Letme Explain you the Reason why i confessed to this Before writing the actual article.I’ve faced a couple of Problems After Upgrade to Hardy which Appeared when i had a clean install of hardy on the other system.The Problem i faced are out of scope of this post.Anyways u can find it here
–>Pls Avoid the upgrade button!
When a new Linux version is made available, an upgrade button appears in Update Manager You are into least troubles with a clean installation, with formatting of the target partition.I explain this maybe partly due to the configuration files that exist in the old version which cause complications in the new version.
–>Always Maintain A separate home partition
Its Always Advisable to maintain a Seperate Home Partition which comes Really Handy at such times.Dont worry if you dont have a seperate partition you can backup things onto a pendrive
–>Save your Emals
Goto your Home Folder and Press Ctrl+A to view hidden files.And all your e-mails are in the hidden directory .mozilla-thunderbird. If you want to save your e-mails,copy this directory to the Thumbdrive.
–>Backup your bookmarks
I never understood how much i rely on Firefox until i once made a clean install and found my favourite sites missing on my toolbar after it.Just make a backup of the bookmarks In the Firefox toolbar u find Bookmarks —> Organize Bookmarks —> Export.It creates a bookmark.html which should be copied on your pendrive.After you’ve installed your new linux, you can use the Import function in Firefox to, well, import your old bookmarks.
–>Performing a Clean Install
After you are done with the Backup work, now its time for the install..Burn the Image you have downloaded onto a Cd(Alternatively you may shipit from ubuntu.shipit.com)
Boot from your Live cd.Choose a Seperate Home parition if u dont have previously which may be useful the next time you make a clean install…Leave the existing swap partition as it is.
I totally agree with your points above, and prefer a clean install every time. When I used to work with Ubuntu, I would take one of my “play” machines and upgrade to the alpha release, reporting bugs all the way through to the actual release. Once I hit actual release, though, I would download the netboot kernel/initrd, reboot into Grub, and do a fresh install, keeping my /home safe.
The only downside to doing this is reinstalling all the extra programs you’ve accumulated over the six months of use. I backup my /etc/apt using “tar -cf apt.tar /etc/apt” and run “dpkg –get-selections > packages.txt” — then after reinstallation, I can put apt back in place and set the packages to install using “dpkg –set-selections < packages.txt && apt-get dselect-upgrade”
It’s a little work, but generally a lot less than either dealing with upgrade woes or adding the packages from memory.
Cheers
Daeng Bo
Yeah evn I do take a Backup of my /var/cache/apt/archives But have not mentioned it coz u know It differs from distro.And i donno how it Exactly it works on others..Tanx for mentioning it.