Non destructive install is important.

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Sep 11, 2006 at 12:38:25PM +0200, Klaus Bitto wrote:
> Colin Watson wrote:
> >If you want to upgrade an existing installation, then you should use the
> >normal package management tools to do so, not the installer.
> 
> My "dist-upgrade" went terribly wrong, even though I knew I had to run it
> many times, as well as the "-f install", which i regard as wrong in itself
> already.

I assume you filed bugs about this?

> Rather than telling one should upgrade using the package management, while
> there is no tool everyone can use to do so, I'd have the installer force
> people to have separated partitions for data (/home and maybe /etc) and
> system, or do so by itself, if auto partitioning is chosen by the user,

This is too smelly a can of worms; the reason we don't do this is that
there is no clear sensible division of space between the different parts
of the system. Lacking more specific knowledge about how the system will
be used, as is inevitable when doing automatic partitioning, the best
thing to do is to allocate space as one big lump.

> and then make the distribution so that you can only upgrade by
> installing a new system, which automatically adds the existing home
> and comfiguration folders.

Absolutely not; sane upgrading in place is a big part of the appeal of
Debian- and Ubuntu-based systems for many people. Please file upgrade
bugs so that they can be fixed.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]