Okay, in a fit of temporary mental illness fearlessness, I decided to do an upgrade of Kubuntu
6.06 LTS to 6.10. Usually, what I do when "upgrading" a Linux installation is to backup my home
directory and then reformat the entire drive to do a clean install. But since I didn't have any critical data on the PC, I reckoned it didn't matter which type of install I did.
By the way, I put the word upgrade in quotes because, in my experience, which admittedly is only over the past couple of years, there's no such thing as a Linux upgrade. At least not in the sense of Windows upgrades. This is especially the case if you have installed any software that you had to compile. Why? Because having compiled the software, based on your old installation, said software may not work under your new installation. Although there may be ways to get around that, most people won't know about them. And if you don't run into that problem, you may run into any number of other issues. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything negative about Kubuntu itself as I have had this problem with just about every Linux installation I've ever used.
But this time, I had confidence in Kubuntu, since its been rock solid reliable. So, I decided to do an upgrade. I followed the instructions that are at the bottom of the page linked to above. For my installation, it required about 500MB of downloads. Via Hawaiian Telcom DSL, it took about 27 minutes to pull all the files. The problem was after the upgrade script began to unpack and install the various downloaded files. All seemed to be going well until the install stopped while installing some KDE components and hung the system. After giving it 30 minutes with nothing apparently going on, I had to do a hardware reset. Of course, since some but not all of the install had already occurred, the system was unable to fully boot. Sigh.
So, this weekend I plan to download the 6.1 ISO and start from that point. Fortunately, as mentioned earlier, I did not have any critical data on the PC so it doesn't matter that I will have to reformat the drive. But let this be a lesson to you - never do an upgrade. But if you do, remember to backup your data first. Better yet, never do an upgrade. And if I forgot to mention it, never do an upgrade. YMMV. Insert disclaimer here.
Have a Great Weekend, Everyone - Aloha!
