Dist-upgrades and non-standard packages
 

Hello everyone!

Does anybody know what happens to non-standard packages that are installed in a linux system after some full online distro-upgrades (i.e. Ubuntu 8.04 >> 8.10 >> 9.04 or Fedora 9 >> 10 >> 11)? A non-standard package is, I believe, every package that is not included in the official repositories of the distribution. So, one can install from extra repositories changing the sources.list file or install a standalone program discovered somewhere in the Internet or install a commercial linux program. What happens to all of them after an online dist-upgrade? What happens to the system? Does sources.list file change or it stays with the changes for the extra repositories?

Thanks!

You really have to read about each distribution, and each upgrade of each distribution, separately. I know that when I tried FC 10 a while back the release notes on their web site said that any graphic card drivers would be deconfigured during a version upgrade.

Release notes for each distribution/version will usually talk about the kinds of issues that interest you.

I have used some non-standard packages and never encountered any problems with them. If the package doesn't correspond to an official one and if all its dependencies are unaffected by your dist-upgrade then, it shouldn't have any effect on these packages. AFAIK, in Debian at least, the sources.list is changed manually and not by any upgrade.
cheers,
jdk

OK! Thanks for the information!