Nongeek Perspective

In Upgrade Notes from Ubuntu community site you can read "skipping versions is not advised and can cause a lot of damage to your installation". So, the safest way to upgrade from Dapper (version 6.06) to Feisty (version 7.04) is making a "clean install", in other words, reinstalling Linux. This post is intended to provide you a non-geek guide to upgrade Ubuntu without losing your personal files and preferred applications. I upgraded my Xubuntu installation from Dapper to Feisty with this method and everything went fine.

Important note: You should always backup your data before upgrading the operating system, no matter which one you use.

1. Install debfoster if it's not already installed in your system. debfoster is in the official repository, so install it in your preferred way. This little application is not required but it lets you generate easily a list of currently installed packages in order to reinstall them after the upgrade. If you know a better way of generating such a list, please let me know.
2. Generate the list of packages to reinstall after the upgrade. Open a terminal window and run debfoster for completing this task. You should run debfoster as root and there are 2 ways of generating the list:
   • sudo debfoster: This way you'll be prompted if you want to keep every package, showing what libraries will remain installed.
   • sudo debfoster -q: The -q option stand for quiet. So, debfoster will quietly generate the list including all application currently installed in your system. Use this command if you don't like to answer many questions or you don't know what are you doing ;-)
     
   The list will be saved in /var/lib/debfoster/keepers. Make sure of backup this file.
3. Backup your data. Perhaps the most important step in the entire process. Here is a list of directories to backup. Please notice that this list may not be complete and you should know better than me what files/directories to backup in your Linux installation.
   • /home: As you may know here is where most (all?) of personal data and configuration files from all local users of your system.
     
   • /root: Check this directory and backup this data if it's not empty.
   • /var: Most likely you don't have to backup this directory if you are a regular desktop user. However, if your system works as web server for example, your web files may be saved in /var/www. So, it's up to you to decide what subdirectories to backup here.
   • /etc: If you don't know what I'm talking about just skip this directory. Here are startup scripts and system level configuration files. If you spent a lot of time optimizing your Dapper installation you may want to backup some files in this directory. However be aware that Feisty may come with a better default setting for some services than Dapper. Once again you have to decide what files to backup.
     
4. Install Feisty. You can install it from the desktop CD (live CD) or alternate CD if you feel comfortable with text based installer. If your /home directory is in a different partition (which is recommended, by the way) you may choose not to format that partition and create a user with the exact same name you had in Dapper. This way your /home will be kept intact save time restoring it if everything goes fine. If not, you should tell the installer to make a partition for /home.
5. Before restarting to your new Feisty installation you may want to restore all your backups if you're using the live CD. If you're installing from the alternate CD then you must restore your files after restart.
   
6. Restart the system.
7. Now, open the keepers file generated in step 2 (the list of packages installed in your Dapper setup) and select them for install in Synaptic package manager. Make sure not to install any package related to Linux like linux-386. Do not install ubuntu-base, xubuntu-desktop (ubuntu-desktop if you're using Ubuntu or kubuntu-desktop for Kubuntu users) either because Feisty installer already put the right versions in your system.

Remember, you may need to configure some hardware and multimedia support.

That's all! Start enjoying your new Xubuntu (or Ubuntu/Kubuntu) version. There is always room for tuning your new installation but, at least, you have your applications updated and your documents, Firefox settings and extensions in place as well as your media files.

Please, let me know if this guide has been helpful to you.


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