[WARNING: In this e-mail I am "selling" Debian. Reader beware.]
On Sat, 18 Aug 2001 at 13:03, Pablo Manalastas wrote:
> When RedHat came out with 7.1, I feel compelled to upgrade my
> perfectly working 6.2, but why? (Upgrading here means deleting
> everything 6.2, except user data and many config files in /etc and
> elsewhere, and totally replacing with 7.1 binaries).
I share your sentiments, Doc Mana. I had a perfectly working RedHat 5.2
box that I replaced (luckily I got myself a hardware upgrade) with a
RedHat 6.0 box. Then RedHat 6.2 came along ... but I couldn't replace this
or overwrite things because it had to be up 24x7 as it was the company's
data server.
I don't trust the RedHat method of upgrading because I've heard more
"careful, it won't work" than "yeah, no problem" reports. This is the
total opposite with Debian.
Debian boxes are known to upgrade from one stable release to the next
since v1.something, I think. Until now smooth upgradeability is one of the
top priorities of the Debian project leaders. And that doesn't mean
"please insert the CD, reboot and run upgrade". For Debian that means
updating the apt sources.list file with either the CDs or the URLs, then
doing an "apt-get update" to synchronize your database of available
packages, then doing an "apt-get dist-upgrade". apt calculates
dependencies, figures out which packages need to be retained or removed or
upgrade, and tells you what it plans to do, prompting for a confirmation.
What's more, when upgrading single (or multiple) Debian packages, the
upgrade utility will prompt you when a configuration file will be changed.
It only does this, though, when the active configuration file is different
from the previous version's default (obviously if it's still the default
then the new default should be the way to go). It allows you to use the
active config, the package manager's new one, or allows you to view a diff
of the two, which for me is a great way to know whether I should use the
new configuration or not.
RPM would just either blow my old config away and rename it to .rpmsave,
or put the new config in .rpmnew. That's okay, I guess, but not for an
upgrade freak like me.
> I can see why I need to upgrade xfree 4.0.3 to 4.1, if there is a
> video driver supported in 4.1 that is not in 4.0.3. I can also see
> why I need to replace horde 2.2.4 with 2.2.6, since I need the CHANGE
> PASSWORD feature of 2.2.6 that is not in 2.2.4. But why make a clean
> and sweeping replacement of 6.2 by 7.1?
Indeeed, why. With Debian you put the latest security source in your apt
sources.list and do regular upgrades. Why? Because you get a notification
that some security exploit was fixed. Don't keep track of the
notification? No problem. Just keep doing upgrades as long as your apt
sources.list only contains the stable and the security-updates
repositories.
--> Jijo
--
Federico Sevilla III :: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Network Administrator :: The Leather Collection, Inc.
GnuPG Key: <http://jijo.leathercollection.ph/jijo.gpg>
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