Linux Thread Time

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2007-10-18 03:57am

Well, a new version of Ubuntu is just about to burst forth from the chests of the open source community, I am left thinking, should I upgrade or should I download the ISO and reinstall. Pros and cons either way, obviously upgrading should be relatively speedy and will require the least amount of work.

Reinstalling will require a bit more effort to get any applications I've installed back the way I like them, however reduces the likelihood of something I've been dicking around with for the past few months coming back to bite me in the arse. My drives are all properly partitioned so apart from reinstalling a few applications should be that big of a deal.

So, what say the experts? Upgrade, reinstall or use something else?

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-10-18 04:04am

I'm going to wait a week or so to see if there are any major problems, then upgrade. I upgraded 7.04 on day one and even the worst of it's problems were fixable by a noob like myself, so I wouldn't worry *too* much.

If you've got bandwith to piss away, you can always do both: get the ISO, upgrade and reinstall when too much gets broken.

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-10-18 05:01am

Just do a dist-upgrade through apt, linux doesn't suffer from windows rot, so you really don't have much to gain from a clean install, unless you messed something up the first time.

Alferd Packer · Post by **Alferd Packer** » 2007-10-18 11:37am

Are you using any custom repositories, like, say, for Automatix or Compiz-Fusion? Those could very well break with a dist-upgrade, and possibly hose your system until workarounds are posted. As I use both, my plan is to flatten and reinstall on my Feisty laptop, and to not upgrade my Feisty desktop until the next version of Ubuntu(whatever comes after Gutsy) rolls out. I'll probably also take this opportunity to dual-boot my WinXP box with a Gutsy install, as I've been wanting to turn my Feisty desktop into a dedicated file/app server for some time now.

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2007-10-18 11:49am

Spyder wrote:Well, a new version of Ubuntu is just about to burst forth from the chests of the open source community, I am left thinking, should I upgrade or should I download the ISO and reinstall.

What on earth.

You have Synaptic for a reason! Use it.

Natorgator · Post by **Natorgator** » 2007-10-18 11:50am

First time I upgraded from 6.10 to 7.04, pretty much everything broke. My ndiswrapper (bastard wireless NIC had no linux drivers), static IP settings, apache, mysql, php. None of it worked anymore.

I'm sure part of that was due to my newbieness, but if you're not running anything like that I'd just go ahead and upgrade.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2007-10-18 12:37pm

I've learned the hard way about upgrades, so I'm waiting until all the bugs are ironed out, as any new software suite will have in bundles. I see no major reason to upgrade other than for the shiny new toys which may or may not be useful.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-10-18 12:56pm

I couldn't resist the Upgrade button. The UM is working it's magic right now. Wish me luck.

ETA: aaaaaaaaand aborted because I don't like the "sorry we don't support your task manager anymore" warning.

Can you upgrade from an iso? It'll take less time to download than through the swamped upgrade system.

Alferd Packer · Post by **Alferd Packer** » 2007-10-18 01:11pm

Get the alternative CD (with the text-based installer). The website has the commands you need to run to upgrade.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-10-18 01:12pm

Gracias. I've used the alternate before for a minimal install, must've missed the upgrade command.

So, has anyone done the upgrade yet?

Alferd Packer · Post by **Alferd Packer** » 2007-10-18 01:21pm

I'll probably do it when Automatix starts supporting Gutsy. Feisty is plenty spiffy for my tastes, and I think I'd shoot myself if I had to be bothered to do all of the stuff Automatix does, well, manually.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-10-18 01:25pm

Alferd Packer wrote:I'll probably do it when Automatix starts supporting Gutsy. Feisty is plenty spiffy for my tastes, and I think I'd shoot myself if I had to be bothered to do all of the stuff Automatix does, well, manually.

...depending on what you need, you can do everything Automatix does in, like, three minutes. And the program itself isn't exactly a great piece of design.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2007-10-18 02:15pm

Bounty wrote:
Alferd Packer wrote:I'll probably do it when Automatix starts supporting Gutsy. Feisty is plenty spiffy for my tastes, and I think I'd shoot myself if I had to be bothered to do all of the stuff Automatix does, well, manually.
...depending on what you need, you can do everything Automatix does in, like, three minutes. And the program itself isn't exactly a great piece of design.

I actually always found that getting the right repos involved spending considerable amounts of time trawling through the Ubuntu forums. Getting libdvdcss for example involved finding someone hosting it, adding their repo, having apt kick up some errors about not being able to find the package, finding another repo, getting the package, then wrestling with gstreamer, giving up on gstreamer and going with xine, then trying to figure out how to turn on DMA so I don't get stutter.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-10-18 02:23pm

There's a ready-to-go libdvdcss .deb package on the official site

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-10-18 03:11pm

You're supposed to use update-manager to upgrade, since it runs a few scripts to fix things that have changed- dist-upgrade breaks things (probably fixable, but why bother going through the headache of unsupported solution?)

Never really used automatix, I prefer doing everything manually if not supported officially.

An update to alpha broke for me, but an update on someone else's laptop to a later beta worked fairly flawlessly. In any case, I always install using the alternate CD using LVM to set up seperate (small) /home and root partitions, growing partitions as needed, so I just blast the root partition after copying /etc and /usr/local to /home and reinstall if anything goes wrong w/ upgrade.

Considering switching from Ubuntu to Fedora though due to better multiarch, 64 bit Ubuntu is somewhat annoying.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2007-10-18 06:19pm

Will using x86 Ubuntu on 64bit systems work/not work/work with downsides?

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-10-18 06:51pm

No downsides to using x86 ubuntu, I just have 4 gigs of RAM and the server kernel that has PAE support compiled in doesn't have precompiled nVidia drivers to go w/ it, and I'm too lazy to compile either. Plus its supposed to be better for tasks such as 3d rendering etc (though I haven't done much lately, no time). The most annoying thing is lack of sun java plugin support.

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2007-10-18 08:42pm

I would argue that if you do chose to update, you ought to do a semi-clean install (nuking your / partition while leaving /home intact often works for Unicses in general), but I would also make the bold claim that upgrading isn't really neccessary, and should be done only if Gutsy offers some really compelling functionality that you can't live with out (and this may well be the case for certain circumstances, for example, users of WPA wireless encryption would doubtless want to upgrade from Edgy to Feisty due to the latter's inclusion of NetworkManager).

My attitude is to avoid OS changes where possible...if I get an operating system working to a point where I am satisfied with its performance, I prefer to leave it for as long as possible.

Spyder · Post by **Spyder** » 2007-10-18 10:37pm

RThurmont wrote:I would argue that if you do chose to update, you ought to do a semi-clean install (nuking your / partition while leaving /home intact often works for Unicses in general), but I would also make the bold claim that upgrading isn't really neccessary, and should be done only if Gutsy offers some really compelling functionality that you can't live with out (and this may well be the case for certain circumstances, for example, users of WPA wireless encryption would doubtless want to upgrade from Edgy to Feisty due to the latter's inclusion of NetworkManager).

My attitude is to avoid OS changes where possible...if I get an operating system working to a point where I am satisfied with its performance, I prefer to leave it for as long as possible.

I just like playing.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-10-19 08:21am

I upgraded. Like the last time, I wish I hadn't - damn cheap hardware breaking stuff

7.10 doesn't play nice with my graphics hardware. And it ate my wireless connection. Worse, the live cd has the same problems.

Now I'm stuck with XP until I can work around the mess.

Braedley · Post by **Braedley** » 2007-10-19 09:45am

I decided to try the update path. My partitions are a little fucked up, but it works for now and I don't want to go through the hassle of fixing it properly. According to the progress meter, I can expect the downloads to take approx. 6 more hours.

Phantasee · Post by **Phantasee** » 2007-10-19 09:54am

I have Dapper Drake on my old P3 box. I guess I should get around to upgrading it. Didn't have time to play with it at all this summer =(

BTW, your poll is broken (formatting). I think the first option was too long.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-10-19 10:23am

The LiveCD doesn't work with the Radeon driver but generic VESA works just as well. I think Gutsy got the wireless hardware to work since I picked up my neighbour's router (not mine, though) but it couldn't connect to my network.

So, plan B: reformat and reinstall. A normal boot doesn't even get to the login screen before it gets stuck at a black screen, the recovery mode boots up fine but I can't fix the problem from there since it won't allow me network access.

Something's really messed up with my graphics adaptor. Damn POS shared crap...

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2007-10-19 05:40pm

Ugh, radeon?

What's your graphics adapter specifically?

Might help to boot in verbose mode normally, or recovery mode and manually bring the network interface up w/ ifconfig/dhclient and download/run the ATi driver package from ATi's site. In any case, a fresh install probably will help fix things, since Gutsy is supposed to be more robust if it can't bring up a GUI using a non-vesa driver. Newer much better ATi drivers are supposed to be out in a month's time. (doesn't help you if you're running anything older than a 9600).

Dave · Post by **Dave** » 2007-10-19 07:18pm

I upgraded Xubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 using the GUI upgrade option. It took about 24 hours (understandable given server load and a 500Mhz PC.) It boots to a limited terminal now, because fsck doesn't like my second HDD (sdb1), which had /home on it. At least the box wasn't too important.

WTF?

Anyway, here's one for a clean install, if at all. Gaah.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

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