Problem during upgrade from 08.04 LTS to 10.04.1 LTS

[Tom H]

On Sun, Jan 16, 2011 at 2:10 PM, Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-01-15 at 08:00 +0000, Fredrik Jonson wrote:
>> Jay Ridgley wrote:
>>
>> >  I am attempting to upgrade one of my systems from 08.04 LTS [and] the
>> >  following message appears:
>> >
>> >  E:Couldn't configure pre-depend jre for openoffice.org-writer2latex,
>> >  probably a dependence cycle.'
>>
>> In cases like this one you can probably uninstall the offending package and then
>> attempt the upgrade again.
>>
>> Though, as mentioned, I'm not sure a upgrade over two versions is a great idea,
>> see the upgrade documentation:
>>
>> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes
>>
>> I recommend doing a backup and starting over with a fresh install instead of
>> upgrading a such old release. It's a great opportunity to relieve the computer
>> of old cruft too.
>
> +1 I concur. I get copies of the Devel list and I have yet to see any
> discussion checking if 8.04 updated correctly to 10.4 ...nary once. It's
> a noble goal to be able to update from one LTS to the next, but I am
> leery of that big a jump and to have all of your .dot and /etc files go
> along with the plan successfully. I see nothing but a potential trail of
> tears.

I'd be interested to know what's special about an LTS to LTS upgrade.
There's no reason why an 8.04 to 10.04 upgrade'd be successful but an
8.10 to 10.10 upgrade wouldn't be - other than marketing. If done
carefully, both these upgrades should be possible given that it's
possible (and possibly encouraged) to upgrade from one Debian version
to another when they're published 2-3 years apart.