Dngrsone
Android Expert
Well this is all interesting. I'm surprised you guys have had such horrors with upgrades.
I used to do fresh installs when upgrading up until 12.04. From 12.04 and on I've been doing upgrades instead and have always gone smoothly. No issues here. In fact, I'm so confident in how well upgrades work that I don't backup anymore when upgrading.
Imagine if you couldn't do upgrades, how does the linux community expect for linux to be a viable OS in the desktop market place. Imagine telling a windows user, hey switch to linux, but be aware that your system might not boot after an OS upgrade.
Upgrades on linux work just as good as any other OS (ie. Mac, Windows). You just have to keep up with your package updates. If you don't keep up with updates, then some packages can end up held back over time and and that's where the problems start when time comes for an OS upgrade.
Hah! I've had way more failures, data loss and destruction via Windows Update than antyhing I've done to myself in Linux.