Ubuntu 10.04.1 was installed on my desktop. It came with Firefox 3.x.
I just checked it out and Firefox 3.6.18 is currently running on the
machine.

Honestly if I was in this predicament Ide go get another hard drive and put
10.04 on it. Hard drives are cheap, plentiful and this way you can switch
back and forth if you want. I am no expert though but I am running 10.04
and have FF3.6.20 right now.

A lot of updates are for the sake of security. Things like patching holes
from known exploits, etc. So I would personally consider doing at least
security updates. As far as the firefox issue, you'll likely need a
bootable CD or thumbdrive for install (see "FWIW" below)... so you can just
check the Firefox version ahead of time when running it live. I've never
seen default Firefox to update a version through one of cannonicals
updates.

FWIW, Upgrading to a new ubuntu version through the "update" center can
cause some issues. It is an unfortunate but true problem. I am not saying
it always causes problems, just that it does sometimes cause problems. Plus
it will be easier to get set with a new home partition on a fresh install -
so there is some other reasons to do it fresh besides the fact that
cannonical intentionally sabotages their product every six months! :-D. As
long as you back home up first and copy it into your new home partition, all
should be well.

If you 9.10 is working fine and set up just as you want then probably
the last thing you want to to is upgrade it to 10.04 !! Upgrades have
always be an issue and if it does go horribly wrong there's no way to
roll back to your working 9.10 :-(

Adding a second HD for 10.04 is a good suggestion and would allow you
to have your 9.10 still available until you have 10.04 set up as you
want. It is possible to save the package list in 9.10 to a test file
and then use that to install all of them back into 10.04 - where you
may fall down is with packages that are no longer around. Also there's
the issue of 32bit vs 64bit - i.e. if your 9.10 is 32bit then putting
10.04 64bit on would be better done as an installation from scratch
and build up from there. Not as quick but probably less hassle in the
long run :-)

To All; thanks for the input and ideas. The second hard drive is a good thought
and may be the way to go. That would require rebuilding the whole system,
something I was trying to avoid.

I'm running 64bit right now and was leaning towards 64bit 10.04 but have heard
that 32 bit may be more "stable". I've got 8 gigs of ram and understand that
32bit won't see all of that, right?

use gparter (don't know if that's the correct
title of the tool...) to make a new /home directory; copy my current /home to
that new directory; do the 10.04 64bit upgrade.
Would that be totally crazy?
It would be nice to be able to do a Complete copy of my current drive to another
drive before starting this so I'd have something to fall back to if disaster
struck. :) Is there a tool that will do a mirror copy?

As far as stability is concerned I haven't found any difference
between 32bit and 64bit Ubuntu - with the 64bit one being quite a bit
smoother in operation on the same hardware. Regarding memory, 8Gb is a
total waste on a 32bit OS and that alone would make 64bit a 'must' :-)

Splitting off the /Home partition is a good idea as is making an
external backup of all your data. Taking a 'disaster recovery' image
is also a good idea but I've not had experience of doing that so
others will chime in here no doubt

I am running 10.04 since it came out, I have all the updates
installed and still have Fire Fox 3.6.20.
So even if you load new which I just did on another PC as dual boot, and
loaded 10.03.4. which
is the latest download.
I have gone with the seperate / and home partitions, which make it
nice to load which ever Linux
you want. Just remember the 2 basic rules of Unix/Linux administratrion.
First rule is back up your
system, second rule is don't break the first rule. Also another
sugestion is to add another drive
or swap the drives. I tried that on my test PC, and unless you can leave
them inside the PC and
boot from selected drives in BIOS, or have it set up for dual boot to
the other drive, don't swap
the drives, because of a chance of damage due to static discharge, it
only takes one zap to kill
a drive no matter how carefull you think you are in handleing the drives.
I have used the Gparted Live CD and keep one handy to create my
drives and it works real slick,
or you can use the built in partition manager of the 10.04 live CD which
I believe uses Gparted also.
I would suggest you will have to use the live CD to repartition the
drive rather than an online upgrade.
So if you download the ISO and create a live CD you will get the latest
10.04.4, or maybe 10.04.3 I
would have to look at my latest to see what I loaded. Once it is loaded
the update is a lot shorter,
I had a 10.04.1 and the update took about 3 hours of four hundred and
some updates, and if you
can hook up to the network with a cable, it will go a lot faster than
using WiFi, or at my house it does
anyway.