Upgrade made easy …. Ubuntu
Ubuntu Screenshot
I have to admit that the upgrade procedure in Ubuntu is yet another tick in the positive column in regards to the distribution. My install isn’t even a standard install and using the upgrade tool to upgrade from 6.10 (Edgy Eft) to 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) was a breeze.
I’m not sure why Ubuntu chooses to use these strange monikers to refer to releases, as most other linux distributions still use release version numbers. Even Apple still uses (mostly) version numbers (10.4.9) with the exception to the huge releases which are usually major version number changes (i.e. Panther, Tiger (10.4), Leopard (10.5?) (now delayed until June or August due to developers being pulled from OS X and put on iPhone)). I think back to the changes of naming of major releases and I can’t help starting to think about Microsoft and their changes from Windoze 3.1 and 3.11 to using years (95, 98) to using names (me, XP, and of course Vista (and all it’s various flavors). Likewise, we somewhere seem to have lost the use of version numbers in most Microsoft products (Office used to have version numbers, then years (2003), then names (XP (can’t remember which one came first … the banana or the egg)), and I now they are just moving to marketing terms (to try to keep Google and other “software as a service” models from gaining (more) market share) like Office Live (ROFLMAO) and yet they are back to (or continuing to) use years (Office 2007).
Regardless, the upgrade process for Ubuntu involved opening the upgrade manager, clicking the upgrade button, reviewing the changes (I think this could have been skipped, but I was curious as my install isn’t standard), and clicking install. It then downloads for an hour or more, crunches through the file changes, reboots and comes up clean. I’d be interested to see how others feel the upgrade process is when compared to other “commercial” upgrades (linux and otherwise, but I’d rather not hear about the Vista upgrade problems people experience as I’m sure that they are too numerous to count (I’ve had some folks call me in tears) (in fact, I’m boggled that anyone actually WANTS to upgrade an existing Windoze machine to Vista)).