Today I thought I'd upgrade my partner's desktop system from Lenny to Squeeze. I more or less followed the "official" advice rather than use my own method. As to be expected lots of things didn't go as planned...

After only a short while I hit a problem with bash and dash, it's a know bug but it did add some time on to getting the box running.

Once the main upgrade was done I started to remove all the kruft that was left over from which took more time than anticipated. Once that was done I logged into KDE4 and hunted for more kruft and added things that were now needed that weren't possible in KDE3.

Finally I logged in as my partner and reconfigured her desktop more or less to standard with all the oddments removed and trimmed so that she could personalise it from a sane base-line.

Problems: dash/Bash - known bug but annoying; vlc won't play MP4s from the BBC but Xine will - annoying as vlc is okay on two other systems; and finally most strange of all, Icedove will not run directly under KDE4 but will via an SSH/X session!