Karmic Koala Upgrade?

[#1]

Chilly - please can you let us know  about the differences and changes?
Am just going to wait until mine upgrades via the normal route but would be nice to have a bit of an idea i.e. what to expect.

[#2]

Different shade of brown 

[#3]

See http://blogs.zdnet.com/perlow/?p=11218

[#4]

Quote

Different shade of brown

Oh well that's alright then - can't wait! 

[#5]

it's the first thing you notice (along with the revised login screen)....
Probably followed by the Ubuntu Software Centre which replaces the add / remove programs thing.
 
I think the most (potentially) problematic areas of the upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 are the move to dependency based booting
(flawless on my rarely used [virtualised] Ubuntu install - but mildly problematic on my Debian box) and grub-pc (grub2).
A fresh install will get you the new grub; the upgrade will leave (legacy) grub in place and let you contemplate the upgrade at your leisure. 

[#6]

Looks very different - at first glance the screenshots made me think 'Mint', although there is a lot blue there. I have the exact shade as I changed it from Ubuntu brown, which I don't care for.
Your comments about grub concern me a bit. I read the previous link and see that it will use ext4 - I have ext3.
In light of both of these issues I might have another play and do a full reinstall.

[#7]

In http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/karmic/alpha6

Quote

GRUB 2 by default GRUB 2 is the default boot loader for new installations of Karmic, replacing the previous GRUB "Legacy" boot loader. Existing systems will not be upgraded to GRUB 2 at this time, as automatically reinstalling the boot loader is an inherently risky operation.

also

Quote

ext4 by default The new "ext4" filesystem is used by default for new installations of Karmic; of course, other filesystems are still available via the manual partitioner. Existing filesystems will not be upgraded.

(It is possible, but dodgy to upgrade ext3 to ext4).
It doesn't benefit any existing files much though.

[#8]

Quote from: Waldo

Different shade of brown

That sums it up quite well. I don't like the new login, as it does not allow you to switch off the chooser.

[#9]

Quote from: poppy

Your comments about grub concern me a bit. I read the previous link and see that it will use ext4 - I have ext3. In light of both of these issues I might have another play and do a full reinstall.

My install will remain ext3 until I need a new PC or a new HD 
I don't think there's any pressing need to upgrade to grub2 either - though I dare say future upgrades will start nagging you to do it at some point.
Actually, assuming you have grub installed on the MBR and booting only one OS the upgrade should be straightforward enough.
Install the grub-pc package and it will attempt to configure itself from the existing /boot/grub/menu.lst config. file and then chainload itself to legacy grub
(adding a menu for grub2 in menu.lst).  Boot as normal with grub and choose the grub2 menu entry and the system will load the OS or give an error depending
on whether or not grub2 is correctly configured. If it isn't you can choose another menu entry from grub to load the OS and reconfigure grub2 .
Once you know grub2 is working run /usr/sbin/upgrade-from-grub-legacy to complete the grub2 install and remove legacy grub.

[#10]

Oddly enough I've just had an experience which suggests that upgrading isn't always the best thing to to.
I upgraded my laptop to 9.04 and it was fine, and its been running on that for months. This morning for some unknown reason the entire disk decided that it was read only and nothing would fix it and I couldn't boot.
So I booted into Vista, loaded up a utility to allow me to mount ext3 filesystems and salvaged my home directory and a few other bits.
Then I did a completely clean install of 9.04 and its different to the upgraded version, nothing major, its silly things like fonts and the audio (which just worked, unlike it did under the previous clean install or after I did the 9.04 upgrade).
This time however I've partitioned my disk so /home is on its own partition.

[#11]

Fresh installs are nearly always better than upgrades. However if you have installed additional programs then you need to re-install them after the install, having a separate /home makes in-situ clean installs easy (keeping all your data), and if you do some apt-get scripts before you install (generating a list of installed programs since install, have seen them but not used them) you can re-install the programs you had before.

[#12]

Can I suggest an easier way round this
I always construct a separate (small - say 100MB) /boot partition - using ext2 or ext3
(I do this as a first partition - a hangover from the days when bios couldn't handle large offsets).
This is followed by the / partition as normal, using any file system, and swap partitions.
For the last partition, I create an extended partition and add several logical partitions to it.
One of these is /home
Others could be for data that is public, archived or backups etc...

[#13]

Hi guys,well i went and upgraded my ram from 512mb to 1gb,needed to be done in this day in age anyway,i got a great service from crucial memory upgrade,bought on on their web sunday past and it arrived in the post today,all seems fine