Time to bite the Lucid bullet!

[Kevin Hunter]

At 12:18pm -0400 Fri, 17 Sep 2010, Clay Weber wrote:
> If you had an Ubuntu base and, I would assume that Ubuntu's upgrade
> tool would upgrade Ubuntu to Lucid fine [... snip]

I have had enough troubles with the update process, even between current 
and current +1 distros, that I've stopped trying.  I have since 
discovered a nice boon that USB key installs go /much/ faster, including 
reinstalling the list of packages needed on each machine.  From a 
personal perspective, I also find that it's good for removing various 
programs that I've forgotten I installed for one reason or another.  If 
I need them later, that sudo (apt-get|yum) install ... paradigm works well.

During the update process, I take a quick (<5 min) gander through the 
output of (dpkg -l|yum list installed), and prepare a quick install line 
for the nonstandard packages that are obvious I want to have installed 
after the upgrade.

The whole process of torrent, create USB key, USB boot, install, reboot, 
update, reboot, sudo apt-get install extra packages, takes me less than 
60 minutes.  The last three times I tried the update process, on 
comparable machines, it took 3+, 4+, and 12+ hours.  On various other 
machines, the process did not even complete, or completed but broke 
random packages.

To read all y'all's thoughts on the process, it would seem that you're 
fans of the update process.  Clearly, it works for you.  So I wonder 
what crucial detail I'm apparently missing.  Any ideas?  Because it 
seems random to me.

Kevin