Ubuntu Offline Upgrade 10.04 to 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat)

Basically, an offline upgrade means doing an Ubuntu CD upgrade, rather than direct from within Ubuntu itself using the Update Manager. You can also use this offline upgrade method to upgrade your WUBI (Ubuntu in Windows) installation, and Ubuntu Alpha, Beta, or Release Candidate (RC) versions.
This article shows you how to do an offline cdrom update of your Ubuntu from version 10.04 ("Lucid Lynx") to 10.10 (aka "Maverick Meerkat") and is meant for people whose PC to-be-upgraded has a SLOW internet connection. Ubuntu ver 10.10 was released on the 10th of October, 2010. For those of you who are not aware of this, the 10 in 10.04 refers to year 2010 and the 04 - month 04. Hence, 10.10 equals Year 2010 Month 10.
Preparation:

• Make sure that your current Ubuntu distribution is up-to-date prior to doing the upgrading (-you must have all the latest available updates for your version) as you will get messages prompting you to connect to the internet for updating if it is not up-to-date.

Note: This means that if the PC to be upgraded has NO internet connection, this is not the solution for you. Either start afresh with a new Ubuntu or Ubuntu WUBI (Ubuntu Windows install) or search Google for "Ubuntu no internet upgrade".

• Have at least 800MB space available in your Ubuntu file system

• Don't be lazy! Do some reading on the latest release notes or at least skim through them. ;)

• Please note that you CANNOT jump versions when doing an upgrade. As long as your version is 8.04 and above, you should be able to follow this guide to upgrade to the latest and greatest version of Ubuntu. Just make sure that you upgrade incrementally this way: 8.04 to 8.10, 8.10 to 9.04, 9.04 to 9.10, 9.10 to 10.04, 10.04 to 10.10, 10.10 to 11.04 Natty Narwhal (when available). Or put in another way: Upgrade Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) to Intrepid Ibex to Jaunty Jackalope to Karmic Koala to Lucid Lynx to Maverick Meerkat to Natty Narwhal . No jumps! If you're too far behind, it's better to just get the latest CD and install from scratch. Why is that? As you can see from the simple upgrade path above, assuming that 1 CD is 700 MB, you will have to download at least 2800 MB of files to upgrade this way!

Using a previous incarnation of Ubuntu some time back, my laptop was still running 8.10, what I did was to upgrade to 9.04 from within 8.10 in anticipation of upgrading to 9.10.
But, having upgraded to 9.04, I found the downloading time for the live upgrade was too long - that's when I chose to do an offline upgrade for 9.10 - and hence writing this hub to document my experience.
(Continued below after the installation pictures ...)

Ubuntu 10.10 Updating: Visual Guide

Just In: (New) Ubuntu 10.10 Upgrade. Note: Pics below showing tried and tested upgrade method on 10.04 version of Ubuntu, works the same way with 10.10.

Keying in the sudo mount command and path to the ISO file in the terminal

Do you want to start the upgrade?

Getting new packages - "Upgrading Ubuntu to version 10.04 LTS"

Installing the upgrades: just starting

Installing the upgrades: 2 mins remaining (Is this going to work?)

Whoa! Progress! The new desktop background is a NEW shade of brown. :D (This was from Beta 1, no longer brown since beta 2)

I really don't mind brown if it comes with nice foreground art as in this picture