ive been using Ubuntu 7.10 for about 3 weeks now and i love it more than any other linux operating system. ive been watching the countdown to the upgrade of ubuntu 8.04. has any one tried out the 8.04 beta at all. if so, did u think it is worth upgrading my box to 8.04 or should i keep it at 7.10? also, is it possible to upgrade ur box without deleting ur data or should i just copy everything to an external hard drive and create a text file showing the packages i have downloaded and installed on my box now?

Thanks
TexasOne

Previous upgrades have been very smooth; once 8.04 is official, your Update Manager will notify you and offer to upgrade. It's not all that different from the regular security updates, just a lot more packages. However, they still have some wrinkles in that, so I would recommend that you try the Live CD on your hardware before you take the plunge. A lot of packages and dependencies change between major releases, and sometimes, it turns out that an older version still works better.

Personally, I actually keep two boot partitions, and all my own stuff on a separate partition, so I can have two releases installed in parallel and dual-boot between them. It was useful when 6.10 worked with my scanner but 7.04 didn't. (No problem with 7.10 there, so I have been running that exclusively since it came out.)

Having said that, there are also still some things which work better from a reinstall; migrating from an older version to a newer one will not give you exactly the same result e.g. when it comes to Gnome settings in your home directory, Firefox plug-ins, etc etc. Usually the differences are harmless but it might still be something to watch out for down the road.

I've been running the beta for a week or two on my computer at work (sic, my production system) and would say that the upgrade to Firefox 3.0 alone makes it worth upgrading, but YMMV.

I definitely recommend trying the persistent USB stick; saves you from burning a CD you only use half a dozen times, and real handy to keep in your pocket just in case. It's not entirely trivial to set up but the instructions on the wiki are pretty decent. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LiveUsbPendrivePersistent

thanks
do you know of any good sites to show how to dual boot ubuntu 7.10 and 8.04 (basicly just two versions of it). a site with site (easier for me to understand) ive tried a couple of sites but none of them have worked. i couldnt get it to boot rite
and i had to redo my hard drive the last time i tried
thanks
TexasOne

another thing would be if i wanted to try out kubuntu. would dual boot screw anything up with having a gnome and kde desktop dual boot. also, any views on the kde enviroment verses gnome enviroment would be greatly appreciated.

You just need to have enough partitions, one for each install (plus, as mentioned above, probably a good idea to have your data outside of those, so you can access it from either installation). At install time, leave one partition empty and then let the other installer install to that. They should be perfectly able to coexist peacefully, in my experience.

Can't say much about KDE, I've been using Gnome and never saw any reason to try K. I basically just use the GUI to launch my music player and browser anyway, and everything else happens in Emacs or the terminal.

They seem to have a wider spectrum of software written specifically for KDE but most of it will run in Gnome just fine as well. From a programmer's point of view I understand Qt (the KDE toolkit) is pretty much best in class, but I haven't done any GUI programming myself, so can't really comment on that. My prejudist opinion is that KDE seems more oriented towards eye candy, but my KDE friend says Gnome is impossible to use without a mouse, whereas he routinely uses KDE from the keyboard only. Anyway, both of them have a fair share of programs which quite horrible usability -- I guess a lot of developers assume it will Just Work as long as they have an all-dancing, all-singing animated color-flashing GUI. (Ahem. Gets off soapbox. Pardon me.)