From what you write I think I can make an assumption and that is that
you didn't make
a separate /home partition. If that is true you will have to do a back
up of that for later
restore, a simple copy from one place to another. Either jump drive or
external drive.
Now you say software you have loaded probably means loaded from Synaptic
or software
center, in that case once you have 10.10 loaded from the live disk you
will have to reload
the added applications. Now if you were to upgrade 10.04 to 10.10 they
should still be there.
Which brings in another possible glitch. Some have complained of
problems with previous
upgraded distros. I think I would rather do a clean install myself.
One thing you may want to consider is at this installation, creating a
separate partition
on the disk, and naming it home. That way you can if you want have two
version of
Ubuntu, 10.04, and 10.10 each maybe about 10 or 12 GB, and dual boot.
Depends on
how big the disk drive is. On my spare system I only have a 40 GB disk
so I keep only
10.10 on it at 10 GB and my /home is about 20 something GB with the
needed rest as
swap. You can do it with the internal partition manager, however I
prefer to set my disks
up using GPARTED, a live CD to partition my disk and format it. I have
since learned and
gained confidence enough to do it with the internal partition manager, I
think it is a version
of GPARTED too, and can do a reload with the use of the GPARTED live CD.
Either way just
take you time, you can go back on the process and make changes and the
step by step
process gives you warnings as when it can't be changed and the choices
will be made
permanent.

I upgraded with to 10.10 with Upgrade Manager, why would you do all
that when he can do a straight update. I do not know what software he
talks about but it should remain and or a download or two would not take
much time.

Yes, using the update manager to go from 10.04 to 10.10 is one way of
doing it and it checks for incompatible software plus keeps data etc.

What can happen though is that the update screws up for some reason
and that can leave you in limbo with the only way out a clean install
anyway. In general, OS updates are a bit of minefield whether it's
Linux / Windows / Mac OS etc....

It appears your update worked and that's great, just pointing out that
that isn't always the case - also the more OS updates you do the more
the chance that it'll screw up big time.

Hence the advice to create a separate Home partition for data and then
doing a custom clean install to keep that data intact. Also using
Synaptic to create an installation script that will allow it to put
back all the software that is currently installed in one go.

When the next LTS arrives I think I'll be doing this separate Home
partition thing - not planning on doing any OS upgrade till then.

I have been very lucky then Barry because over the years I have used
that method on every version and never had a hitch. In future perhaps I
will do a real backup with the external HD I am after.

Well I guess personal experience, and preface is all. Going back to
old Unix days I learned some things just didn't upgrade to well. I don't
even like upgrading in MS Windows environment, and will go with a clean
install if possible, that is the reason I have a separate /home too.

Sure its all down to preference but for ease of operation and to avoid
the need to replace programs and files upgrade it always my preferred way.

my experience with Ubuntu says it will just install where 10.4 is by
doing its own format.

You are correct, I didn't make a separate home partition. I was a total novice
at the time. Like yours, my old laptop has only a 40 gig drive. I'm looking at
the site for GPARTED right now. Could I set up a partition, install Ubuntu
10.00, get everything working and then delete the Ubuntu 10.04 partition? The
only things I've installed are GIMP which I haven't/probably won't use and
Google's Chrome browser which is my favorite browser. I have almost no files on
the laptop, I'm all browser/online based with this machine. I do keep it updated
every few days.


What do you think about just doing a clean install from the Ubuntu 10.10 CD and
then download whatever might be needed at that time.


BTW, thanks for all your good help in your reply, I should be able to make a go
of it. However, if anyone else can share tidbits with me as well, I'm all ears
and eyes.

You can preserve most of your installed software like this:
Before you start your new install, open a terminal and type this

dpkg --get-selections "*" > Desktop/applications

Since you haven't got a separate /Home partition, make sure you include
Desktop in your backup (or anyway, make sure you include the file called
"applications" which the command has generated).

Once your new install is done, you'll need 1) to apply the latest
updates, then 2) to restore your backed-up /Home data, then 3) issue
these commands in a terminal:

sudo apt-get update
sudo dpkg --set-selections < Desktop/applications
sudo apt-get -u dselect-upgrade

The final command takes quite a while to run, but it's a lot easier than
doing it all manually.

Since you don't have much in your home directory you could do a clean
install
and not worry about it. If think you may want to keep things in your
home directory
this would be a good time to make two partitions, one for root, and one
for home, swap
is pretty much automatic. You can do that with the live 10.10 CD, or a
GPARTED CD you
can create. I have found it is nice to have one of each on hand, they
are useful to look
at a disk and see how things are set up. If you do a clean new install
you still have the
choice of either formating or not formating the root partition. I think
it is a good idea on
a new install. Then you can reinstall things like Gimp if you wish
later, you will loose
Google Chrome on a new install but you can reload it after it is up and
running.

I've had a curious experience with upgrading to 10:10.

First, I always wipe my entire hard drive annually (at least) as a sort of
software spring clean. I have been dual booting for several years and have
always used the LTS version of Ubuntu.

When I install Windows XP I make two partitions, one for the Windows system, one
as an archive and leave a lot of unpartitioned space for Ubuntu.

Having restored XP and the archive files I have installed Ubuntu. The last time
I did so I used 10:10 (which is not LTS) and when the part of the process began
to select the partition for Ubuntu I was a little disconcerted to see that 10:10
was offering a reduced size of the Windows partition and the available remaining
unpartitioned disk space.

I have previously been offered to install Ubuntu on the largest free disk space
and always selected this option. This option wasn't (or didn't seem to be)
available on 10:10.

I eventually used 10:04 which went through with no problem. This offered to
install Ubuntu on the largest free space available.

I noticed this morning that an icon previously on the top panel has moved down
to the bottom panel.

This may be due somehow to me having reinstalled Ubuntu without completely
wiping the whole hard drive, I simply deleted the previous Ubuntu partition and
swap partition.

I have a 500 gig hard drive and usually wipe it with Darick's Boot and Nuke so
it may just be time for a more radical reinstallation of everything.

It's unlikely to be a Windows born virus problem because I hardly ever use
Windows.

I do not do the clean install
like you on a regular basis and with two drives it always gives me an
option on people s computer to install on the Slave drive. 10.10 also
gave a format session that did allow me to load into a second partition
on a single drive computer.