The Ultimate Question - Upgrade or Re-Install?

[Samuel Thurston, III]

On 4/23/07, Jakob Lenfers <ubuntu.mailinglisten at jl42.de> wrote:
> I would always upgrade. And if you're afraid its taking too long, just
> wait a couple of days, the main part of the updating should be over by
> then. And you can always continue working while the upgrade-process
> downloads files.

I am an upgrader myself.  Now, I have a REALLY fast connection and
don't mind setting the upgrade to start in the evening when I retire
from the computer, and come back in the morning to check on it.

That said, there are disadvantages to the upgrade process.  In my
experience, you don't always get the new meta-packages so like on my
feisty machine, I don't have the fancy new control centre in gnome.
That's even though i did a dist-upgrade today.  Sometimes the
installer will ask about a configuration file and be waiting for most
of the night for me to say yes or no.

On the whole though, it seems upgrading is the way to go, it will
certainly save you time over downloading the whole CD.

What would be really neat, IMO is if the repositories worked more in
the way of bittorrent, so that high demand would equal higher
availability, but that's maybe just a pipe dream, and could certainly
pose a security risk.