Ubuntu Studio 8.04 -> 9.04 upgrade

[Scott]

Brian David wrote:
> I can't seem to find it in my mail archives at the moment, but I seem to remember
> that this issue was discussed before and at that time it was said that upgrading
> from 8.04 to 9.04 would NOT be supported, so you'd have to upgrade to Intrepid
> first and then to Jaunty, or just do a clean install.  However, an upgrade between
> LTS releases (such as Hardy to Karmic) would be supported.

I'd like to chime in here and suggest something that may help people in the future.
Linux partitioning is quite robust and provides a great opportunity to do seamless
upgrades.  If you create two 10-20GB partitions at the front of your volume and leave
the rest for '/home/' (minus a couple GB for swap at the end) you can do system
upgrades without breaking your previous setup.

I alternate releases between the two 20GB '/' partitions and always set my '/home/' 
and 'swap' to the same partition leaving it untouched.  That way I can comfortably 
test or upgrade new releases without breaking my production system while having access 
to the same settings and data.

If you went with the default 'everything in "/"' install, you can use gparted from a
live CD or USB-boot to adjust your existing partitions to accommodate the method
above.  As always, backup first if adjusting partitions isn't in your blood and make
sure you have enough room when you resize.  YMMV

-Scott