Fresh install?

[Ric Moore]

On Wed, 2008-10-15 at 12:46 -0400, Bruce Marshall wrote:
> On Wednesday 15 October 2008, Paul Lemmons wrote:
> > Am I the only one with such a positive experience with the upgrade
> > process? Do more of you upgrade or rebuild? Why the constant advice to
> > backup your system, remember all of the apps you installed and then
> > trash it to install clean and restore apps and files with a prayer that
> > you did not miss anything?
> 
> I always do fresh installs.
> 
> 1) It cleans things up...
> 2) You learn a lot.
> 3) You get to find out what is new and don't miss some of the new options.
> 4) If the upgrade goes bad, you are left with nothing.  And need to install 
> fresh anyway.  (this happened to me and is why I will never upgrade again)
> 5) If you have a minor bug in the upgraded system, you will never know whether 
> it is a bug in the new release or some incompatibility in the upgrade.
> 6) You learn a lot
> 7) You get to go over your notes.  (you *do* have notes don't you?)
> 8) You can get rid of things you never use or that didn't work out.
> 9) If you have the space, you can install the new and still keep the old, thus 
> having both to cross-check things/bugs.
> 10) You learn a lot.

I agree. Running Fedora I upgraded from FC4 to FC5 and udev went ape on
bootup. It took a clean install to fix it. I've never trusted an update
since, especially when major upgrades of gcc and the like are involved.
What I do now is easier to me than an upgrade, I keep two major
partitions and freshly install to one, while keeping the older version
on it's own partition. Then, the install goes quickly and usually
without any fuss. I get to play with it in "pristine" condition and
slowly move data from the old to the new. I do that in baby steps. If
something goes wrong, I just have one issue to deal with instead of a
hopeless pile of errors to witch-hunt through. 

I quit using Fedora as I do not wish to beta-test while I need to be
doing useful things. To many things routinely blew up in testing that
interfere with my true work. So, I switched to Kubuntu to have a stable
platform to work with and I have not looked back. Keep up the good
work!! My two-cents, Ric


-- 
----------------------------------------------------
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
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