Open Office and / or Libre Office

[Avi Greenbury]

Ric Moore wrote:
> Read again, I said "in theory" and "Some have reported success doing
> the LTS to LTS upgrade". So, just how it that completely absolutely
> wrong? You need to brush up on your reading skills, IMHO, before
> making such a declarative statement.

I've seen hundreds of these go absolutely fine (admittedly, mostly
server-oriented). I think it's worth remembering the point that nobody
is vociferously content with something - if I do a dist-upgrade and it
works and everything's fine, I've no particular reason to go round
telling everybody. It's a rather boring process that just plodded on
and did what it was supposed to do.

> Now, my perspective is that human beings make mistakes, on the 
> statistical average, of 15% of the time. Then you take a 10.4 
> installation and ramp it up past three releases in order to "upgrade"
> to 12.4. It's not whether you can do it or not, the question is ~if~
> you want to do that.

I see this as an argument to do a single upgrade rather than four in a
row. I'm sure you're using it to argue that four separate upgrades is
more sensible, but I can't see how.

> Will ALL of your newly installed package's config files be replaced 
> properly with that giant of a leap? Again, no one is perfect, not
> even the Devels. The chance for mistakes to appear, to me, is greater
> and should be ~considered~. Especially when the newbie do'er can't
> even manage to use google and will need intensive hand holding as
> stuff breaks.

It's not normally 'giant leaps' in config changes (in terms of
iterations through three or four different config file formats) but
many parallel ones - more packages having config file format changes at
the same time, rather than the same packages changing repeatedly. 
 
> I never said it wouldn't work, I'm saying to take these things into 
> consideration before you do, or advise others to do so. Check out my 
> Linux Counter number, I've been around awhile and have seen much blow
> up in very interesting ways. And, I haven't run into anything I
> couldn't fix myself without crying, whining and running multiple
> threads ad nauseum, as I ignorantly proceed to break my own stuff and
> drag others into the day-to-day unfolding drama.

By the time Precise is released, 10.04 will be unsupported. Again, if
your concern is that he will need more help than an average user, then
I would imagine it would make more sense for him to be upgraded to an
actually-supported release. 

The only reason I can think of for anyone to go the long way round from
10.04 to 12.04 is a peculiar fondness for the process.

-- 
Avi