I thought this might be useful to someone. No tips, no tricks, just some observations of what happened to me.
I had two machines to upgrade, one a desktop running “ordinary” Jaunty (Gnome) and the other an AspireOne running UNR. The netbook was the priority, so I downloaded the Karmic UNR iso file. This is not an upgrade option, it will only carry out a fresh install. So, although I’d made a full backup, I remembered how much time and grief it took me to get MS Office 2007 running under Wine and CrossOver, and decided against it. Back to the desktop.
The Ubuntu website talks a lot about an upgrade path from 9.04, using the “alternate” iso file. This is fantastically well hidden given how popular it is likely to be, but eventually I found it and got a-downloading. Sure enough, mounting the iso from hd0 as a cdrom drive, it upgraded nicely, with one small problem: for some reason, it stopped recognising the keyboard and mouse during the upgrade process, leaving a power-off as the only option to continue. However, powering back on saw everything in order. Machine 1 – tick.
So, following the same logic, I then mounted the alternate iso as a cdrom on the AspireOne. Smooth as you like, it whizzed through the upgrade faster than the desktop (same processor in both), and was ready to reboot. At this point, the snazzy new UNR interface was not installed, but a simple launch of Update Manager sent us into a Partial Upgrade (network based), which brought everything into line. The only curiosity is that I have lost my Quit icon, meaning a ctrl-alt-del is required when I want to shut down. The good old days! Machine 2 – tick.
Worth it? Very much so. Minimal difficulty in the upgrade process itself, resulting in two machines running much faster than before, and in the case of the AspireOne, looking much better too. I am also tempted to suggest that battery life is better too, although to be honest it is too early to say.
So how do I get my Quit button back?