1. Newbie evaluation. 2. Gutsy>Hardy: request for advice.

[Xurxo Fernández Gismero]

> What is becoming clear to me is that the best option for the upgrade 
> from Gutsy to Hardy is a 'clean install' (install 'from scratch') after 
> taking some other measures:
I created a partition of 10GB for / and left the rest of the hard disk
to /home. Whenever I want to reinstall from scratch I just wipe out the
"/" disk but the /home disk is safe so I dont have to safe email,
videos, pictures, bookmarks or configuration files.
I upgrade edgy to feisty to gutsy to hardy without much hassle so
upgrading is fine. Since I'm having problem with suspend I decided to
wait a few weeks this time. In previus versions I upgraded when the RC
version was out.
> So far, so good. However, two important questions still remain:
> * what is the best moment to try to resolve the sound problem on my 
> desktop: before or after the upgrade indicated above?
Upgrade first, then try to solve any problem that may arise. Maybe with
the new version it will work fine.
> * what about the problem with Firefox 3, which is in Hardy, but which is 
> still unable to work with vitally important add-ons?
try this:
cd /etc/usr/bin
sudo rm firefox (removes the firefox link)
sudo ln -s firefox-2 firefox (create a link from firefox 2 to firefox)
then you have to go to your firefox2 folder:
.mozilla/firefox/ and then a folder with numbers and letters. You have
to remove the file extensions.rdf and you can use firefox2 and your
extensions again.
> Finally, I have a few questions about your message, Xurxo:
> 
> > I have been upgrading since feisty (dapper to feisty upgrade broke my swap partition due to using UID to identify partitions). 
> How can prevent happening something like this?
Upgrading is usually safe. If you keep /home on a different partition
the worst escenario would be to format "/" volume and install again. I
keep an excel file with the software I have installed and a copy of my
sources.list file just in case.
> 
> > Sadly, resuming from suspend doesn't work on my laptop in Hardy so I had to go back to Gutsy.
> 'Resuming from suspend': what does this expression mean in this case?
You can suspend to ram or hibernate to harddisk  when using laptops. I like it to suspend the ram when closing the lid.
> 
> >  I don't think Hardy was stable enough for a LTS release ....
Maybe that word was too strong. Hardy is stable but I lost japanese input and suspend and i need those features. japanese input is solved now though.   
> 'LTS Release': 
It's already been told but it's because of having 3.5 and 4 version at
the same time. Not a big deal anyway.

> On the other hand: if Hardy is still not 'stable' now, can we expect 
> that so-called 'updates' can sufficiently effectively eliminate the most 
> important bugs?
I shouldn't have used the word "stable". I missed some features, thats all.