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39 Comments
- schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+920 minutes without a lossy transition? I just wish the distributors delivered wizards that handle the upgrades flawlessly. Alas, even Vista fails to do this. I'm not sure about Mac OS 10.x.
Been over 3 years since I last updated my Linux at work. It just works. - cynicist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7So your grandma can upgrade Windows XP by herself?
- brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6There's also a graphic-based update manager that automatically does it, too. It's really easy. I don't understand why the person that wrote this article chose to upgrade his OS in such an unnecessarily complicated way. It's like trying to learn how to ride a bicycle by riding it backwards.
- prammy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5lol. I would NEVER upgrade any version of Windows to a newer version. With Windows, I would ALWAYS do a fresh install. This is even more critical during a major upgrade like Windows 9x/ME to 2k/XP or from WinXP to Vista.
Every single time I have seen someone upgrade, I see problems they experience. And its never pretty.
This is not to say that Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora or even OS X upgrades are without fault though. I have seen enough upgrades borked. - killerofkiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4man this is real complicated....
copy paste
sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude upgrade && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade && sudo aptitude autoclean
then when that is done ( it does it all by it's self!!)
gksudo “update-manager -c -d”
and click update
also the first step can be done via gui also but it's easier to just give a command then to guide them through windows and tabs - Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Ignore those articles. 90% of the time they're blogspam written by someone who's been using Ubuntu for 5 days.
BUT if you stopped and looked at it carefully, you'd find that it really isn't as hard as it appears. - Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5And to that fanboy alert, I say:
This is exactly why the general population of Windows users are mindless zombies who will click on anything, even if it's HugePeni0rParade.exe - secleinteer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3schestowitz:
Some people are compulsive upgraders ;) I know that personally I don't have a "don't fix it unless it's broke" tendency (though I am still running Kubuntu 6.06, which is probably more due to a lazy tendency :P ).
As for upgrading to the next version of Ubuntu, I've found it best to have a separate /home partition and do a clean install. Too many problems with the in-place upgrade. - ArmchairAthlete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree, installing most things on my recent install of Ubuntu isn't something Joe Sixpack would care to figure out how to do.
Command line apt-get wasn't too hard for me, but your average windows user isn't going to use the command line or figure out how to uncomment the lines in sources.list to get the universe repo.
Seems like most stuff i download has a series of instructions on how to install, then requires finding some other libraries, maybe compiling, etc. No easy walk thru after clicking an exe.
On the surface it looks easy, but then you encounter things that are just a PITA.
It just plain isn't as easy as XP. - pozzoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Last two times I upgraded an ubuntu release I had to reinstall everything (nobody remembers Dapper->Edgy chaos anymore?). So I would recommend either stay one more month in Edgy after Feisty or install it from scratch. For those who have the home in a different partition this shouldn't be much of a trouble.
By the way, you may ask, why I am still using Ubuntu? easy, it is great! - Negyxo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Nice. It's good to just see this in plain english. Last update (my first) i simply noobed out and just downloaded the latest ISO. It only takes 20 mins to install anyways...*shrug*
- ricperry1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why not just download the .iso for the next version, then boot the disk and select "upgrade"? You have to download most (if not all) of what is on the .iso anyway, so it wouldn't take that much more bandwidth. The other benefit of this method is that if you have a botched upgrade, you already have the installation media, so you can then just perform a normal install.
- sixhat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Very useful. I Tend to forget some things when I try to upgrade and then I usually break my system and have to start from scratch.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Man, I got really exited, I thought Feisty Fawn was out of Beta (three months early for some reason). Good guide, but doesn't running the update app in -c mode work just as well?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i always thought you edited the sources.list and changed from "dapper" to "edgy" on all lines?
- fulldecent, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How do I upgrade dapper to edgy from only a terminal without editing /etc/apt/sources.list?
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"90% of the time they're blogspam written by someone who's been using Ubuntu for 5 days."
It doesn't matter. Everything with the magic "Ubuntu" word makes it to the front page.
We have a profanity filter, how about a keyword filter? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=286599
Officially supported way, and the way I and thousands have done so successfully. Took about an hour. - brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ahh I see. I installed Edgy from the CD since I didn't have Dapper on my computer at the time. Edgy was just horribly unstable compared to Dapper. Now come to find out the normal upgrade method doesn't work like it should, it seems like the folks there really screwed up this time around.
Perhaps a 6-month release schedule is too much for them to commit to. - exzaltid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Found a Video on installing ubuntu from scratch in case anyone would like a reference:
http://www.supporttube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=aa6e02c990b0a82652dc - trogdoor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1First of all that sounds like horrible advice and if you really wanted to do fresh installs like that you should have a separate /home partition anyways.
Second of all, why boot into single user mode? That seams like a completely useless and overcomplicated way to get root privileges unless you have forgotten your password. - shanesemler, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You can type all that nonsense or you can use the GUI tools, like Adept to upgrade. I don't know why these geeks have to make things so complicated.
- killerofkiller, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yeah but installing ubuntu doesnt take hours....
- deadgoon42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I run Ubuntu and like it, but I've yet to have a positive experience when upgrading. I went from Breezy to a Dapper Beta, you know, the beta that wiped all your partitions? After several days and $80 I was able to recover my data and install Breezy again. When Dapper came out a few days later, I did the upgrade, but it hosed my system. I did a fresh install of Dapper. That worked fine. When Edgy came out I did the automatic upgrade. It hosed my system again, but I was able to boot and get things working for the most part. I backed everything up to DVD. I took this opportunity to install a few other distros. I tried Vectorlinux, FreeBSD, and Opensuse. Vectorlinux is cool BTW. I went back to Ubuntu though because I like it the most. Too bad the DVD media I was using for backups was low quality and while the discs looked good, most of the data was corrupt. Some of my data was lost permanently during that upgrade cycle.
I might skip the next upgrade unless it has some features I just can't do without. When I do upgrade again, there will be backups on high quality DVD media. There will also be backups to a secondary hard disk which will be physically unplugged during the upgrade process. - RedIcculus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Between Dapper to Edgy, it caused an unbootable black screen. It is supposed to work that way, but didn't happen that way last upgrade in this distro.
- JrGhoull, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1hahah i TOTALLY agree with you strangerzero...to me (a complete and total noob) this ***** means nothing, and just hopefully leads to the upgrade. I am planning on installing a version of linux however soon enough on one of my older comps in the hopes that through use, i can actually learn a bit about computer programming. I feel that through a hands on approach such as this that people can learn alot more about how computers work than they otherwise could/would with windows.
speaking of upgrades...wasnt the last ubuntu upgrade literally like the most ***** up upgrade ever? I read that like, even real tech savvy people were having probs that they didnt know how to work around. - strabes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0sudo update-manager -c does that for you. That's why it's so easy
- sanguinemoon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2"for vista, put disk in drive..... follow on screen steps.... (much easier) :P "
And watch yiour digital rights be "managed" away. - toogs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Thanks! This will help me alot when I decide to switch over!
- brstilson, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2can't you just type sudo apt-get dist-upgrade to do the same thing?
Seems like a lot of unnecessarily complicated steps to perform a very simple task. - sanguinemoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Sure, let me walk grandma through THIS upgrade procedure."
Somebody already said that she can't upgrade XP either, but I diagree slighty. My granny is can listen to what I tell her and press the key that I tell her. She's not both deaf and stupid. She's not blind either. She can read a screen.
My biggiest complaint about this tutorial is the fact that it doesn't make all that sense to edit using Vim. Everybody knows the only true text editor is Emacs. - sanguinemoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0It much easier than this tutorial would have you believe. But I believe that the author of the tutorial was trying not for the easiest way, but the way that would be more likely to succeed and not bork. When it comes down to it, you can always upgrade the Windows way. Put the CD in, let it format your drive and install the updated OS
- strangerzero, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3This is a good example of why Ubuntu is just to damn geeky and won't catch on with the great unwashed computer masses. The average user does not want to type this gibberish into a terminal window. This kind of stuff needs to automated.
- strabes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0arcane and obtuse compared to the ideal, easy compared to Windows XP. I had no problems upgrading to edgy and it took two commands
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Is the author trying to show how easy it is to update Ubuntu or how arcane and obtuse?
- Sp00nMan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Actually, I've found the cleanest upgrade is to just boot the ubuntu cd in single user mode, then remove all the directories applicable to your OS, while leaving stuff that you've created (i.e. /backups, /home, anything else important). Then just install the OS into your existing ext3 filesystem like a new install.
Yea, you might lose some settings, but most likely all your gui settings are in your home directory (ala .kde, .gnome), and any other special binaries you installed by hand should be in /usr/local, which you can not delete as well.
Cleans crud up nicely, and yes, you may have to do a few "apt-get install blahs", but that's fairly easy - Locuester, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1With all the comparisons between Ubuntu and WinXP lately, I'd assume this would be easy... The fact that an article has to be written about how to upgrade Ubuntu speaks to how slanted these comparisons are. Sure, let me walk grandma through THIS upgrade procedure.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1Here are my steps to upgrading Ubuntu:
1. Reformat.
2. Install Fedora Core 6. - YacozA, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2very handy, and easy to understand.... oh and i am warning u about the subsequent section
windows fanboy alert:
for vista, put disk in drive..... follow on screen steps.... (much easier) :P
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