[clue] ubuntu upgrading

[Yaverot]

Even when you guys are telling me what I don't want to hear, I'm taking your advice seriously.

Honestly, I thought they'd been hitting the "upgrade" button when it appeared; or that another relative was keeping a closer eye on the system.  Or that something would've said "Hey you're about to fall off the 'can upgrade' cliff!" instead of leaving us in the position.

Since a full Ubuntu (9.04) and all their data is taking up only 4GB on their harddrive (according to df), I think the right solution is to get a Live-USB, that I set to use the home folder on the HD.  This gets them a current/more_secure system, gets their new printer working, and buys more time until I can get there again and to a proper partition & reinstall of a distro I can better remote admin for them.

Or maybe that works well enough, that we don't switch; and we rotate USB keys like a backup set, and I update the keys when I get them.

Is there a Gnome2 distro that be good for that, or will I be stuck trying to Gnome-ize something else? 

--- Lorin at RickerNet.us wrote:

From: Lorin Ricker <Lorin at RickerNet.us>
To: CLUE's mailing list <clue at cluedenver.org>
Subject: Re: [clue] ubuntu upgrading
Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 18:28:05 -0600

Yaverot: David is right -- Full and clean (re)install is likely your 
best option, so be sure that all user data (/home/...) is safely 
backed-up.  Really, there's no good reason not to go all the way to 
current release, or at least to last LTS (12.04).

I know, I know... Unity gets a bum rap, but I'm using latest/greatest 
Ubuntus ("plain/main" with Unity, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu Studio) without pain.

If your user is bound to an old(er) Ubuntu desktop style and unwilling 
or unable to grok to something new like Unity (which is just fine for a 
casual, non-tweak-my-DT type user), then get him/her switched over to 
Xubuntu, or even consider one of the current Mint distros/DTs.  But, 
IMHO, letting a user (esp. a non-technical one) languish with an old, 
unsupportable distro of any flavor, especially if the only excuse is 
"don't mess with my desktop", is just asking for trouble... eventually.

If/when you re-install, be sure to do some careful HD repartitioning, 
and carve a big (biggest?) one out as the designated /home partition; 
this way, future upgrades can be a "clean and full reinstall" without 
re-initializing that /home partition.  This doesn't absolve you (or the 
user) of making backups, but usually makes a clean install go a whole 
lot faster by skipping that backup-and-restore the user-tree step.  Just 
a suggestion...

Hope this helps.
best regards,
   -- Lorin

On 09/05/2013 03:45 PM, David L. Willson wrote:
> I'd recommend 10.04, but I'm not sure an upgrade is viable, because
> your repos are gone and so are the repos for your waypoint, 9.10. I
> think you have to backup your data and do a clean install. Maybe
> someone else will have better news. If not, you could try posing your
> question to CoLoCo, too.
>
> -- David L. Willson Teacher, Engineer, Evangelist RHCE+Satellite CCAH
> Network+ A+ Linux+ LPIC-1 UbuntuCP NovellCLA Mobile
> 720-333-LANS(5267)
>
> This is a good time for a r3VOLution.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>> Okay I got a friend who's using Ubuntu 9.04, and has just got a
>> new printer, which requires a newer version of hplip than the one
>> he has installed, and the repositories for this version are now
>> gone.
>>
>> Do you guys recommend a manual update to a newer hplip (many
>> missing dependencies), or upgrading to a newer version of Ubuntu?
>> If upgrading U, which version means not having to re-teach the
>> user, as screenshots of the newest version clearly show.
>> _______________________________________________ clue mailing list:
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>
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