DebianThis forum is for the discussion of Debian Linux.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
I'm running for more than 2 years a Fedora Linux distribution on my server. The first install of the system was with FC6 and I did upgrades for every new release of the system until 9.
For each system upgrades I got troubles when rebooting the first time. It was always about the initrd image that had wrong libc librairies or so. Fedora is a system a hard to upgrade but with some efforts I could always manage to make it.
Recently I tried to upgrade from Fedora 9 to 10 and, without surprises, the system could not boot anymore. I tried to fix the innitrd but no way. I asked support in several forums, but nobody from the Fedora community could support me to fix this initrd issue.
By looking at the Fedora documentation I discovered the official recommendation was to reinstall the system, not upgrade it.
I personally consider that a good unix-like system is a system that offers a way to upgrade from one release to another and supports it.
So I decided to move away from Fedora and to choose another linux distribution for my server.
During my studies I ran a "Potato" version of Debian and I was quite satisfied with it. I'm also looking at CentOS (to keep my habits with RPMs).
So here are my questions:
Is the Debian distribution fully supporting system upgrade from one release to another ?
If yes, will this philosophy be kept for future releases ?
Those questions are important to me. I want to choose a linux system to run it for at least the next 10 years. I want to do one and only one fresh-install: the first one.
Of course, I'll manage configuration files changes etc...
Yes, Debian does rolling upgrade's very well and will continue to do so. I've done three in a row (Woody --> Sarge --> Etch --> Lenny) on my machine with no major glitches (read the release notes before upgrading). My only snafu during the recent Etch to Lenny upgrade was with my MythTV setup. I had to update the firmware for my Hauppauge PVR-150 card in /lib/firmware and I had to reset the mythtv user and password on the MySQL database used for Myth. Otherwise, no issues at all. My wife didn't even notice I had upgraded the system...
I think Debian does a good job making the upgrade path as problem-free as possible. I've got a machine on its third release and I've never reinstalled.
But nothing is perfect. Many people feel it is easier to do a fresh install when updating from one stable release to another, but it certainly not generally required. I assume you're aware of the "Debian way" of releases - stable, testing, etc. If you run stable, there basically are no updates (except bug fixes and security updates) for the entire life of the release. There is no fixed schedule between releases - the new release comes out when the bugs are fixed. If you run Testing and keep up with the ongoing updates, it's really more of a continuous process.
I use sidux...which is a kind of mild form of sid...which is a continuous rolling release...once install you do not need to ever download another install cd/dvd
The disadvantages are (imho)
- you will never have patched security issues....but you always run the latest software so never get a chance of new exploits hanging around long
- there will be times when packages are on hold...because package A has updated but relies on B which is not yet updated
sidux can get around some of these issues due to a team watching sid breaks and putting out warning messages and h2 uses a script called smxi which is the most painless updating I have ever done...get me a new kernel/software/ free and that other stuff.
You can normally upgrade Debian between releases with few issues. On my desktop I installed Debian Sid back when Woody was stable, its still chugging along just fine, even after a motherboard/cpu/ram change.
At work, despite awful network conditions (updates are through the network), I managed to upgrade the server from Mandriva 2007.1, to 2008, to 2008.1, to 2009.0, without any problems aside those due to the bad network; and even then, the system was always in a bootable state to upgrade one step further as allowed by the network… Sometimes almost unbelievable if you want my opinion.
All in all, among the PCs I manage with Mandriva, and those with Debian, I had much more trouble when upgrading Debian. On the other hand, with Debian too, I never was locked out of the system.
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.