Upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10

Well today was the day! Its a Saturday and what else does one have to do on a raining day in beautiful British Columbia Canada, Upgrade to Ubuntu 7.10!

I have spent the last few days since the release of Ubuntu 7.10 reading all the various info I could find on Google about the experiences people were having upgrading to the new release. My experience with any upgrade whether it be Linux or Windows has not always been a successful one. Looking back I think every release of Windows I basically just wiped out the hard drive and started again. Sometimes not even backing up a single file.. :) With Linux, most of the time I have just backed up my home directory and again just re-installed the newer version of whatever Linux I was using at the time.

Todays upgrade was the easiest I have ever done without losing and or even backing up anything.

This morning I woke up and went downstairs with my first cup of coffee. I again read a few more things about upgrading to Ubuntu 7.10 from 7.04. Some good comments and some bad. With that info in my head I began my upgrade with no hestitation what so ever.. Ya right. I stared at the computer for about another minute and after doing a final check for updates on my Ubuntu 7.04 system I clicked on the "Upgrade to 7.10"

After the various checks started it prompted me to read the list of software that were not needed anymore for 7.10. In that list was only one piece of software that I used everyday. XVNCSERVER as I do all my cd business on Windows machines I need the ability to VNC into each of them. Knowing that I was sure Ubuntu would still have some way for me to get into those Windows boxes I proceeded with the upgrade.

Now at the end of all this I was presented with once again another screen saying that I was about to download 900 megs of packages totalling 1200+. One more second to think about what I was getting myself into as I had spent months getting Ubuntu 7.04 just the way I like. Being the true pioneer in Linux.. ya right... I pressed the button and away the downloading went. Fast connection at 1.2 megs per second the downloading was done I think in under 15 minutes.. Maybe more.. :) Then.... The installing began...

35 minutes later after my DG965OT Intel 3g Pentium D machine chunked away at installing every piece of new found gold.. :) I only had a few screens to replace the odd config file and then the message saying installing was completed and you must now reboot.

You know the feeling you get when you are totally not in control of your system is usually at that moment. Will it start? Will your system see the HDD and reboot. Bad things have happened to me before at this moment but I had total faith in my Ubuntu.. Well as much as one can have with a binary system that you have not compiled.. :)

One system survived! My new Ubuntu 7.10 system came back up without a hitch. Everything even seemed to work. I still had Flash on websites. My Ubuntu 7.04 system had on a couple of occasions after updating had lost Flash. I had my movie player and all my other much needed software, even my VNC.. :)

After about 15 minutes of looking around I did come upon one thing that didnt work. My VMWARE SERVER was not happening any more.. Well after a quick look on the web I found a tut of how to get the newer version of VMWARE SERVER to get going and after using the provided patch even that was working.

There you go, no backups not worrying about anything and total faith in an OS. Thats hard to find these days.. :)

This upgrade was at least painless for me and I hope yours is too.

Check out My Ubuntu 7.10 Short Flash Video in Action!

Michael Perks
ReviewLinux.Com