Upgrade or fresh install?

[bendy]

So I see people are having problems with 15.04, and several have recommended a fresh install rather than upgrade. I have a stable and fully functional 14.10 kubuntu set up, and fortunately thought to check these forums before rushing to update to 15.04.

My question is - why is a fresh install better? Is it because of problems with package selection and upgrading from 14.10, or is it just because Plasma 5 has problems starting from an existing kde 4 based ~/.kde profile? i.e. if I upgrade in place and wipe my ~/.kde profile will that be just as good?

Although I'm asking this, I really don't want to delete my old .kde profile because I have kmail and my wallet all set up, and I'm never sure where to find the stuff I need to back up and restore. These days, kde seems to randomly splatter it's config data through several different hidden files and folders e.g. ~/.kde, ~/.config, ~/.local, ~./kderc etc.

[Penguinclaw]

Although I'm new to Kubuntu, I think the main idea behind doing a fresh install as opposed to an upgrade has more to do with the move to systemd than Plasma5. I would always backup files (including configuration files) that are important to me regardless of whether I'm upgrading or doing a fresh install. Use a backup program like Luckybackup (which has a nice gui) to achieve this.

[nukedathlonman]

I'm in the opposite camp - only ever installed Kubuntu once waaaaay back in 2006 (and this I keep backed up and I use it to quickly get other computers going). That said, there are issue's with upgrading (I've had issues with Vivid's Kmix (it didn't like the configuration files as was setup by KMix in KDE 4 many many many years ago) and stability specifically - I fixed Kmix, and so far that seams to have fixed the stability). But what I've been reading, Vivid has problems either way you go.

But the idea of a fresh install is to achieve a 'clean state'. The idea of upgrade, is everything is already configured and you don't need to spend time redoing everything. I say follow your heart, I'm sticking to keeping the system very clean, updated and upgraded (I'm always going through my computer with a fine tooth comb). The only clean state I'll ever get is if I decide to use another distro. I'm not gonna say whats better, I just say this has been working fine for me for a very long long time. But I know it's been the total opposite for other people.

[Teunis]

Without being an expert on the subject I dare say the problems are not at all due to systemd but are caused by a big change in configurations between 14.10 and 15.04.
There's no daoubt in my mind that part of the problem is caused by the fact not all applications have been ported tot Plasma5 and thus we get incompatibilities.

I tried an update and it was horrible.
The Iast time I reinstalled with all previous configurations removed (like ~/.kde and ~/.config) and it became a workable system.

[Kubuntu1404_Singapore]

I upgraded from 14.04 and I would only say that if you are comfortable sorting out a few repository related issues, you are probably OK to make the upgrade. It is not perfect, for whatever reason, in that regard. If you know going in that Plasma 5 is buggy (compared to KDE 4), and that your special settings (configured desktops or icons) will be lost, then an upgrade is fine. Your production data is not likely to be at risk based on my experience and reading on various and reviews about the upgrade route. To be safe back up any production data you can't afford to lose, which is good practice anyway. If you are bug-averse just wait. BTW, its really very nice and all, so I'm not regretting the minor pain of doing the upgrade. But to each his / her own and tailor your choice to your tolerance for some issues upon upgrade (my repos were messy and conflicting between sources.list and sources.d/* ... after using the repo creator online and reading some on kubuntu.org I sorted it...).

[bendy]

Well I upgraded my laptop by doing a fresh install but retaining my home directory which was on a separate partition, and kept my existing ./kde, ./config, ./local etc directories. I did an immediate upgrade to the latest plasma and kde apps from the backports repository from a terminal before even logging in to a graphical plasma desktop. I have to say that so far everything is working just fine.

This is on an old XPS M1330 laptop with standard intel hardware.

[Teunis]

Wow! Good to see it is possible.

[bendy]

OK, I bit the bullet and upgraded my main desktop (from 14.10). This was a totally in place upgrade (sudo do-release-upgrade), retaining all my config files etc. I have to say it all went fine (so far). This even with an nvidia graphics card using the proprietary driver.

The one thing I did do (as with my laptop mentioned above) is add the backports ppa from the command line before logging in to a graphical desktop for the first time. I don't know if this helped or not....