Anxious about upgrade

[smitty88]

Pleased at how easy misc upgrades happened I jumped for FFawn as soon as I saw it and ran into all kinds of trouble (it failed), having to get help to bail me out. Seems that it was a mistake not to wait a few days.
Now I'm uneasy about upgrading the kernal about which I rec'd notice. I'm comfortable with the graphic interface but not with command line ops (I don't know a thing about "compiling").
Not knowing just what most of the upgrades do I assume they are improvements and just go ahead with them and everything works fine.
Is it likely that the current batch of upgrades (including the large kernal) can be done by most people without problem or should I just ignore it until someone more skilled than I is at my side?
Compaq AMD Sempron 2800+ 512/40GB (with plenty of space left).
Thank you!
Smitty88

[jankushka]

Re: Anxious about upgrade

(un)luckily enough, upgrading an apt based linux distro is way too easy.
people jump on new versions just because new versions are available.
of course newer versions should improve upon older ones.
but then, as old issues are fixed, new ones may be introduced.
and if upgrading is easy, downgrading is very much less so.
so, for me, the old "never touch a running system" still holds.
after all, if your system does what it is supposed to do without problems...then why upgrade?
personally, i disabled the automatic adept updater thing and am just as happy.
moreover, from what i gathered by reading this forum, people on amd systems
always seem to have the most problems and should, in my view, be extra careful.
that's it.
my 2cts.
cheers

[Detonate]

Re: Anxious about upgrade

If a update loads a new kernel, and it causes problems on your system, merely boot to the older kernel, until the problems have been resolved.

As for release upgrades, I always install the latest release to a separate partition and keep the current release until I am satisfied the new release is stable.

[MoonRise]

Re: Anxious about upgrade

It all boils down to each individual user. I myself jump right on board and upgrade just because. No reason. I like actually learning what causes what. Again, that is me. I agree to what Detonate said, if it is an update that included a kernel update, go back to the old, which I found to be the beauty of Linux!! I had such a case on the last kernel update. Figured out what needed to be done to get it working while under the old and had it fixed. Again, me. I wouldn't expect everyone to have that same "joy". It is what ever you feel comfortable with doing.

Maybe this will help on the kernel issue:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...72500#msg72500

[smitty88]

Re: Anxious about upgrade

"Booting to the old kernal" seem like a safe option, if only I knew how to do it. Maybe I should ask google?
With "22 upgradable packages available" is there some way I could upgrade 21 of them and just skip the kernal upgrade, or are they all necessary?
Thanks!
Smitty88

[Detonate]

Re: Anxious about upgrade

When the new kernel is installed, and entry is automatically added to your menu file for Grub. When you reboot, the default will be the new kernel, but the previous kernel will be listed below that. Simply select the kernel you want to boot to.

[MoonRise]

Re: Anxious about upgrade

If you don't see the GRUB menu, press ESC before the timer reaches 0. Then you should see the GRUB menu.

[ivan-frankfurt]

Re: Anxious about upgrade

With "22 upgradable packages available" is there some way I could upgrade 21 of them and just skip the kernal upgrade, or are they all necessary?

If you're using the Adept Updater it's easy:
after you have clicked on "Fetch list of updates", right click on the updates you don't want to apply and select "Cancel changes" from the context menu.
Then review your selection and click on "Apply updates"