On 1/2/2013 11:09 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
On Wed, 2013-01-02 at 10:51 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
[…]
I've been avoiding upgrading Ubuntu, because the last time I did that the
installer trashed everything. Lost a day on that one.
Just because it happened once doesn't mean it will always happen.
Until I abandoned all use of Ubuntu, I had never had an upgrade crash
that didn't correct itself on appropriate rerun. You are the only person
I know that had a total trashing due to installer fail.
Reinstalling from scratch does not take a whole day. 2 hours maybe.
It does when you don't remember what goes in the host file, what you had
installed, redoing all the ssh keys, etc. It also deleted all my virtual boxes,
I never did figure out how to get them working again. I simply gave up on
virtual boxes as more trouble than they're worth.
It also nuked all my mail and calender data, which is why I don't use Ubuntu for
mail or calender anymore, nor do I use it for music (same thing happened).
P.S. The Mac is the only machine I've ever been able to upgrade the operating
system on that worked without trashing everything and forcing a reinstall from
scratch.
I have the opposite experience, Apple hardware seems incapable of
upgrading operating systems. Their policy seems to be "you want a new
operating system, then buy a new piece of hardware from the store."
The only actual trouble I had was the installer assumed a screen larger than the
one I had, and insisted on putting the [next] button off the bottom of the
screen. Argh.
P.S. I like calendar programs, but on Windows and Ubuntu, upgrading the OS
inevitably deletes the calendar database. None of those frackin' calendar
programs ever deign to tell me where they store their frackin' database, so I
can back it up. I really, really don't understand mail and calendar programs
that make it difficult to back up the data. I quit using Outlook Express because
it stored the mail database in a hidden directory. WTF? Thunderbird is better,
but not much.
