Dist Upgrade Or Clean Install - Here Is What I Prefer And Why

Most of you might have already installed the brand new Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. I did too. But here is something I would really like to know from you guys. I tried upgrading the whole distro 2 times before and failed miserably. It took a heck lot of time and post installation issues were simply overwhelming.

So here's my take.

Clean installation is a much better way than the dist-upgrade option in its current form.

In reality clean installation takes even less time since you have already downloaded the ISO.

If you are a guy who likes experimenting with new stuff all day, you are definitely going to end up with a whole lot of unnecessary apps and libraries. Clean installation can help you start all over again without all the fluff. You will be amazed by the sheer amount of "new" space you were able to liberate out of the mess.

Installing from scratch is fun. Period.

Using the USB Disk Creator app to burn the ISO image into an USB and using it as the installation medium is my preferred way of installing Ubuntu right now. Another Ubuntu is released in just 6 months and USB live OS is something you can 'recycle'. It's a much greener option.

Those of you guys who don't even knew such an app existed will be amazed to know that the disk creator app is available in Ubuntu by default!

So all you need to do is download Ubuntu 10.04 ISO, fire up USB Disk Creator app(System - Administration - Startup Disk Creator) and plugin your USB. That's pretty much it. Here is what it looks like.

In my experience using a live USB is much faster than the conventional live CD way. So what's you take ?