Announcing Beta release of Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Fri, Apr 21, 2006 at 04:48:16PM +0100, Antony Gelberg wrote:
> Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> >It is possible to upgrade manually, but the DapperUpgrades method is
> >strongly recommended.  A simple dist-upgrade attempts to resolve the entire
> >upgrade based solely on the package metadata, while the upgrade tool is 
> >more
> >sophisticated and has explicit logic supplied by the development team to
> >provide a smooth upgrade.
> >
> 
> Can you point me to more info on this?  I don't like the sound of it. 
> I'm used to the distro being nothing more than the sum of its packages, 
> hence the metadata being enough.  What "explicit logic" is required over 
> and above package metadata?

Sure, more information can be found here:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/release-upgrades

"apt-get dist-upgrade" has never truly been sufficient, and this tool is a
solution to that problem, not its source.  Upgrading to a new Ubuntu release
is a complex high-level operation which is not easily addressed with the
kinds of heuristics used to support incremental upgrades.

> This is not good news for those of us who want to upgrade machines without
> a GUI tool.

The availability of a GUI tool should not have any impact on users who
choose not to use it.  You may still perform upgrades using the command-line
tools, and resolve any difficulties manually, just as you always have.

But for those who want it to "just work", there is now a more suitable
option.  It is a complementary use case.

-- 
 - mdz