Ubuntu upgrade 7.x to 8.04

[simple_gifts]

First of all, being in the I.T. field I have never been a fan of "overwriting upgrades" when the previous version is installed on top of the current version, plenty of real experience on why I don't like them. ; I prefer building a new version and then migrating the data....

Well, I tried upgrading my Ubuntu from version 7.x to 8.04 thru the supplied package manager. Click on "upgrade to 8.04" answer a few questions, walk away, come back in a while and all the new packages are installing.

Ubuntu prompts you if you want to replace "changed" configuration files with the new versions. It knows when original distribution files have changed, indicating you have edited them....files such as ntp.conf

A nice benefit of the upgrade process is that it round robins the install servers. If you get stuck on a slow download server, it lasts for that package only and then moves onto another server (hopefully faster) No download speeds of 24Kb/sec and a 3 week upgrade process.

One reboot. Now running 8.04, Firefox 3.0 and restricted drivers included, all data in place.

Wow...

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

I'm with you, it's best to "upgrade" with a different box, especially for servers. But it's really cool to hear that Linux can be upgraded that smoothly.

 

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
First of all, being in the I.T. field I have never been a fan of "overwriting upgrades" when the previous version is installed on top of the current version, plenty of real experience on why I don't like them. ; I prefer building a new version and then migrating the data....

Well, I tried upgrading my Ubuntu from version 7.x to 8.04 thru the supplied package manager. Click on "upgrade to 8.04" answer a few questions, walk away, come back in a while and all the new packages are installing.

Ubuntu prompts you if you want to replace "changed" configuration files with the new versions. It knows when original distribution files have changed, indicating you have edited them....files such as ntp.conf

A nice benefit of the upgrade process is that it round robins the install servers. If you get stuck on a slow download server, it lasts for that package only and then moves onto another server (hopefully faster) No download speeds of 24Kb/sec and a 3 week upgrade process.

One reboot. Now running 8.04, Firefox 3.0 and restricted drivers included, all data in place.

Wow...


Awesome!

Gentoo doesn't do version upgrades per se. Portage (Gentoo's package system) has Q-releases where the tree is refreshed. Every time a new quarter-release is pushed to Portage, and you sync then do a world update, you are automatically running the latest "version" of Gentoo, which is just simply based on whichever quarter is classified as current. And of course there are stable and unstable trees depending on how cutting-edge you want to be.

It's a great system, as it completely eliminates the traditional "versioning" system! As long as you sync and do an emerge -uvaD world every once and a while, you are always "current".

 

[ToyotaNSaturn]

A nice side benefit of Ubuntu 8.04 is that the mouse & keyboard are natively seamless under VMWare Workstation 6.0x. You don't have to deal with CNTRL-ALT everytime the mouse goes in or out of the VM, all without the need for VM tools!