Upgradephobia!

[Justin Gruenberg]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 6:50 PM, David McNally <david3333333 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, when I was reading the release notes for 9.10, I noticed that ext4 and
> GRUB 2 won't be installed on an upgraded computer - only a fresh install.
> Would there be any way of creating a fresh install, but with all of my
> programs and files (and I do mean EVERYTHING: Virtualbox VMs, Wine programs,
> game saves, Compiz settings, etc), while still having ext4 and GRUB 2?

If ext3 and grub1 are working for you, there's no real reason to
upgrade to them.  Changing the format of a disk is likely to cause
problems (MASSIVE DATA LOSS).  Neither are things you're going to have
to interact with. . . and honestly, the less time you have to deal
with them the better.

As for your upgrade idea, it might be possible by backing up your home
directory and the list of packages installed (restoring the backup and
installing all the packages when you clean install karmic).  You're
probably going to encounter more issues doing this than just doing the
distribution upgrade through update manager.

I'd suggest just upgrading the normal route.  You might want to do
some googling of your specific hardware (graphics card, laptop model,
etc) to see if other people have encountered issues.