Software repository question

dave boland dboland9 at fastmail.fm
Wed May 25 16:35:26 UTC 2011



On Wed, 25 May 2011 17:49 +0300, "Ioannis Vranos"
<ioannis.vranos at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 4:54 PM, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Yes, true, but the official upgrade path is only from one release to
> > *the next*. If you stayed on 9.10, for example, the only
> > officially-sanctioned way to get current today is to go:
> >
> > 9.10 -> 10.04 -> 10.10 -> 11.04
> >
> > So if you "stay behind" then it either means you are just postponing
> > the pain of multiple upgrades - you're still going to have to do them
> > sometime - or you are compelling yourself to do a wipe & reinstall at
> > some point down the line.
> 
> 
> Yes, personally I prefer clean installs as a home user.
> 
> However I think that if a home user is in a hurry, he may keep the
> /home directory, perform a clean install, and use the system without
> major issues.
> 
> I am not sure the official upgrade path in the style 9.10 -> 10.04 ->
> 10.10 -> 11.04, modifies something in the home directories anyway.

Clean installs and regular upgrades have some advantages -- recent
tested software, bug fixes, latest kernel, etc.  The downside is having
to do frequent upgrades, and that something may not work any longer. 
So, there is a place for both regular upgrades and LTS, and it really
depends on use.

As for the home directory, one problem I have seen is that when you
upgrade the distribution, and try to use the files in the old home
directory, there may be conflicts between hidden config, and data files.

Getting back to my initial problem -- getting recent software for LTS --
I guess it is just one of the downsides of LTS and that I can use
GetDebs or PPA's where applicable, or do the upgrades.  No real happy
medium that I can see right now.  Perhaps in the future there will be a
way to do this that won't affect the stability and reliability of the
system.

Dave,
-- 
  dave boland
  dboland9 at fastmail.fm

-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - One of many happy users:
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