Well, some of you may remember me commenting a little while ago that I had been pleasantly surprised (and a little nervous) to discover a completely painless transition from Kubuntu 7.04 to 7.10 (the first time I’d ever managed to have a completely clean upgrade between Ubuntu versions since I started using it back with 5.04 – Hoary Hedgehog).

This was on my IBM T41 that I picked up second hand last summer, and which has been using the Kubuntu version of the Operating System since being purchased. It seems to handle it well, no major hardware problems (the ones that do have problems are solved using the proprietary drivers – because I hate freedom) and just does what it needs to do.

Last time I decided to stick to what I (think I) know and did the upgrade via the command line – manually changed all the official repositories to Gutsy versions, removed all the 3rd party options and went out on a prayer with sudo aptitude dist-upgrade. It worked. Which was a miracle.

This time, I went a stage further and decided to see if the Kubuntu GUI for these sort of things actually worked as well and looked as acceptable doing it as its GNOME-based older brother. Full marks to the Kubuntu team for getting the update manager up to speed and looking every bit as ‘in place’ as they have on Ubuntu for a version or two. I still think straight Ubuntu looks better, but that’s mainly because of GNOME’s layout – on the flipside I just prefer how KDE works. Having said all that, I may well find myself going back to a GNOME desktop if I continue to fail epically at getting along with using Dolphin as a file manager, at least until I find an easy way to keep it permanently replaced.

Anyway, that’s not the point of the post. The point was to say well done to both Ubuntu and Kubuntu teams for a job well done. The upgrade was painless, kept me informed at every step of the way, looked nice and really was easy. I have yet to double-check that every little thing still works as it should do, but I’m fairly confident any setbacks will be entirely minor and fixable, if present.

As far as this laptop goes, I reckon this will be the last time it gets such an upgrade process, as it doesn’t really need the shininess of KDE 4, and solid Long Term Support that Hardy provides should definitely see it through it’s lifespan as a workhorse.

I still want to get an EeePC though. In black, please.