Re: [tlug] Newbie: Kubuntu Configuration: Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) Released

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

CL writes:

 > Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
 > 
 > > Should we (ie, some subset of TLUG members bigger than {poster} ;-) care?
 > > If so, why?  (If not, pardon the noise.)
 > 
 > No need to get testy.

Not being "testy", inquiring minds wanted to know.  So far my only
complaint about Mac OS X upgrades has been a slightly slower computer
but every other distro I've used (including both Fink and DarwinPorts)
has given me reason to be cautious about upgrades.

To be honest, I've not been real impressed with what I've heard about
improvements in Japanese handling from one minor release to the next
in Ubuntu.  They're definitely there, but I have to wonder if people
wouldn't get better results by learning how to configure the IM
themselves rather than waiting on Magic Markie.

 > All the OP wanted to know was whether there is an advantage to 
 > downloading an .iso or whether the online update already performed 
 > yielded the same result.
 > 
 > I am guessing the answer is "no difference."

There's a big difference: reinstalling from an ISO is more likely to
nuke your local configs and other changes, unless you conform to the
distro's convention for making such configs.  Distros are getting
better about that, but especially for relatively new packages nuking
the user's configs is a common newbie maintainer bug.  FWIW I've had
more problems with that with Japanese packages than average, and the
OP seemed pretty concerned about the Japanese.

On the other hand, reinstalling from ISO may get you a better working
distro.  Eg, OpenSSH on Gentoo and MacPorts has been broken off and on
for me recently because of changes in crypto config handling in
OpenSSL.  It's really important to build OpenSSH against the library
it will be used with, but upgrades of OpenSSL don't force an upgrade
of OpenSSH in either distro (except by hand when all your ssh-based
stuff suddenly stops working).

So the answer is "probably there's a difference, but which way is
better just depends".