I am using Kubuntu on a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600 and recently upgraded to Edgy Eft.
The basic upgrading process is straightforward. I use the command line and apt-get, so I opened /etc/apt/sources.list and changed all 'dapper' to 'edgy'.
My new sources.list (with less comments for readability):
deb http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted
deb-src http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy main restricted
## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates main restricted
deb-src http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-updates main restricted
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
## repository.
deb http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe multiverse
deb-src http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy universe multiverse
## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports'
## repository.
deb http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ edgy-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security universe multiverse
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security universe multiverse
## edgy-commercial by canonical
## currently has realplay (realplayer 10) and opera (opera 9)
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu edgy-commercial main
Don't forget to change your area code (fr->de, for example).
After that, I did a standard upgrade process:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
Because I usually work off-line and have to go somewhere else to connect my computer to the net, I had to interrupt the upgrade process during the upgrade. However, using sudo dpkg-reconfigure -a and sudo apt-get install -f I was able to fix everything.
However, not everything went smoothly. Here's a list of bugs I had to fix:
Eye candy: usplash too quiet
I prefer to see what's going on when my computer boots. Edgy automatically boots as quiet as possible. To change the splash screen to show the boot messages, change /boot/grub/menu.lst and delete occurrences of 'quiet' where necessary.
Problem: KDM does not boot
After switching to runlevel 2, I just got a black screen. Sometimes, if I fiddled around with the keys, I got to my tty1 and could switch to X with Alt-F7, which would sometimes spawn KDM.
Sometimes I even had to log in and start KDM manually.
I found that KDM starts a bit too early during the boot process, which probably causes the crash. I set KDM to boot as the last process. This doesn't exactly speed the boot process up, but at least it works. The easiest way is to just rename the link in /etc/rc2.d:
$ mv S13kdm S99kdm
I don't know if there's an Ubuntu tool to do this graphically.
Problem: optimised kernel no longer available / modules missing
The linux-image scheme using linux-image-686 has been obsoleted. Instead, install linux-image-generic, that should do the rest. Check if any module-packages need to be upgraded manually. This definitely includes the vmware modules which I had to upgrade by hand, although the vmware-player-kernel-modules package should really take care of that, and I've heard there's problems with the restricted modules (nvidia and whatever). Install linux-restricted-modules-generic.
However, there doesn't seem to be an automatic package configuration that lets me choose which kernel I want as standard. You have to change /boot/grub/menu.lst for that.
Eye candy: konsole font doesn't work properly
My favourite font for konsole (The KDE xterm) is Courier 10 Pitch. For some reason, some characters weren't displayed properly any more after the upgrade, including ~ (tilde) and € (euro), the former being used quite often in a shell. The only way I could change that (so far) is to switch to a different font, now it's Courier New set to bold.
