Updating from 8.04 LTS -- incrementally or jump or not at all?

[Chuck Peters]

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 4:25 PM,  <h.stencil at verizon.net> wrote:
> One older machine on my home net has been running flawlwssly
> for years, using the KDE3.5 desktop and Kubuntu 8.04.  I
> gather that KDE4 has pretty much got past its teething
> problems, and I'd like to bring this box up to date.

Older as in a Intel P4 with onboard Intel graphics?
See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Bugs/Lucidi8xxFreezes
On a few machines I have helped others with the stability went out the
window with 10.04. 10.10 was a somewhat better as far as X not
crashing, but not as as good as it was with earlier versions.  I
haven't had a chance to see how well those machine do with 11.04 yet.

Before you upgrade, make backups of at least your user data!  I also
get a copy, via rsync, of /root, /etc and /var/backups in my routine
backups as well as a listing of packages for restoring the system.
# cat /usr/local/sbin/backup-prep.sh
#!/bin/bash

# This gives us a list of versions of packages
dpkg -l > /var/backups/dpkg-l

# This list is useful to restore packages,
# ie cat dpkg--get-selections | dpkg --set-selections
# and run apt-get dselect-upgrade or whatever.
dpkg --get-selections > /var/backups/dpkg--get-selections

dpkg-query --show > /var/backups/dpkg-query--show


> Should I...
>
> -leave it the hell alone?

End of Life is 3 years for the LTS Desktop, so yes it is about time to upgrade.

The recommended path is
8.04 -> 10.04
And if you have that particular Intel graphics I mentioned,
immediately upgrade to 10.10 and perhaps 11.04.
10.04 -> 10.10 -> 11.04


Chuck