[Charlug] Upgrading old Ubuntu

[Dennis Clark]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Peter Senft <peter.senft at hpss.de> wrote:

>
> apt-get dist-upgrade -d
> This line will only download what is needed for the upgrade. BTW, you
> should be able to resolve conflicts :). I am not sure how that system
> grew over time. But I can tell you that the upgrade from my potato/woody
> mixture to lenny was painful ;).


In general, Debian-based distributions only officially support upgrades to
the release that immediately follows the currently installed one. This means
that to get from woody to lenny you were supposed to go through sarge and
etch. Was that part of your upgrade, or were you able to bypass them
completely? If you attempted the latter, you must be a real masochist ...
and if you succeeded, you must be really good :-)

Ubuntu offers an alternative to release-by-release upgrades with its Long
Term Support (LTS) releases. Users who do not like the idea of upgrading
every 6 months can instead install a LTS release. Ubuntu supports upgrading
from one LTS release to the next, and the last two LTS releases were about 2
years apart.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

The downside to LTS is that software versions can get a bit outdated over 2
years. If you like the slower release cycle of LTS but there is specific
software that you need to be more up-to-date, you can combine an LTS release
with its corresponding backports repository:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports

With these choices, most users should be able to find their preferred
balance for keeping up with new software versions. However, if you value
being at the "bleeding edge" over stability or security, you can choose to
ride the wave of the Debian unstable repository. But beware: it is no
coincidence that Debian unstable is named after the kid in Toy Story who
loved to blow up toys ... BOOM!

Cheers,

-- Dennis
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://charlug.org/pipermail/charlug/attachments/20090130/30b86a73/att=
achment.htm