5 for server). So, if I have an initial 7.10 install which I patched for a couple of years so that 9.10 is the current release and 8.04 is still supported... all 3 (patched to current) should be be package for package identical(?)

The only support issue I see is that the Synaptic software sources on my 7.10 install pull updates from "Important security updates (gutsy-security)" and "Recommended updates (gutsy-updates)" and my 8.04 install from (hardy-security) and (hardy-recommended). Once 7.10 is no longer "supported" will the (gutsy-) sources go away? I do not see any way to change the source location for updates.

Regards,

Ken