Sorry about the delay in my reply. I hadn’t realized anyone else had posted a response to this.

I don’t think there is any set time delay you should observe. I just keep an eye on the forums, and watch what kind of problems other people are running into. If the problems are related to something that I will need, then I wait until someone posts a reasonable workaround or fix.

Common things I keep an eye out for are problems with the upgrade itself, as well as hardware issues like sound, video, and other networking. Just watch for threads like “I just upgraded and now my XXX doesn’t work”. To be sure, many of these problems are just people who are not familiar with the upgrade process and are solved fairly quickly, but many times these problems are very real and have bugs reported against them. Watch the threads and learn how to distinguish between these two kinds of posts.

Of course, someone has to upgrade at release time in order to report problems, but if you’re a new user and unfamiliar with linux you’re best bet is to avoid becoming a new release test subject. Watching the forums, and being patient will save most new users a great deal of headache.

Thanks for the question,

Dale

This point particularly, coming from a geek (who could be more reckless than a newbie !):
“Patience also carries over into distribution upgrades… I have six active computers in my network, all running Ubuntu. Only one of them is running Hardy, and it gets the least amount of use.”

I’d like you to tell us what delay, after a new version of ubuntu is out, you could name reasonable and which delay you respect for your own computers.

Thank’s !

PS. Sorry if my english is not so good.