[clue-tech] Upgrading

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Thursday 13 January 2005 07:13 pm, David Anselmi wrote:

> Good idea to do a backup first, so you don't format and then say "oops,
> /root was on / and I wanted to keep that".  The other thing you'll need
> is a list of what you want installed so the package list stays the same
> (plus dependency changes).

Heh.  Did that the last time around,  and that package list went on for pages 
and pages...

I just ran across it recently.

> RPM and Debian should allow you to update by pointing to a new version
> and running update.  At least Debian can figure out which old packages
> are replaced by which new ones.  You may end up with some cruft though.

That's the thing.  That cruft.  I can get by with doing a fresh install,  then 
moving "old stuff" over a bit at a time to make things work the way I want 
them to,  paying attention to file datestamps and such,  but still...

> For me, I've been running Debian testing and doing an upgrade every
> month or so.  That way my machines are always pretty up to date and I'll
> never have to do a massive upgrade like RH9 to FC1 or Win2k to WinXP.
> Since package entry to testing is automated and not always synchronized
> I have to be a little careful (on desktop machines with KDE or other
> huge packages that sync poorly).  But I haven't had much trouble on
> servers.

I'm running Slackware,  no package automation stuff like those other distros 
have,  but no dependency hell either.  This is gonna be fun...

Guess I gotta start looking around for what drives I've got handy to install 
to.	:-)