[plug] upgrading from 6.06 to 8.04 ubuntu

[Tomasz Grzegurzko]

On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 6:16 PM, Keith Bawden <keith at bawdo.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 18:09, Martin Barry <marty at supine.com> wrote:
>> Ubuntu does time based releases (every 6 months) and the version number is
>> YY.MM so 8.04 is the April 2008 release. 6.x to 8.x implies 2 years and 4
>> releases but says nothing as to how much of the underlying system actually
>> changed.
>
> Ahhh well that explains it :-) Thanks for the info.
>
> BTW, I did have my tongue firmly in cheek when I was going on about
> 4-5 being closer than 6-8.
>
> Regards, Keith

I've dealt with many kinds of breakage of Debian systems but dpkg
always seems to come to the rescue. Here's some examples of ultimately
successful scenarios:
Debian Sarge -> Testing -> Unstable -> Testing -> Ubuntu Dapper ->
Edgy -> Feisty -> Gutsy -> Hardy
Debian Sarge -> Ubuntu Hardy
Debian Sarge + Ubuntu Gutsy -> Ubuntu Hardy
Debian Unstable -> Stable
Ubuntu Edgy+1 (before it was Feisty) -> Ubuntu Feisty

Even thinking about such incredible steps with a rpm based system is
silly, but it seems possible with dpkg, handles it quite well.
I've always found aptitude to be the best guide to this as a dpkg
front end though, and for any upgrade I'd simply suggest making sure
that "obsolete and locally created packages" are either all eliminated
or kept in well check as they're pretty much the sticking point in any
upgrade. Ubuntu's graphical upgrade mechanism is smart enough to
disable all 3rd party repos and just seems to focus on getting the
main metapackage installed, based on your derivative (ubuntu-desktop.
kubuntu-desktop, xubuntu-desktop....) then working out the mess after
that. I've had a lot of success with it but always found there's clean
up to be done after the fact.

Tomasz