System upgrade "cloud style"

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I have got a new computer for my office. The old system was still up and running and so I was a bit reluctant to replace it, but I finally bite the bullet as I could say no to a free new system. I was running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64 bit meaning that no major upgrade happened in the last three years to my system. Over time your system also gathers lots of drivers, small utilities and fixes that you only discover you had them once you've migrated to a new one.

So last week I used some time to install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on the new computer, just to discover it won't wake up from suspend properly. The problem was the graphics card driver (an Intel graphics card in the motherboard chipset). But the only way to get the system back to work (without logging in from another computer) was to reset it. When I asked for help to another colleague he mention he had no trouble at all with a similar system. It turned out he was using Ubuntu 13.04 instead. So after almost a week of small installs I deleted everything and installed that new version which I am using now for writing these lines.

The good thing is that using Chrome I can get all my bookmarks, preferences and web information synchronized to the new computer easily (only security certificates need to be moved by hand). Same holds with the gigabytes of information I have on Dropbox, just install the damn thing and wait till your hard-drive gets all the files auto-magically.

I wish that office printers and other stuff could somehow automatically transfer from one system to the new one.

Anyway, relying on certain cloud services may be evil but it proves very convenient when upgrading your computer. I guess it is difficult to find a perfect balance between convenience and control.

Comments

Computer upgrades said…
This article is very informative and useful for me
Thanks for sharing this nice blog
11:02 am
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