Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic" Alpha4 and the Intel video drivers...

[Matt Graham]

> Bob Elzer wrote:
>> The best way to upgrade an OS is to do a fresh install.

How extraordinarily annoying.  I have installed Gentoo once on my
laptop, when I got it, 3 years ago, and have kept it up to date with
the portage system.  In most cases, that approach Just Works from
what I can see.  I'm a huge fan of the gradual update process as
done in Gentoo, since it rarely breaks everything and you can almost
always tell what broke and then fix it.

(Like a few months ago, when libexpat upgrades made all KDE and
GNOME apps throw a wobbly.  revdep-rebuild to the rescue....)

From: Michael Butash <michael at butash.net>
> don't like having to spend a night reinstalling and tweaking to get
> it back to where I had it.  I don't mind fixing problems when they
> arise after installs, as I see them as adventures in learning more
> about systems, but they're no less annoying when they arise.
> 
> I guess I'm lame in assuming or expecting that if they're going to
> offer an upgrade function, that it work.

Ubuntu's problem AFAICT is that they're trying to be New! Shiny! and
Awesome!.  This is a worthy goal, but it can lead to the system
being as stable as a stegosaurus on rocket-powered roller skates.
Debian seems to be much better at the whole upgrade thing because
they're so conservative in moving forward in stable.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see