Thanks to everyone. I definitely came to the right place for advice. You guys have given me a couple choices and pointed out some of the some problems I might run into.. My choices are to either do a new installation of 9.04 and reinstall the programs I have on 7.10 or to do what John does by following the sequence of installing one version after another on top of the previous version until I get to 9.04.
One other question. I have some email in Ubuntu's email program on the laptop. How do I back my email up in 7.10 and then restore it to 9.04? Where does Linux keep those email files? Are they in the /home directory? -rr On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 1:55 PM, Chris Knadle <[email protected]>wrote: > > On Thu, 2009-09-10 at 17:10 -0400, rrloria wrote: > >> Maybe someone can help me. > >> > >> I'm new to Linux and need some advice. > >> > >> I have an older laptop where someone installed Ubuntu 7.10 on. > >> > >> I tried it out and I like it. > >> > >> Now I want to upgrade from 7.10 to the latest Ubuntu 9.04. Then I found > >> out on another website that I can't do that directly. I have to do a > >> new install and if I install it on my hard drive where 7.10 is I will > >> lose all my programs. > > If you haven't installed anything proprietary that isn't part of Ubuntu > then really what you're saying is that you'd loose your installed program > choices. Before reinstalling or upgrading, you can get a list of what > programs you had installed via the command > > dpkg --get-selections > my_ubuntu_selections.txt > > and then emailing that text file to yourself. Then if you want to > reinstall the newer version of Ubuntu directly you'll have the list of > what was installed to allow installing anything missing through the > package manager. > > >> A friend said he thinks there is a way that I can back up some files and > >> folders on 7.10 that hold my programs to an external hard drive. Then > >> he said I could do a new install of 9.04 on the internal hard drive, > >> overwrite 7.10, then copy the saved files and folders from the external > >> hard drive that has my program files and folders saved from 7.10 to the > >> new 9.04 installation. > > I'm assuming that these are not programs that reside in your own home > directory and that they were installed from Ubuntu using the normal > package management tools. If that's the case then I really don't > recommend trying to copy the old 7.10 programs back to the new 9.04 > installation, for several reasons. > > - the package management tools wouldn't know about the files you copy > back; this means that upon an Ubuntu update you could run into trouble > - the old programs might have security issues the new versions of the same > programs don't (like Firefox) > - the underlying libraries the programs require may have changed in the > new version of Ubuntu such that the old programs may not fully work > as they did before > > >> How would I do this? > >> > >> What folders and files have to be backup and how do I reinstall them > >> in in 9.04? > >> > >> Does that completely restore my old programs from 7.10 to 9.04? > >> > >> Are there any problems when you do this? > >> > >> Any advice you guys would have would be great. > >> > >> Please keep it simple since I'm just a beginner. > >> > >> If anyone has step-by-step instructions that would be helpful. > >> > >> -rr > > In practice I think it would be too difficult to do properly. I wouldn't > want to attempt it. > > > On Fri, September 11, 2009 10:43 am, Allen wrote: > > Since no-one has answered you so far, I'll post this. Disclaimer: I'm a > > novice level Linux user, not an expert like others in MHVLUG. I > > multiboot Fedora and Ubuntu. I run Fedora over 95% of the time, so I'm > > not too familiar with Ubuntu. > > > > One area where Ubuntu is way ahead of Fedora is with release upgrades. > > To upgrade from Fedora n to Fedora n+1, a reinstall is recommended. A > > release upgrade can be done through the Fedora package manager (Yum), > > but it is discouraged. > > SELinux might be part of why, but another big issue is the method RPMs > upgrade config files -- you have to save the log of the upgrade to a text > file and read over it carefully, because that's the only notification that > RPM found differences between config files and dropped a <file>.rpmnew > next to the old config file -- and after the upgrade the old config file > may not be compatible with the new program. > > > With Ubuntu, release upgrades from Ubuntu n to > > Ubuntu n+1 are supported by the Ubuntu package manager, Apt. When > > upgrading this way, your programs are preserved. > > > > In your case, you want to update from Ubuntu 7.10 to Ubuntu 9.04. You > > want to preserve your programs. I suggest you investigate whether this > > can be accomplished via release upgrades. Check if it is possible to do > > a release upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04. Then from 8.04 to 8.10. Then from > > 8.10 to 9.04. (You have to enable release upgrades in the update > > manager.) > > It should be possible to upgrade Ubuntu this way, but I've only done it on > Debian rather than Ubuntu, so I don't know if there are any known issues > in the process. > > -- Chris > > -- > > Chris Knadle > [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org > http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug > Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium > Sept 2 - Linux and HDTV > Oct 7 - TBD > Nov 4 - Google Wave > _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Sept 2 - Linux and HDTV Oct 7 - TBD Nov 4 - Google Wave
