[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
Quoting Paul Sutton <zleap@xxxxxxxxx>:
Rob Beard wrote:It may be different with other organisations, maybe some organisations can afford to have down time, or do things differently. In the case of one of my current customers, they have a couple of spare PCs, and in total they have only about 8 PCs, so it's no major problem to just do one PC at a time, and if a PC fails they have a spare to use. Rob
I guess in some ways the same applies to upgrades on Linux, I had 8.10 and eventually upgraded to 9.04, I am always worried that something will go wrong, either software, power surge, or other issues during the upgrade that will cause the upgrade to fail to a point where the system won't boot or worse won't turn on at all.
I very much doubt you'd get a problem with a software update that a machine wouldn't turn on at all. The only thing I can think of is dodgy hardware to start with (for instance some underlining fault) or a BIOS update gone wrong (which in some cases can be recoverable easily now anyway with the BIOS recovery options).
I think applying updates seems to be a skill set in it's self, and choosing not to do something can make a big difference.
It can also leave you open to security flaws and bugs. If you're really worried about updating, stick with the LTS releases of Ubuntu, although I say that, I did have a problem recently with XULRunner on Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, it wouldn't install and eventually it worked out easier to upgrade the PC in question to 9.10. Most of the time though I find that updates don't tend to go wrong for me.
I did an upgrade on my 2nd system 8.10 to 9.04 to check it went ok, but that is fine but it differes from system to system, I alwys wait a while anyway to make sure there are no teething issues, like many people who jump on the upgrade wagon as soon as a new release is out.
I dare say if you possibly install packages outside of the repositories, or maybe add 3rd party repositories you could possibly leave yourself open to issues with dependency problems, although I have found when upgrading, usually the sources.list is modified to disable external repositories.
I will probably not upgrade to 10.04, using software, but will probably do a clean install.
Same here, not that I don't want to do an upgrade, I'm sure an upgrade would be find, in my case it's an excuse to clear out some of the junk I tend to accumulate on my hard drive.
It needs a clean install every so often, so the next LTS relase seems logical.
Yep, I think it's down to each individual user's preference really, what they feel comfortable with.
I upgraded my PS3 from Xubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 the other day, I was a bit worried it might fail and cause me another couple of hours messing about reinstalling the OS and adding the extra bits I'd added, but it worked fine.
Now on the other hand, I'm cheesed off to find after taking 6 hours to complile the emulator Mame on the PS3, it won't work properly because of the way the PS3 displays video. Yes it's a super fast console and has something like a dual core 3GHz PPC CPU, but it's VERY slow when it comes to updating the screen. Anyway, I'm getting off topic, time to go and replace someone's Windows PC.
Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html