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I am on dual Boot pc with Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows XP SP3.

Hardware Specs: HDD 250GB, RAM 2GB, AMD Athlon X2

How to upgrade Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) to ubuntu-12.10-beta2-desktop-i386?

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Short answer for : test the new release in a VM (as suggested) and prefer a fresh install. Jumping two full releases (10.10 → 12.10) in-place is fragile, especially because 10.10 is end‑of‑life and third‑party PPAs and drivers often break. If a live test is fine, a clean install of 12.10 (or, for stability, 12.04 LTS) is the safest route for a dual‑boot system.

Essential prep (backup + package list)

  • Back up /home and any configs, and save the list of installed packages so apps can be reinstalled later.
sudo rsync -aHAX --exclude='/dev/*' --exclude='/proc/*' --exclude='/sys/*' --exclude='/tmp/*' /home /media/backup/
sudo dpkg --get-selections > ~/pkglist.txt
sudo apt-mark showmanual > ~/manual-pkgs.txt

If insisting on an in-place, stepwise upgrade (risky)

  • Ubuntu supports only one-release jumps, so repeat this cycle: 10.10 → 11.04 → 11.10 → 12.04 → 12.10. Before each jump:
    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
sudo do-release-upgrade    # run once for each next release
  • If the old release’s archive is removed you may need to point apt to old-releases.ubuntu.com or use installation media. Use -d with do-release-upgrade only to move to a development/beta release (12.10‑beta2).

Practical cautions and tips

  • Verify free root partition space with df -h / (allow several GB). Disable or remove PPAs before upgrading (look in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/). Note proprietary GPU/wifi drivers may need reinstallation after upgrading. On 2 GB RAM consider Xubuntu/Lubuntu images rather than Unity. For a beta (12.10‑beta2) keep it confined to a VM; do not use on a production/multiboot machine without full backups.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

First, find wall, place head against wall, pull head away from wall, accelerate head to impact on wall sharply, repeat instructions...

Second (and less painfully), install a virtual machine manager such as VirtualBox on your system, then install Ubuntu Server 12.04 there and go back to "First" above until you get it working correctly. Once you have it running ok in a virtual machine, you will be ready to install it on your system.

FWIW, the only difference between a user workstation installation and a server installation are the tools and programs. You really do not need to install the server version itself unless you need some of the more advanced security features and such. In that case, DO NOT try to update/upgrade your system, but install the server software from scratch.

Edited by rubberman
Member Avatar for rubberman

And in case you are wondering why I say what I do about this, consider that I am the principal performance engineer for a tier-one cell phone manufacturer and help manage performance and reliability for 4 world-wide data centers with a number of thousands of enterprise servers running in them. I run Red Hat Enterprise Linux (or clones) on all of those machines, in a VM on my company laptop, on my home workstation, and on my personal laptop. I used to run Ubuntu on my personal laptop, but got disgusted with it after 9.04 - that was, in my opinion, the best Ubuntu distribution ever, and it has (again, in my opinion) gone downhill ever since.

So, why do you need a server distribution? If you do, why not Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or a clone such as CentOS or Scientific Linux? Our company does support Ubuntu on engineering workstations, but not for server use. For that, we are strictly an RHEL or certified clone shop.

Edited by rubberman
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