[11.04]-Turn Off Unity & Use Classic Gnome?

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:32 PM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 4:15 PM, Alan Pope <popey at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>>> On 15 February 2011 16:10, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> You do realise that you can only upgrade from one release to the next?
>>>
>>> Not true. You _can_ skip releases. I've done it a few times. I'm not
>>> recommending that people should, or that it's wise, just that you
>>> _can_.
>>
>> Oh really? With the update manager? I thought that was expressly
>> forbidden. Or are you talking about leaping in with editing
>> sources.list and doing an apt-get dist-upgrade? I've comprehensively
>> broken a Debian 5 box with that approach in recent months and would be
>> loath to try again, frankly.
>
> Yes, by editing sources.list, running "apt-get upgrade", "apt-get
> dist-upgrade", and a few other steps before and in between. The Debian
> 5 to 6 upgrade is the Ubuntu equivalent of skipping 3-4 Ubuntu
> releases!

True.

> It's not forbidden (how could it be?!)

Well, OK, not "forbidden", but unofficial and unsupported.

Q.v. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes

"To avoid damaging your running system, upgrading should only be done
from one release to the next release [...]  If you wish to 'skip' a
version, you can backup your data and do a fresh installation, or
progressively upgrade to each successive version. For example, to
upgrade from Ubuntu 8.10 to Ubuntu 9.10, first upgrade to 9.04, then
upgrade 9.04 to 9.10."

That is pretty explicit, I'd say.

Also, the supported upgrade process is to use update-manager, *not*
dist-upgrade, as described, e.g, here:
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/upgrade

"Install update-manager-core if it is not already installed:
sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
edit /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and set Prompt=normal
Launch the upgrade tool:
sudo do-release-upgrade
Follow the on-screen instructions."

> but a good anti-dote to someone
> just "editing sources.list and doing an apt-get dist-upgrade" and
> killing his box - if that's what you did.

It was, but it was only an experiment. It wasn't a problem.

> There are a few people posting on debian-users with upgrade problems
> but there'd have to be many more posting if failure is a
> general/common scenario.

I think that is an artifact of Debian users being more generally
clueful than Ubuntu users.

> Furthermore, Debian 6 was released about ten days ago so your failure
> in "recent months" might have been due to upgrading to a beta issue
> that's been ironed out since.

I was trying to go from 5 to the current "sid", but it's not really
important any more.

Every few years, emboldened by my growing Ubuntu knowledge, I give
Debian another try. Every time, I give up again a day or two later,
chastened.

-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
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