It’s that time of the year again. Time to upgrade my Ubuntu installation to the
newest version.
In the past, this has been a mixed pleasure.
I’ve been running Ubuntu on my laptop since 6.04, and while
dist-upgrading has become a lot easier, I’m still not completely relaxed about it.
In the early days, I had to re-install my system when doing an upgrade, as the automatic upgrade scripts would always break something.
Now, however, those problems are mostly gone, and the last upgrade went without a hitch.
This time, though, I’m contemplating doing it the old-fashioned way, mostly to get rid of all the cruft that has gathered on my hard drive during the last year.
Old versions of programs that I no longer use, and stuff like that.
The real problem with that is to remember my system configuration in order to get my computer back the way it was.
Like most users, I like to personalize my system to fit my needs, which has resulted in a lot of small alterations, most of which I can no longer remember.
The modifications I’m most worried about is the ones for tablet support (I have a Lenovo x61t) which are a pain to get right, even with the help of google, but also smaller configurations, like the gnome theme I’m using and stuff like that.
Most of those settings are saved in my home directory, but I plan on cleaning that one out too, in order to get some fresh config-files in my system.
Another solution might be to just save myself the trouble and keep using my computer as it is… but who am I kidding. I want new! I want shiny!
I will try to document the process here, if I survive…
Black book of woodoo hacks 
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