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The Ubuntu blog has a report on installation metrics:
We first announced our intention to ask users to provide basic, not-personally-identifiable system data back in February. Since then we have built the Ubuntu Report tool and integrated it in to the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS initial setup tool. You can see an example of the data being collected on the Ubuntu Report Github page.
At first login users are asked if they would like to send the information gathered and can preview that data if they wish.
One thing to point out is that this data is entirely from Ubuntu Desktop installs only and does not include users of Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, our cloud images, or any of the Ubuntu derivatives that do not include the ubuntu-report software in their installer.
For example, the average install took 18 minutes, but some systems were able to install in less than 8 minutes. Available RAM was most frequently reported at 4GB followed closely by 8GB, but there were systems reporting in with as little as 1GB and as much as 128GB.
How do your system(s) compare?
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Tuesday June 26 2018, @12:42AM
I think you forget something...
I've used a number of distros over the years. Slackware, Mandrake (yes, that long ago), [Ku|Xu|U]buntu. Hell, even -funroll-lo--- ahem, Gentoo at one time. I use Debian these days (pulse and systemd haven't pissed me off enough to switch to something else... yet).
But regardless of distro, even though I've been at this for at least a couple of decades, I've never felt comfortable doing automated in-place upgrades from one major release to the next. Too many failures in the past, and there's always some schmutz left over after enough routine apt-get upgrade runs (apt-get autoremove always wants to clean out stuff I want to keep, so I never use it).
When I'm ready to update to a new major release, or if my OS has been showing signs that it's "due" for a major clean-up, I just download/burn the latest installer image to a USB fob, back up my personal data to an external hard disk, and reinstall from scratch, letting the installer wipe my root partition in the process (/home is in its own, natch). Often, I'll take the opportunity to wipe out all of the less-important dot-files/folders (yeah, I call 'em that, so sue me), caches, etc., keeping config trees that are either too important, or just too much of a pain in the ass to recreate (desktop environment, browser, email, etc.).
What helps with that is a not-quite-a-script that I keep updated, that I can use to basically restore my system state after USB installer has done its job (fetch/install all my favorite packages, configure things that don't survive a reinstall, re-compile a few out-of-repo packages I use, that kind of thing). It's "not-quite-a-script" because it's quite dumb: there's no error handling, no sanity checks, no nothing. Just a raw list of commands that I can just copy and paste to a shell a little at a time.
Once the installer's done its job (usually about 20 minutes if the network mirror is cooperative, and I'm installing from one of my decent USB fobs), I can at least go browse the web or something, while I work through not-quite-a-script in the backgroun. 2 hours and everything's back to normal.
I hate reinstalling, but I like starting from a clean slate. Surely I'm not the only one who approaches things this way?