Gutsy to Hardy Upgrade

[skipperx]

Hello:

I would like to upgrade from Gutsy to Hardy. Should and could I upgrade or remove Gutsy and install Hardy clean? Could someone please tell me what is the best way to do it and why. I would prefer to upgrade while Gutsy is running because I had to fight with the wireless card quite a bit to get it working at the beginning.

I am using a Dell Inspiron note book with a dual boot or XP and Kubuntu. I did a quick check and see 3 partitions on Linux side. 4 G for system, 1G for swap and the rest for data.

Thank you.

[jankushka]

Re: Gutsy to Hardy Upgrade

if you haven't got any pressing reasons for wanting to upgrade from gutsy to hardy now, then don't!
if your gutsy is stable, then my suggestion is: stay with gutsy.

hardy does not offer anything particularly new compared to gutsy.
and starting from intrepid, kde is upgraded to version 4.
kde3.5 and kde4 are very very different.
this means that you would upgrade to a version of kubuntu which is already surpassed by a newer one.
this newer one is not stable yet, but i expect it will be by june or so (jaunty will be out end of april 2009).

if you want to start experiment with kde4, you could wait until jaunty is out.
but i would still install jaunty alongside gutsy...not in place of gutsy.

on my dell precision gutsy is still the most stable kubuntu i have.
i now run gutsy for the most part and i experiment with intrepid while waiting for jaunty.
i will install jaunty alongside gutsy and decide whether or not to get rid of kde3.5 gutsy.

i tried hardy but it was a nightmare.
kernel issues with intel wireless driver would make the system load skyrocket and would render the system unusable.

hth

[skipperx]

Re: Gutsy to Hardy Upgrade

Thank you very much for the reply. Actually, I don't want to upgrade at all. I am quite happy with Gutsy. After struggling to get things working, I'd like to use it a bit. I am thinking about the upgrade mainly because of the EOL dates I saw for both Kubuntu and Ubuntu on different websites. What do those EOL dates mean? No more security updates after that date or no more support on forums such as this one or what? Sorry for the dumb questions..... :P

[aged hippy]

Re: Gutsy to Hardy Upgrade

My experience was that i couldn't actually upgrade from Gutsy, so i ended up installing Hardy from a CD.

The only problems i've had with Hardy were the video driver (ATI Radeon 9800) and a wireless (Netgear) problem which is no longer the case as i now plug straight into the router.


I'd highly recommend installing via a live CD, and if you do so, you will (after up-dating) be using the latest kernel and KDE 3.5.10 - which is a desktop without rival.... in my opinion.

[ebtech]

Re: Gutsy to Hardy Upgrade

I'm running Hardy on a Dell Inspiron 2200 laptop in a dual boot with XP and I could hardly be happier with it. I did not care for Gutsy although I didn't try it on the laptop, I tried it on my desktop.

Anyway, all my laptop hardware works perfectly in Hardy. I did have to install the wireless driver (Broadcom B43 wireless driver) thru my wired connection but all I had to do was go to System>Hardware Drivers Manager and it found the proper one and installed it. Worked perfectly ever since. I did have to edit my /etc/dhcp3/dhcp.conf file to prepend my router ip. Knetwork manager would not keep it after reboot.

If your Inspiron is similar I'd highly recommend upgrading (by way of clean install) to Hardy.

My 2 cents
Your mileage may differ

[jankushka]

Re: Gutsy to Hardy Upgrade

I am thinking about the upgrade mainly because of the EOL dates I saw for both Kubuntu and Ubuntu on different websites. What do those EOL dates mean? No more security updates after that date or no more support on forums such as this one or what? Sorry for the dumb questions..... :P

eol unfortunately means no more...nothing.
end of life.
end of story.

your point about eol is a good one.
consider the following, though:
ubuntu hardy is an lts release (eol april 2011).
kubuntu hardy is not (eol october 2009).
you would postpone the eol issue by 6 months.
upgrading from 7.10 to 8.04 to 9.04 (possibly to 9.10) is something you can forget about.
it won't work.
my suggestion is: do not waste your time.
kubuntu gutsy ends its life at the end of april 2009, exactly when kubuntu jaunty comes out.
find 5gb of space somewhere and install jaunty alongside your gutsy.
and don't share the .kde directory in your home (kde3.5.x and kde4.x work differently).
my view only, of course.
cheers.

[jglen490]

Re: Gutsy to Hardy Upgrade

A far as I can tell, the actual answer is "it depends". For those files and executables that are purely KDE, Kubuntu Hardy is not LTS. For all else that is shared with Ubuntu Hardy and is not in any way made unique for Kubuntu, the answer is updates will be available through the LTS EOL cycle.

Now being only partially updated after the KDE-specific part of Kubuntu Hardy reaches its EOL, will increase your risk of security problems after September 2009. So, it will be wise to take an upgrade towards the end of this year. I know I will, and considering how well KDE4 does not work with my hardware platform, my upgrade will likely be other than Kubuntu.

I hate it when the answer is a "definite maybe".

[skipperx]

Re: Gutsy to Hardy Upgrade

Thanks, everyone for chiming in. I am all for not working more than I need to....

I will postpone upgrading for now at least till April and fresh-install a new system from CD. When I install the new one, say Jaunty, can I keep the data and use the same partitions for the OS and swap or do I have to repartition everything?

[jankushka]

Re: Gutsy to Hardy Upgrade

you can of course reuse the swap partition.
operating system and data partitions...it depends.
basically it depends on what applications you use and where your data is stored.

my (standard) partitioning scheme on simple lap/desktop systems is:
/ is the operating system
/home is the users' home directories partition
/multimedia is where i keep music, video, pictures...
then there's swap, of course.

with such a scheme, installing jaunty would be:
a) get to the manual partitioning of the installation process and
b) reuse / (format the partition)
c) reuse /home (do not format the partition; mount it under /home)
d) reuse /multimedia (do not format the partition; mount it under /multimedia)
e) reuse swap (format the partition)

when you are asked to create a user, use a new username.
so that /home/oldusername/.kde is not overwritten.

hth