Just want to point out that you CAN skip versions with Ubuntu. Probably 
not unlimited version skips, but I just went from 12.04 to 13.10 on a 
couple of machines in one go.

Now if you're going to do a reinstall, well, this is why we keep /home and 
/usr/local etc on separate partitions (: You can reinstall the OS and keep 
all your data and configuration.

On Sun, 23 Feb 2014, Mike Miller wrote:

> On Fri, 21 Feb 2014, tclug at freakzilla.com wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 21 Feb 2014, paul g wrote:
>> 
>>> For a basic home/office computer user running an older FireFox version say 
>>> '20.0' under Ubuntu 10.04 etc '2.6.-- kernel' will new web pages and 
>>> webpage design soon require the need for a later version of FireFox or 
>>> Opera to 'surf' the web? Just a curious question I am a noob.
>> 
>> Might be some small things that won't work, but in general you should be 
>> fine.
>> 
>> Of course, as time goes on, those small things will get bigger and bigger. 
>> Still, basic HTML with basic javascript should be fine for a long time. It 
>> all depends on what kind of content you want.
>> 
>> May I ask why you're running such an old version of Ubuntu?
>
>
> I wasn't the OP (that was paul g), but I'm using 10.10 on my home Linux box. 
> One reason for that is I tried to upgrade and it did not work.  I think 
> sometime in the next few months I'll get around to just redoing everything to 
> and installing fresh.  Apparently, if you don't upgrade soon enough, you 
> can't upgrade at all.  I'm not sure why.  Another Ubuntu thing is that you 
> can only upgrade to the next version -- you can't skip ahead. I don't know 
> why that is, but it's annoying.  So now I'm trying to keep up-to-date on the 
> machines that are current enough to allow upgrades.  I don't like to upgrade 
> immediately when a new version comes out, but maybe a month later, in case 
> they had some bugs to work out.
>
> I'm using Firefox 11.0 on that Ubuntu 10.10 box and it seems to be working 
> fine.  I don't know what I'll be getting for upgrading Firefox -- that will 
> be interesting to see.
>
> I have an even older box that I use more -- it's running Ubuntu 9.10.  I 
> would love to get that upgraded, too.  The main problem there is that I'm 
> constantly using it.  I bought another machine to replace it, but I couldn't 
> get everything to work on that new machine.  I should try again. We have to 
> admit that there are all kinds of hassles with making these machines do what 
> we want.  I'm getting a lot out of it, though.  A lot. There is nothing in 
> the conventional Mac/Windows world to compare.
>
> On that 9.10 machine I'm mostly using Chromium-Browser.  It gives me this 
> version information:
>
> 13.0.768.0 (Developer Build 85577 Linux) Ubuntu 9.10
>
> I'm sure that's a few years out of date.  It definitely is starting to cause 
> some problems.  The biggest problem is that I can't seem to upgrade the flash 
> and some web sites won't work because of that.  Some sites will complain 
> about my old browser and tell me to upgrade (which I cannot do, it seems), 
> but those sites still work OK, as far as I can tell.
>
> Mike
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