Hiya,

I've been a Redhat/Fedora user for a long time, although I've used all of the major distributions. I've stuck with RH simply because it is one of the most supported OS's, and I like to be able to resolve issues quickly.

Unfortunately, I'm very dissapointed with the process of upgrading from one version to another... well, there really isn't any way to do it reliably (it's really not even possible with FC3->FC4).

So, although I've "saved" a lot of time using a popular OS, I'm frustrated with the time wasted as I have to reinstall the OS every few months to get the latest and greatest.

So my question is... do any of the major distros have any reliable and stable way of upgrading between versions? If so, tell me a little bit about how they do it!

Thanks,
Justin

This has been vexing me too - the only upgrade (to next distro version) is a fresh install. Though, with preparation, the fresh install won't erase existing partitions.

I don't know any distro (of anything) where an upgrade is entirely painless. Generally, the point of producing a next version is because of a significant change in the way things are done. However, there is the question of why the upgrade... is there something in the next version that you desire and is not available for the current one. It is usually possible just to keep the kernel, gcc and libraries up to date to get the latest widgets and apps. AT least for a long time ... I have FC2 and will next upgrade for FC4 - since there will be significant change this time and it would take a very long time to update everything I got now.

I believe that Gentoo and Debian (and distros based off these) have the easiest upgrade pat. Gentoo: emerge world. Debian: apt-get dist-upgade.

I'd also like to plug Slackware - I am currently running Slackware-Current via Swaret - easy-peasy

I have to agree with XavierP, Debian or Gentoo are two of the easiest distros to upgrade. That is because of the focus of the distro. Red Hat/Fedora does their releases like most commercial OSes do: by release, whereas Debian and Gentoo (probably others, but these are the only two I have enough experience to say for sure) make releases just to keep new installs from taking so long (have to go grab the latest packages if install media is out of date).

Otherwise they simply "move forward". The philosophy of a distro is very important too. Debian strongly emphasizes stability whereas Gentoo offers incredible control over how your distro is built and maintained.

I myself used Fedora Core 1 extensively (still do on a few systems) and loved it. Then I moved a work desktop from FC1 to FC3 by the usual backup, format, install method and after a while just wasn't pleased with it. I knew I would have to turn around and repeat the process in about six months. I wanted a distro that would just let me continue to update what I had installed without having to play the format game.

Gentoo to the rescue.

I would suggest trying multiple distros as there are many like XavierP said that are based off of Debian. I can't speak for Slackware, but that's where I started.

Best of luck.

No experience with Gentoo, but I can vouch for Debian's ease of upgrading. It is seamless.

Gentoo and Debian, and those distros based on these, are called "meta-distros". Meaning that they can easily be kept current at all times with simple commands using their package managers. They use a "rolling release" method.

RPM based distros, besides the dependency hell, are "fixed distros" meaning every time you need to upgrade, you have to install an upgrade or do a fresh install.

This is one of the many reasons so many people are moving away from RPM and towards the meta-distros.

Slack falls somewhere in between as it really doesn't use a package manager scheme at all. Being a pretty much manual type distro upgrades are simply a matter of installing only those packages that have changed in order to remain current and this can easliy be done as you go along. Tools like swaret, slackpkg, and slapt simple do some of the manual work for you, but as Slack is really meant to done done manually, you can run the risk of borking your system if you use these without some care.

Also ArchLinux, as Gentoo, is a metadistribution in that 'versions' are just a frozen point in time where they decide it's stable enough. There is NEVER a need to reinstall for upgrading. You could take an ArchLinux disc of 0.4, install and run 'pacman-Syu' and be completely up to date. That's what I love about it. I do a 'pacman -Syu' daily, and I am ALWAYS up to date.

As another plug, installing/removing software is very easy as well.

To install xmms, gaim, and xchat:
"pacman -S xmms gaim xchat"

To search for anything related to xmms (plugins, codec, etc)
"pacman -Ss xmms"

To Remove XMMS (and it's unnecessary dependancies)
"pacman -R xmms"

Easy as pie, somewhat reminiscent of Gentoo's 'emerge' but it uses i686 optimized binaries, and is very fast. In all honesty, I found Arch to be significantly faster on my 2.4GHz Pentium 4 notebook than Gentoo with P4 optimizations, and I don't even have to wait for the compile times!

Hope this helped

Yeah I forgot to mention Arch in that meta-distro group. I guess it's because it's one of the few I haven't tinkered with yet. Come to think of it, I think I'll install it now and play around with it some.

hehe.. cool.. I hope you like it.. be sure to come visit us in #archliux as well

I second Arch. I just started using it a few weeks ago. Its very nice. It reminds me of Slackware with superior package managment(Don't kill me Slackers).

Luckily we Slackers are very secure people and don't mind if anyone doesn't like the best way of doing things Slack has pkgtool (installpkg foo, removepkg foo, upgradepkg foo) with the only drawback being that it has no dependency management, we have Slapt-get which is apt-get for Slackware and we have my personal favourite Swaret.

XavierP,

No intention of being rude, but slapt-get and swaret are both 3rd party package management tools that frequently break systems. At least that is my experience. I hear about an equal number of people who destroy their systems with them as I do people who love them. Of course, the majority of the people who break their systems with it are the ones who don't read the docs and don't read Pats CHANGELOG lol..

I was also curious as to whether it was an intended pun or just a percieved one.. "Luckily we Slackers are very secure people.." hehehe... Though it is generally a true statement..

Unintentional pun. True, there are lots of people who break their systems with Swaret and Slapt-get, happened to me once - I installed Slack 9.1 to a laptop and then upgraded to 10.0. About halfway through the install I remembered that 9.1 used Xfree86 and 10.0 used Xorg. Ooops! Only did it once though

Another vote for Arch. Hmmm, seems to be getting fairly popular around here...

And search the forums halo14, plenty ofpeople have broken their systems with pacman as well

the only problem I heard of people having with pacman is the upgrade to kde 3.4 from 3.3, however, I installed kde 3.4 beta WAY before it was released, and had no problems updating to any of the updated versions..

I know any tool can cause problems..i just made the point because places like IRC #slackware are frequently filled with people saying "I used <swaret, slapt-get, etc..> to update, now I can't even boot!!" or something similar..

I have used slackware, and actually and dual booting it with arch right now.. and using swaret.. but.. I do it with caution and preparation and not willy-nilly installing and upgrading things without first reading the changelogs and stuff..