Hi rob, I think i would personally recommend a clean install. As you said, you have your home directory on a separate partition, this makes it very convenient to do a fresh upgrade. Myself, I have my home directory also on a different partition, and a script of install commands (apt-get install) for software which i typically always use. So a quick Ubuntu install, and 10 minutes of running the script, and i am back up and running, with the new operating system, and my previous settings. <div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 19:04:41 +1000 From: Rob Farquhar <<a href="mailto:imagines@bigpond.net.au">imagines@bigpond.net.au</a>> Subject: Upgrading from 8.04 to 9.04 To: <a href="mailto:ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Message-ID: <<a href="mailto:4A13C7A9.10407@bigpond.net.au">4A13C7A9.10407@bigpond.net.au</a>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Hi, everyone. I've been lurking for a little while and am hoping I'm not being too forward in using my first post to ask for a little help! I'm currently running 8.04 as a dual-boot with Windows XP on my home machine. It's been a whi8le since I last seriously fiddled with my Ubuntu installation and I'm thinking bout upgrading to the latest version. I understand that I can't directly upgrade from 8.04 to 9.04, though. I'm wondering, as I've mounted the main OS files on a separate partition from my /home directories, whether I can delete my OS partition and install 9.04 straight over it. Am I asking for too much trouble? Thanks, Rob Farquhar </blockquote></div>