Upgrading

[paul cooke]

baza Wrote: 
> I read a posting today that made me a bit gloomy. A person posted that a
> 
> fresh install of Hoary gives you a better system than going from warty
> 
> using apt-get dist-upgrade.
> 
> I thought one of the advantages of Debian is you can upgrade without 
> having to re-install? It's a bit of a sod if I have to do that because
> 
> I've got things running as I want, nice Java, flash, DVD, lots of cool
> 
> stuff like Nvu. If I had to reinstall it would be pain. Not to mention
> 
> the last time I did that I killed Windows (which I use for games).
> 
> 

Hoary isn't finished yet... they're still thrashing things out,
especially the upgrade process... If you're unfortunate to do an
upgrade while the repositories are in a state of change, then things
break...


those doing a fresh install are getting their files from a static place
where the current complete state is set up. This is why you here talk of
Array 3 and array 4 etc... these are known working snapshots that have
been commited to CDrom state for installing from. When hoary final is
sorted out, then it will be safe for normal users to do the upgrade
process al la Debian... until then, don't do it unless you know exactly
what you may be letting yourself in for... ;)

I currently have three machines... two using Hoary and the other using
warty... warty is on my "production" machine... i only want to see
security fixes being made to those repositories... and that's what is
going on... that machine will only be upgraded to Hoary when Hoary is
officially out.

In the meantime, the other two machines are being mercillessly thrashed
out and I update one every few days and if nothing breaks, then I update
the other... never both together. That way, I've always got at least one
working Hoary box...


-- 
paul cooke