On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 11:40:45AM +0200, Oded Arbel wrote:
> ×××× ××××× 28 ××× 2004, 10:04, ×××× ×× ××× Gal Goldschmidt:
> > From my past experience it's a pain.
> > I had to format and reinstall, since the upgrade left the system in an
> > unstable state.
> > Maybe the upgrade is smother on the new version, My last Mandrake
> > installation was around the 9.1.
>
> My experience shows that you can easily upgrade a year old installation with
> the latest Mandrake w/o consequences. the older the install and the weirder
> your setup, the harder it will get, but for the "standard" simple install it
> will be nothing more then "next"->"next"->"finish".
>
> That being said, generally speaking I suggest either of two modes of keeping
> Mandrake up to date: either (a) re-install every time you have a new version
> (make sure your /home is on another partition and you don't have important
> data elsewhere and then format / and reinstall and reconfigure - takes 2~3
> hours at most to get your system back up) or (b) upgrade your system live
> using URPMI. this is relativly safe and very easy to do, but I suggest you do
> it for every new version that comes out (every 6 months or so) otherwise the
> difference between a year old install and a current one will probably be too
> great to make it painless.
>
> > > 3. Do we have any distribution (beside Gentoo) that do not
> > > require upgrading ? I.e. once installed, some "emerge -world"
> > > always (!) bring latest updates for all packages ?
> >
> > Definitely Gentto is the best, but if your machine is not a >2GHz CPU and
> > you don't have a day or two for the installation, you should check Debian
> > or a Debian based distro, The upgrade apt-get update; apt-get upgrade no
> > need to reformat or reinstall from scratch you can move from stable to
> > unstable very easily and the machine usually won't break too much ;-).
>
Just watch the dependencies. Sometimes they change enough that aptitude
has a hard time doing exactly what you want and you may have to play
around a bit with the packages. You should be left with a stable system
though although you may have to reconfigure some things as some
programs tend to change their setup over time in a way that isn't
backward compatible (not Debian's fault).
> Debian is an option, but you have to remember that unless you are using Debian
> unstable you really are using a year old distribution (two years for
Stable is mostly meant for server use where you need a rock stable
system and where up to date features are of less importance.
They do keep security upgrades for both stable and testing though and
there is a backport archive for those wanting more up to date programs
such as X and window managers with a rock stable base.
Testing or unstable is more suitable for workstations.
> "stable") - feature-wise. gentoo is not much better - when you 'emerge
> -world' you're also living on the cutting edge of Gentoo development (mostly
> as gentoo does not have a clear distinction between the "stable" and
> "testing" versions).
>
> If you really are considering Gentoo with constant updates or Debian unstable,
> then why not use Mandrake that way ?
> URPMI is as easy to use as apt or emerge in order to completly upgrade your
> machine to the current Mandrake development version ("cooker") which is
> always available through many mirrors. I have been updating my personal
> machines that way for over two years and I can't say had a serious problem
> for more then a year now. I'm running updating on a weekly basis and
> upgrading to the new stuff I find ("urpmi.update -a && urpmi --auto
> --auto-select"). I have a machine installed originally as Mandrake 8.2 which
> now reports itself as 10.0 (upgraded last week. a bit of down time because I
> wanted to try the latest kernel).
> I can't recommend this practice to any Linux user (mostly as I also can't
> recommend using Debian unstable or Gentoo to any Linux user), but if
> you know
Actually from experience, debian unstable was always much more stable
for me then Mandrake and Red Hat machines I used. You should watch when
upgrading that all dependencies exist since sometimes (not very often)
some dependencies are slower to enter unstable then the newer version
of the original package.
Aptitude will usually just hold back the original package anyway until
all dependencies can be resolved (the problem tends to be more with
installing new packages with currently broken dependencies where you
may have to wait a few days but not with already installed ones).
I am running unstable for about 7 years now and never had a problem
(that is not related to me doing things I shouldn't such as resuming
from suspend on a disk that was modified since then and such ;-)
> what you are doing you shouldn't have any problem.
>
> P.S.
> A Mandrake URPMI tip: update on sundays.
>
> --
> Oded
>
> ::..
> If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.
> -- Lewis C. Carol
>
>
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