You will have to do an upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10 then to 11.04 then to
11.10 before you can upgrade to 12.04. Your best bet is to do a clean
install.

>
> First, I have some installed applications that I would hope would remain
> untouched. These are Hercules and VirtualBox, where I have Windows Vista
> running. If necessary, I would re-install them, but I read somewhere
> (OMG! Ubuntu, I think) where the blogger intimated that the upgrade left
> such applications intact. If that is true and requires any special
> action or approach, I would love to know that before I start.

With an upgrade I would imagine yes. But I've always done a clean install.

>
> Secondly, I have a separate home partition which I want to keep and I
> understand that there will be an option somewhere in the process that
> permits that. Is this also available in an upgrade as opposed to a clean
> installation and will it be obvious?

Since you have the separate home partition the clean install is the best
bet.
You will have to reinstall Hercules and Virtualbox. So long as your
storing your Virtualbox virual disks on your home partition then it
should return with your old settings.
That is the beauty of a separate home partition, you keep your settings.
Now if your using Wine then you might have to reinstall some of those
programs, but it should persist after reinstall. I've never had a
problem with it either.

>
> I'm a reasonably experienced Ubuntu user with about 2 years use under my
> belt, but this is a new step for me and I would appreciate any
> suggestions or warnings before I start.


To summarize your best bet would be a clean install, otherwise you will
have to do 4 upgrades to get to 12.04.

Not necessary when upgrading between LTS versions so 10.04LTS can be
upgraded directly to 12.04LTS

Thanks for clarifying that. I had seen that LTS t o LTS upgrade was OK
in a single step. Any other suggestions or answers to my questions?

Main thing to ensure when planning an upgrade of any OS is to be
prepared for what to do in case of failure. Having a separate Home
partition in Linux helps as even a totally wrecked upgrade can be
recovered from by doing a clean install and using the advanced option
to manually select the partitions from the existing ones. You'd still
need to add the programs you use but that's not such a great hassle
and in the case of Virtual Box all you need to ensure is that the
virtual machine files are saved in your Home partition and you can
pick them up from there.

Other points to watch are making sure all updates are done to the
existing Ubuntu ( should be keeping up with those automatically ) and
if using PPA's then temporarily removing them will help as it's often
these that balk an upgrade. You can always add back after the upgrade
and if a PPA is no longer valid you will just get a failure to install
rather that a trashed upgrade :-)

As a 'belt and braces' approach you could image the entire system onto
an external drive so if it goes totally awry and you cannot get back
then you can restore the image and start all over. It's the approach
I'd always take when considering an upgrade to Windows but have to say
that the times I've ever done upgrades to that OS they've never taken
well and always ended up needing a clean install anyway At least
with Ubuntu and the separate Home partition you have a fighting chance
of it going well !!

Upgrading and saving your home partition is not a problem. Usually. :)
Backup just in case.

I ALWAYS do a clean installation and in since I began Ubuntu in 2006 I have
not lost any data. It is even easier if you are just upgrading. There is
always a first time, though, and according to Murphy's Law it will go wrong
at the worst possible time. So back up essential data if you can. That
would include your documents folder, picture folder, music folder, etc.
plus your virtual machines.

Then just do a normal distribution upgrade using your update manager.

www.omgubuntu.co.uk/.../ubuntu-10-04-12-04-upgrade-how-well-does-it-g\
o

Or try it from the terminal. :)

www.liberiangeek.net/.../upgrade-to-ubuntu-12-04-from-ubuntu-10-04-vi\
a-the-terminal/

If things go awry then you can still do a fresh installation and preserve
your home folder. You may need some help if it comes to that, but think
that it should go fine without resorting to it.

And remember the first two rules of a system administrator are;
1. Always make sure you have a current backup!
2. Never forget rule one!!

I upgraded directly from Ubuntu10.04-4LTS to Xubuntu12.04LTS. I'm also using a
separate /home/my_user_name partition and VirtualBox and I had to reinstall most
of my favourite applications, which should normally not have been a problem as
data and preferences were stored in my /home directory. The upgrade ran fast and
smoothly.
However and BEWARE, I typed too quickly on the keyboard when I entered my
user_name and I mispelled it. Result : my old /home/my_user_name directory was
not anymore recognized.
A small mistake and many hours to recover from its consequences, I had to
rename, delete directories and edit the path in the preferences of each
application in my /home directory.

Anyway I like Xubuntu12.04LTS and feel it was necessary to upgrade as some of my
favourite applications, like fldigi are not anymore updated in 10.04.

Upgrades can always go awry so it's a good idea to plan for this, but
having a separate home partition is going to help. If the upgrade
doesn't go well then you can clean install 12.04 afterwards and not
lose your data.

When going from one LTS release to another LTS then it is supposed to
be more reliable so chances are it will go well