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I have Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I am considering upgrading to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I already read a similar post about it: Is it necessary to upgrade to 14.04 LTS or can I stand in 12.04 LTS forever with no problem?

However, the answers in that post do not say if applications need to be reinstalled after upgrading.

In particular, I am about to install Matlab R2016a on Ubuntu, for the first time. If I wait until next year to upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04, will I need to reinstall Matlab at that point, when I upgrade?

Because if I do, then I should upgrade now, before I install Matlab and put one year of setups and adjustments on it, which I will lose if I have to reinstall it when I upgrade to 14.04.

If I don't, I'd rather wait one more year to upgrade until 12.04 will run out of support in April 2017, so I will get the newest possible LTS version of Ubuntu.

Since I am using Ubuntu on a MacBook Pro (using a firmware called re-fit) I had to install and configure a driver called MTRACK which makes Ubuntu 12.04 responsive to the touchpad of the MacBook Pro laptop in a humanly possible way (it took me quite some time to do it).

[These are links about MTRACK: http://bryansiegel.com/2013/05/fix-the-crappy-touchpad-behavior-when-using-ubuntu-13-04-on-a-macbook-pro/ https://github.com/BlueDragonX/xf86-input-mtrack/blob/master/README.md]

So again: if I upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04, will the MTRACK installation and settings be preserved or will I need to reinstall MTRACK after upgrading from Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS?

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Lorenzo
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  • As for MATLAB, you don't need to reinstall it. As for your configuration for mtrack though, it depends on how you configured the driver. Can you share some details on that? – edwinksl Jun 28 '16 at 10:05
  • Thanks. This is my mtrack configuration file (below, shortened to fit). But I am not worried about having to EDIT the configuration file (I can just copy it). I am worried that mtrack will not be preserved and that I might not be able to REINSTALL it at all after upgrading to 14.04.

    Section "InputClass" MatchIsTouchpad "on" Identifier "Touchpads" Driver "mtrack" Option "Sensitivity" "0.55" Option "FingerHigh" "12" Option "FingerLow" "1" Option "IgnoreThumb" "true" Option "IgnorePalm" "true" ..... EndSection

     – Lorenzo Jun 28 '16 at 10:28
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    Just to be safe, I suggest you ask the mtrack maintainers at mtrack's GitHub repository about compatibility with 14.04. As for MATLAB, you can see from http://www.mathworks.com/support/sysreq/current_release/index.html?sec=linux that 14.04 is on the list. – edwinksl Jun 28 '16 at 11:19

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I have no experience with running mentioned software on Ubuntu but my overall experience is following:

There is basically no need for reinstalling a software after system upgrade unless it gets unmet dependencies. In that case you’ll need to upgrade such software. This may happen to Matlab as it is not installed using APT. However, Matlab R2016a supports Ubuntu 14.04 and not 12.04 (thanks @edwinksl for the link), so you should upgrade Ubuntu before installing Matlab if you’ve done none of these changes yet. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS has been out for 2 years already and should be mature enough.

If the installed software or users have made any changes to system configuration (/etc mostly), Ubuntu installer will ask if you wish to keep, overwrite or merge such changes. This will probably happen to the configuration of MTrack.

Melebius
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