Upgrade

[Derek Broughton]

Kaixi Luo wrote:

Please don't top post.

> I doubt if it's possible. Why don't you just upgrade to Lenny? It's a
> super stable and bug-free distro. :)
> 
> On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 9:41 PM, Raquel <raquel at thericehouse.net> wrote:
> 
>> I'm wondering about being able to upgrade.
>>
>> I have a laptop being used by my spouse that is running Debian Etch.
>> Rather than upgrading to Lenny I'm wondering about "upgrading" to
>> Ubuntu Intrepid.  She wants to keep the same applications and data
>> but I'm not so sure of the ability to just upgrade.  Anyone have any
>> experience, or words of wisdom?
>>

Of COURSE it's possible.  It's Linux, for heaven's sake.

I haven't done it from Etch to Intrepid, but I did it much earlier and many
others have done it since.

Upgrading from Debian to Ubuntu is hardly _simple_, but it's possible.  It's
basically an iterative process.

1) change your /etc/apt/sources.list to point to the ubuntu sources
2) sudo aptitude update
3) sudo aptitude full-upgrade

Then things get hazy... You will almost certainly have broken packages.  Fix
the obvious errors, repeat step 3.  Keep repeating until nothing is broken.

At some point - very probably the first attempt - you will be presented with
options suggesting some things should be removed to make the upgrade work. 
Here you need to use your judgement.  If it looks like it's removing too
much, say "no" and see if it gives you a better option.  Whatever it does,
don't let it remove libc6.  

4) sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop