kUbuntu 7.10

Just a few days before leaving for South Africa, the latest version af Ubuntu was released. I really didn’t have the nerve to try and upgrade before my vacation, but today was the day.

Ubuntu is an operating system – like windows – but based upon (Debian) Linux. It can probably do everything you need – and it’s free. With the packaging done to Linux by the Ubuntu team(s), it’s a complete user-friendly and easy to use alternative for most computer users, and it has worked pretty well for me for the quite some time.

The upgrade

While it probably is possible to do a distribution upgrade, I’ve been reinstalling from scratch when upgrading. It usually just requires all the contents of my home-directory (and a few select configuration files from the /etc/ directory) to be zip’ed together in an archive. The archive is temporaryly store don a USB disk (about 600 Mb in total), while the harddisk was completely wiped and formatted.

The entire install process was the smoothest experience I’ve witnessed so far, and to less than 30 minutes. The packed homedir was unziped in a directory on the desktop, and the files and directories I know I needed was moved to the location they were placed in before the reinstall.

The software updater was run and within an hour the machine was running the new version. So far it’s been an impressive upgrade. Screen drivers, printers and just about everything work. Amazing.