OT: Other OS upgrades also can be a "nightmare"

[Guest]

A little turnabout in this forum is fair play. Because a few folks come
here to troll that Vista is a fundamentally flawed product due to upgrade
issues, here's a link to another forum where the problems of upgrading to
Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) is discussed. Lessons learned: OS upgrade? Clean
install!

From the post:
"Many people report that straightforward upgrades of relatively mundane
systems go well, but anything the least bit interesting seems not to have
been accounted for, like software RAID, custom kernels, and Opera. Even the
official upgrade method doesn't work for everyone, including crashes of the
upgrade tool in the middle of installing, leaving systems unbootable, no
longer recognizing devices (like the console keyboard!), reduced performance,
X server crashes, wireless networking problems, the user password no longer
working, numerous broken applications, and many even stranger things. Some of
this is fairly subjective, with Kubuntu being a bit more problematic than
Ubuntu, with reports that Xubuntu seems to have the worst problems, and
remote upgrades are something you don't even want to try. Failed upgrades
invariably require a complete reinstall. The conclusion from the street,
about upgrading to Edgy, is a warning: If you're going to try to take the
plunge, be sure to make a backup image of your boot partition before starting
the upgrade. Your chances of having the upgrade be a total failure are high.
If you're really dead-set on upgrading, you'll save yourself a lot of time
and headache by backing up all of your personal files manually and doing a
fresh install (don't forget to save your bookmarks!)."

Upgrading to Ubuntu Edgy Eft a "Nightmare"
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/06/10/28/239258.shtml

 

[M. Murcek]

Yep - we live in an age of abundance, hardware and software wise (other ways
too) and it's pretty much impossible for anyone, from Microsoft on down, to
test for every possible upgrade configuration. I'm reading Tiemann's and
Urban's FreeBSD 6.1 right now, and they say right out that support for
anything other than generic ATA or SCSI is a crapshoot (well, they do say
it's a *bit* better than that) We are not living in the old days where
everything was simply a "Winchester" and we're not going back either.
Better that people should learn how to put their user data where it will not
be bothered by a clean install, and try to stick with a program set that's
not a huge pain to reinstall. Oh, and getting an install right, and
actually using a machine for production for an extended period of time
without upsetting the apple cart? Well, it is done, somewheres...

 

[ML]

But I didn't have to pay for additional license when I change hardware under
ubuntu..... And I didn't need to pay for the OS upgrade either. I wouldn't
complain if I am using a product I can get for free. Vista, however, I DO
NEED TO PAY........

 

[Guest]

You don't necessarily need a new license to change hardware under Vista. And
yes, you do need to pay to upgrade Vista. That is standard with any
non-freeware OS/software. However, if your experience is like many others out
there, your free Ubuntu upgrade from 6.01 to 6.10 will render your system
useless and destroy your data. I imagine at that point you will complain.

 

[ML]

Actually, I did the upgrade and it was flawless......