Upgrade, update or what.

[carpetshark]

Thank you both. Very nice to receive good answers. Will try live CDs. (DVD if large file)

[Jonas]

Hello and welcome to KFN.

I think you would find kubuntu quite different but with in the scope of the familiar with coming from ubuntu. If you prefer little to no change (except for unity)Mint and Ubuntu Studio would be your choice. If you like to get some new features or change slightly in workflow I think you would enjoy kubuntu.

As for hardware there shouldn't be any major difference from before.

I agree with Steve that best way to find out is to try it with a liveDVD/USB.

b.r

Jonas

[SteveRiley]

It's difficult to predict what your experience will be. The best thing you can do is give it a try with the live CD.

Will letting a new distro erase the drive before install be enough?

It appears that you aren't trying to create a sophisticated partitioning scheme, so in your case, yes.

[carpetshark]

Right now I have a dual boot XP/Ubuntu 11.04. Each OS has its own separate hard drive. Therefore, I am not partitioning or messing with the XP drive so except for Grub, the computer is basically Ubuntu. I want to try GIMP 2.8 and I need to upgrade. I have been reading about 12.10 and I simply don't like the way Ubuntu is going.
I am not enthusiastic about all the social being built in to the desktop. I uninstalled most of the crap in 11.10.

I also don't like Unity. Your desktop looks like what I want and the way all my computers are set up. I am also looking at Ubuntu Studio and Mint.
Studio would fit the way I do use a computer. I have Adobe programs on the XP drive. Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign.
I can use Inkscape and most of the paint programs - also Audacity and some movie editing. I do more hunting for information online than social.

I have an nVidia graphics card that was installed when the ATI card went haywire. I was using 10.10 at the time and had no problem with the driver on update to 11.04.

I have downloaded a few zipped programs. I do use an AV (NOD32) since I download for other windows computers - 2 are offline and don't need an AV. but just in case.
I have the install file for that. I also have the zipped files for Firefox and Thunderbird ESR. I just want the security updates and not the fluff. Can I transfer the zips over to the XP hard drive and TF back? I also use Stellarium.

I have an Epson Scanner and an HP laserjet 1300. Both now work. Skype, webcam and mike all work. 11.04 also reads my Android SD card well. Will an upgrade change this?

I would run any distro from a DVD drive first - but on installation it would have the whole Ubuntu 11.04 drive to itself. Will letting a new distro erase the drive before install be enough?

The computer is an AMD dual core 3200. I am running 64 bit right now.

I like Ubuntu - find it fairly easy to do what I want. I don't plan on upgrading Windows. I no longer need to upgrade the programs that Windows XP is running.

Thanks