Upgrading an operating system is not a laughing matter. It is the most important software that can run on your computer. With people still upgrading to Vista, Leopard being available to Mac users, and the new Ubuntu 8.04 LTS release coming out soon, you'll probably encounter this issue. I have a few tips after upgrading several operating systems and going through several headaches.
On a Windows machine, make sure that your computer can handle the upgrade. Even my computer wasn't able to handle Windows Vista too well. Make sure that all of your drivers are available. Another good solution is to dual-boot the previous version of Windows and Windows Vista. That will leave Windows XP for your use in case Windows Vista kind of flops on your machine.
On a Linux machine, upgrading can be difficult. I use Ubuntu, and have come to the conclusion that you must wait at least one week or more to upgrade. At least on the Ubuntu mirrors, there is this phenomenon that plagues them each release. The amount of traffic to the servers is amazing. Unfortunately, this means that the newer release will take considerably more time to download and install. Also, if you use third-party software repositories, then the fresh install option is the way to go. Upgrading Ubuntu with third-party packages is just begging for trouble. Third-party packages introduce variables that the Ubuntu developers never planned for when they test upgrades. Unless you wan't to screw up your system, then do a fresh install.
Whatever operating system you upgrade, always be sure to backup your data! And finally, I highly recommend that you do a fresh install of the operating system you plan to run, unless you want to have a headache.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I beg to differ. Downloading about one hour after the release is the best time, because if you are smart you grab the torrent and you get the advantage of all the people who got the torrent an hour before went to watch a movie and left their computers on. I got Gutsy in under a half hour this way (24 Min Flat)!
~catfacts
You know, you are completely right. If you plan to do a fresh install rather than an upgrade, then you should download the ISO through BitTorrent. With that many people downloading, it will sure make the download much faster.
Post a Comment