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Before it is even released (at the time of this writing), I have already found a number of reasons why I will not be upgrading my various computers to Ubuntu 8.10.

Rather than highlighting my own experiences with why upgrading to the next version of the popular Linux distribution is a mistake, let's instead examine those issues that potentially affect the majority of us. In short, if it isn't broken, don't fix it. Allow me to elaborate.

1) A history of broken releases

Despite having tremendous love for Linux and to some extent, Ubuntu, lately I have found myself torn. I first tried Ubuntu after dumping another popular distribution of Linux for it back with Ubuntu 6.06. For its time, it was fairly usable. Yet as new releases came out, I was beginning to see less focus on making sure it was ready to roll out of the beta stages and more interest in making sure the distribution remained in the headlines. To point out that this bothers me greatly really goes without saying.

To be fair, I would say the same about any distribution of desktop Linux -- do not upgrade to a new "version" unless there is a compelling reason to. While security and kernel upgrades are important in the installation running on your desktop, the fact is most people end up jumping into Ubuntu upgrades without realizing all of the facts. Considering that nearly ever version of Ubuntu released since Edgy has shown annoying regressions and other issues that were show-stopping for some, to blindly upgrade despite this knowledge is just plain foolish.

2) Crashing your old installation

Despite the belief that choosing to run "upgrade to the new distribution release" will not break your old Ubuntu install, 8 times out of 10, it will at some level. Moreover, most people do not think to image their existing Ubuntu installations onto a DVD in case the upgrade goes horribly wrong.

Is it too much to ask to grab a copy of Remastersys, make a backup of the way your system is currently, then try making the upgrade? Yes, it is, unfortunately, based on my experiences in the Ubuntu forums -- this never happens. The user generally puts blind faith into the upgrade process going smoothly -- big mistake.

3) Bad video drivers

Proprietary or FoSS drivers, in the end, sometimes do not come through. This happened to one of my old notebooks I was running tests on with Ubuntu 8.10, and, sure enough, nothing I did would allow it to boot into X. Scouring through the logs indicated it was indeed a problem with X and by all appearences, the openchrome driver appears to be the culprit. Had I not tested that notebook at all, the old installation of 8.04 would have continued working fine. Now I am not saying this is driver and not xserver related, but in any case, the result ends up with me not being able to use X on that old notebook.

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