[ubuntu-uk] jaunty upgrade safe enough for me?

[Rob Beard]

Farran Lee wrote:
> hi all
> sorry to sound like I'm doubting Jaunty... I'm not, it's just I'm wary 
> for a few reasons:
>
> - I've had lots of trouble with upgrades before
> - my ubuntu currently installed has a few (several) weird issues
> - I'm about to start exams
>
> So, would you say it's safe and stable enough for me to just click 
> 'upgrade' and leave it? Perhaps there are files I could pastebin for 
> you to check out, to see if my system will throw up errors?
> Sorry to be awkward :P I just don't have the time for a broken 
> computer, yet I really would like to upgrade it
>
> thanks :)
Well there's always a risk when upgrading, assuming you don't have 
anything non-standard (such as extra repositories) installed then you'd 
probably be fine.  But I guess it's a case of how desperate are you to 
upgrade?

If it's working fine at the moment and you can't afford downtime due to 
reinstalling then you might be worth leaving it for now (I presume your 
exams finish in the next couple of months anyway?).

One option which you may be able to do is boot from a Desktop CD and 
install alongside your existing installation.  Assuming you haven't got 
4 primary partitions at the moment (/dev/sdX1, 2, 3, 4) then you should 
be able to resize the existing installation of Ubuntu to make room for a 
new install.  Basically then you can dual boot both installations.

Might be adviseable though to backup anything important before trying 
this, just in case.

Rob