When Ubuntu Hardy Heron arrives, will I be able to upgrade without formatting my harddrive? So I can keep all of my music, documents, applications, etc.

apt-get install dist-upgrade

Thank you both so very much!

apt-get install dist-upgrade

You'll have to update /etc/apt/sources.list to reflect the sources of the new repositories... With that said, this method doesn't tend to work very well on Ubuntu systems; many users have dependency issues and whatnot when upgrading, and it becomes a big hassle.

The officially-supported method of updating an Ubuntu system is to use update-manager, which supposedly takes care of all the problems that could be induced by using dist-upgrade. If in doubt, look at their website page:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading

Thanks, John.

When Hardy comes out and I upgrade that way, will I still have to update my /etc/apt/sources.list file?

update-manager should take care of that. You can always check after upgrading; the repository links should contain 'hardy' in them.

Hardy's supposed to be out June 5th. I actually can't wait for its release.

How is Ubuntu compared to say, Microsoft? Do their released have a lot of bugs in them? Do we need to wait a few months before it's usable?

On the software updater (update-manager) it will say at the bottom that a new release is available and you can choose to upgrade. DO NOT an edited sources.list then use dist-upgrade, it tends to break thinbgs

I wasn't planning on doing that.

>DO NOT an edited sources.list then use dist-upgrade, it tends to break thinbgs
Well, if you're intending for dist-upgrade to do anything, you will have to edit your sources.list file first. :)

Yeah, it may be better to backup your files and Gconf, then do a manual reinstall via CD.
The dist-upgrade method messed up all of my default programs (on Feisty).
To linux:
do you have an UbuntuForums account?
You'd benefit, its a great forum.

>DO NOT an edited sources.list then use dist-upgrade, it tends to break thinbgs
Well, if you're intending for dist-upgrade to do anything, you will have to edit your sources.list file first. :)

use the ubuntu update manager thing instead of the apt method.

>use the ubuntu update manager thing instead of the apt method.
That's what I said in my first post.

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