Okay, I know this sounds like a newbie question, but here's why I'm asking:

Xubuntu 9.10 is awesome, fast, and perfect on my 'puter. The latest version is very slow, troublesome, and very resource hungry.

When 9.10 reaches "end of life," why can't I just edit my software sources list to "Lucid" instead of "Karmic," rather than upgrade and have my poor 'puter slowed down by all that buggy Plymouth and PulseAudio stuff they put in 10.04?

I would seriously rather run 9.10 unsupported (and fast) than a supported version that makes my poor old hand-me-down 'puter slow to a crawl.

Thanks,
Robin

I know about that upgrade button... what I'm concerned about is that the upgrade will install whatever that stuff is (I think it's Plymouth) that slows everything down and kills the sound (PulseAudio?).

That's why I was thinking of just editing my /sources list to the Lucid repos instead of the karmic ones, leaving my Karmic installation intact instead of polluting my 'puter with all that Lucid stuff that makes it crawl worse than Windows did.

Shouldn't they be compatible? Can I simply changes the repos (for newer versions of applications) without upgrading?

Thanks,
R

I'd like to try, if I can, because the later versions are much more troublesomme on my aging hardware than the older ones. 9.04 was a beauty, and 9.10 was great as well. But from 10.4, with the inclusion of that very buggy Plymouth and PulseAudio stuff that was never in Xubuntu before, it's slower than Windows XP was and has boot-up and sound issues I can't overcome.

I reckon that by the time Karmic reaches end-of-life, Debian might be truly ready for the desktop by then... or perhaps Linux Mint's Debian Edition will be mature enough for a non-geeky kid like me.

I wish the Xubuntu developers had not chosen a LTS version to put all this weird buggy stuff in.

[rant]
And - just a short rant here - I wonder if they've shot themselves in the foot in a way. Because one of the main reasons people look for an alternate OS is that their aging hardware is too underpowered to run the later versions of Windows and they can't afford to upgrade their machines. Imagine their frustration when they find that the latest version of "the best newbie-friendly Linux distro" is as resource-hungry as Windows! Sure, there are a zillion "lightweight" alternatives, but Ubuntu (and it's derivatives) is the one that Google and most "distro chooser" sites direct newbies to.
[/rant]

That's why I was kinda hoping to just change repos and hope that Plymouth and PulseAudio are not dependencies for security updates, which are the only updates I will accept anyway.

-Robin