Discussion on:

Windows XP SP3 vs. Ubuntu upgrade to 8.04

For the past 10 years, every always do the install from scratch if jumping major version. Within the same major version, there are patches for it. So RPM/apt-get/YUM is use. I found this is less painful than upgrade.

However, SPs are minor upgrades so shouldn't have any issues at all. It should work as if I were to do update/upgrade using RPM/apt-get/YUM.

i wanted to do this as an experiment. honestly i was hoping it would go off without a hitch so i could "nya nya" to the Windows nay-sayers. alas, i couldn't.

Don't do an upgrade. If you must, try to find someone else (Jack, perhaps?) who has already tried it.

shhhh, nya nya nya Windows users nya nya nya

...done fresh installs of new versions, always hear bad things about upgrading. and i've never had a problem with doing fresh installs...until 8.04 when it broke my wireless (integrated centrino wireless), other than that no problems

my current wireless issues have been resolved, but it was almost a "showstopper" for me to have a commone wireless device not work out of the box (as the last 3 versions of ubuntu have detected and enabled automatically on first boot), oh well

Because I have upgraded my two ubuntu machines, and it went smooth on both the desktop and laptop. Of course the atheros wifi on the laptop needed some work, but then it wasn't functionnal without work under 7.04/7.10 either.

In fact my data partitions on both computers were correctly mounted. Just like in windows, you can get lucky I guess.

I have had almost zero problems with the update mechanism but then I don't use wireless and my drives were already set to sd(x) anyway. That evaded the problem you had.

Thanks too years of doing Windows installs; I can't remember the last time I upgraded between major OS. Updates and services packs, sure, apt-get or Windows Update all you like. For a major move between distribution or Windows versions; clean install, always.

I was thinking of trying an upgrade on a VM before it get's formatted and reinstalled clean.

Huh, why should I reinstall my Linux system? I'm running the same installation of Debian (it was a Woody with a 2.4 kernel) on my desktop; I have changed the whole PC firts, and then the HD, and finally the mobo + cpu + hd but I have still the same base system (ah, the powers of APT )

Of course, I have faced some issues that a user-friendly distro can hardly address, and the switch to libata can be one of these since the distro cannot treat the crowd of different bioses/system settings on the face of heart.

I have Ubuntu 7.x on physical hardware (a triple boot along side of XP and Vista) and Ubuntu 8.x on a virtual machine.

The physical 7.x is hosed. I tried installing Beryl and it toasted just about everything. Now I'm afraid to reinstall for fear it will screw up my XP and Vista partitions (I'm a Linux newbie).

But the virtual (as always) is running great.

I can't remember the last time I built a machine with only one OS on the physical hardware. You should have no issues putting a reinstall of Ubuntu on the hardware; maybe an upgrade to 8?

For me, the key is watching the partitions. Your drives are in letter order (hda = 1st drive, hdb = 2nd) and your partitions numeric order (hda1 = 1st primary, hda2 = 2nd primary). The hickup being the secondary partition wrapper which I think get's hda4 (partition 4) since hda5 is my first non-primary partition space. Numeric orders are left to write in the MS disk manager.

You may also try a Mandriva One liveCD at least as far as the disk manager (custom option) which will give you a good view of your partitions. From there, you can install Mandriva or note your paritions in an easily viewable manner then boot whatever you prefer to isntall.

Provided you don't forget which partitions bellong to Windows and format them, there should be no issue.

Bootloader is the other bit. If your setup to install your lilo/grub on a /dev/fd0 (floppy) then you can use that same setup and leave your hard drive FAT and Windows boot sectors untouched. If you have to install lilo/grub on the hard drive you may need to use your trusty Windows install CD and do an FDISK /MBR but be sure you've adjusted your lilo/grub first or plan to learn "loadlin".

See, all that is why I haven't even touched it yet.

This triple boot PC is my work PC. I can't have downtime period.

I can't even remember what I did the first time. Just followed some instructions I found on-line. Something to the effect of Linux first, Vista next and XP last...can't remember.

Anyways, starting to think I'll just ghost everything just in case.

But, I would like to put the newest version of Ubuntu on there.

I just tend towards being over-wordy and detailed these days.

Ghosting is definately a good idea. You might also consider a seporate "play" drive since you can't be mucking with your work partitions. VMs will keep you happy to though.

When asked the first time about a bootloader, just say "no." I actually don't recall that dialog at all in Ubuntu, but in Debian, Mandriva & Fedora, you'd be asked whether you want to install a bootloader. Say "no," then put a blank floppy in and at the next step type

'/dev/fd0'

Put Linux on your MBR when you're used to it, comfortable with it, and don't rely on Windows.

I have several machines that multi-boot between 6 and 12 OSs each, and perhaps with 15 partitions on a hard drive. If you begin with windows and give it 2 or more partitions, it will typically [ie by default] set itself up as C-drive=hda1 and then extended partition [what you call the wrapper] as hda2. [Additional logical partitions are created inside this extended partition - for windows or linux, and always start numbering from hda5.] Windows doesn't partition more than one primary partition. But you can add primary partitions for linux with a partitioner such as Paragon under windows, or gparted under linux and they will become hda3 and hda4. If you create free space after the extended partition hda2 then hda3 and hda4 will be created here in this free space and the numbering of the primary partitions 1,2,3,4 will be in the same order as their physical placement on the disk. But if you create free space ahead of c-drive [hda1] by shrinking it so that it still adjoins to hda2, the the next primary partition you create: hda3 will physically come before hda1 on the drive. Certainly with some partitioners. Other partitioners may try to renumber partitions to preserve physical order, but this can create problems for installed systems so you don't normally want this.
With some BIOSs [I just last month found a brand new Abit motherboard that still has this limitation in its bios] - they can only address/read the first 1 or 2 GB of the hard disk. This means for linux you must place your boot partition at the start of the hard drive, ahead of the hda1 windows partition. So in my experience it is quite common in this situation to have the first primary partition on your hard drive numbered hda3 or sometimes hda4. The extended partition does not have to be hda2 either, it can be any number between 1 and 4 depending on how it was created.
Regarding Installing Ubu 8.04 [Beta]:
I have done fresh installs on two machines, and it messed up on both. On one machine my boot partition and my home partition were identical sizes and it created the same UUID for both drives, then because it uses the UUID in fstab to mount the drive, and because the boot drive came before the home drive, it mounted the boot drive as /home! As a consequence it was impossible to log in as it couldn't find the user directory in home. [It said it didn't exist!]
On the other machine I had a / partition and a /usr partition and it mounted the /usr partition as /home !
I hope these issues have been or are being fixed for the official release.

I do it so absent mindedly these days that I've forgotten the specific terms. I only remember the extended seperation because my first logical partition comes up as hda6 instead of the next in numeric order.

I would also have explained it all in less technical detail but Rickk is pretty competent on the Windows side so I stuck to the more detailed ramble.

Why don't you try Wubi and install 8.04 right into Windows provided your machine has fast enough CPU and video card. I did it on a Dell Quad-core Inspiron 530 with Vista on it and on a HP 1.35 GHz machine and they work just fine. I have also had my 8 years old Dell Dimension L800r updated from 7.04 to 8.04 and works in slower pace but it works just fine. It is faster to get the job done with fresh install though.

updated with SP3 and has seen no problem so far.

there's no difference between linux and windows. I've never done an upgrade install of windows, and the moral here is that you should do the same with major linux releases.

I can't remember if the problems with apples last release were limited to upgrades or across the board, but if the former, then that would also support always doing a fresh install.

To me, it just makes good sense. Every OS is complex and most of them have a near infinite number of configurations. I assume the developers have anticipated most fresh install scenarios, but when it comes to upgrades, it's just not possible to catch them all. Besides, a new install is a good chance to do some spring cleaning

A complete reinstall , preserving your home directory , takes all of 10 minutes - plus a few more with a decent internet connection to reinstall some packages . I personally just upgrade as I go along . Try a complete reinstall with windoze and your personal files (which are dumped all over the same partition that your system files are dumped all over ) are lost . I'm yet to break a Linux system and not be able to recover my desktop .

Likewise, I upgrade as I go. However, when I saw the chance to upgrade, I did.

Granted, I'm not pushing the limits of the OS (it is simply on the family utility PC), the only issue I had was with internet connectivity. Why they bundled the Firefox 3 beta 5 is beyond me.

After fiddling with Network Manager, deleting FF3b5, and installing FF2.0.0.14, all was better.

All in all, not a bad upgrade.

I hear you; my last upgrade was a joy. I saved ~/ to a backup location, did a complete whipe and install then copied back what config I needed from ~/ along with any saved files.

I've also had to reinstall the same version. In that case I whipe all but the home partition and moments later, I'm back in business with all my configs set.

As for Windows, just save your files to a second partition. C is for programs, D is for data. I even move "My Documents" too my D drive. Most programs let you set where they save too. It does not do this by default so us smart users have to do it ourselves.

It is no quite fair to compare these two together.

XP SP3 updates the OS.

Ubuntu 8.04 you are upgrading an OS.

A better comparison will be upgradeing win2k to XP SP3.

Ubuntu has has automatic update and patches.

Upgrades and updates are just not the same.