How often to re-install Linux?
 

Hey! I don't think this is the most common forum, but I figured this should be here anyway, so those who read/respond: Thank You!

Forum Question:
How often have you had to re-install your distro (not by choice of upgrade or to try a new one out, but because aspects/all just... quit) ??


My history:
I've been M$ free for a few years now, and I be lovin' the Linux since my SuSE 8.2 days. I still use SuSE (at 9.2 now) on my main/home computer.

An old P2 at work was running SuSE 9.1 but it bombed out after an interruped network update and I, lacking many other ideas/options, I put on Mepis 3.3. I love that, too, but it gives me many errors at home so I am sticking with SuSE.

But my SuSE machine seems to die a slow death every 5 months, making me reinstall the most recent freely-available version about a month before the next (i.e. 9.3) is downloadable. This last round, my trashcan died, then Gaim died, then Firefox, then Kopete (that turned out to be a protocol/MSN thing)(ok, close to M$-free ;) )... reinstall time!

This last reinstall wasn't the first. I tried reinstalling/upgrading everything via YaST, but it solved nothing. I tried to delete the hidden config/folders in /home: still nothing. Then i was out of ideas and a reinstall was just easier.

My Mepis hasn't died at all yet, but I get nervous touting Linux to others (who are often less saavy) when *I* need to reinstall rather often. Even a spyware-riddled M$ pc can still tick along, slowely. Is it just too many different sources for my SuSE to handle cleanly? Is reinstall a common thing? I sometimes get the feeling that either:
a. People try so many distros that nothing has time to break, or
b. I do more tinkering with application installs than those who don't fall under (a)

What is the LQ reaction out there? (I'm not looking for help w/ SuSE, I'm looking for stability/reinstall stories, from both the good and the bad sides)

Thnaks, LQ'ers!! Always been the best!

I had a version of Slackware 7.1 that I manually kept updating for about 2 or 3 years at one time.. I think the time it finally died.. Slackware was on version 9.1. So myself being the awesome admin that I am.. I don't do reinstalls unless I have to.. ;)

never

when you get it working and secure just leave it alone and it will work till the hardware dies without any degraded performance

Maybe you should look into Debian. Thanks to its package management system it's possible to reinstall less often than other distros.

all of my reinstalls since I started using slackware have either been due to hardware failure or me wanting to try another distro.

once I reinstalled slackware on my server because it was acting funny and bad stuff was happening, however, it solved no problems and I discovered that my problems came from a combination of overheating and electromagnetic interference.
this same server had its motherboard catch fire shortly before this happened, even that didn't require a reinstall, I just got a new mobo and processor and everything went fine.

the other time, I got sick of slackware (always working and not giving me too much to do) and installed debian, as it was the last major distribution for me to try, this is the only time I had to reinstall because of distro failure, but it was completely my fault. my second install of debian has been running happily on for months now.

it froze once, but that was because the cpu fan FELL OFF.. my hardware problems never end....

When i was using mandrake and redhat at the beginning, i was reinstalling often. As i discovered linux by myself without no help, i used to try anything to master the system.
Root account can do the worse things when you are still a newbie :).

I don't reinstall unless i have to, i stick to debian on the laptop and at work and to freebsd at home. No way i reinstall, especially on freebsd, my pc is old and i don't want to compile that much to bring the system up2date :).

That is kinda what I figured: I need to learn more to prevent the reinstall issues. But after two years with SuSE i am amazed how stuff breaks still, and nothing I can do (including RPM package management) seems to want to make it work!

I've been really happy and impressed with Mepis/Debian apt tools tho.

No one has any bad stories to share!?

Don't know what you may think but I use FreeBSD and Slackware to learn about the way of running
Linux and BSD and tend to have at least a Debian box running and a Mandrake one, which has never
let me down so far (knock on wood).
I break everything twice a week or more on Slack, but each time I try something I take notes and can get back to a previous *stable* state. I take notes on different notebooks. I have my Debian one, my Slack one (bigger than the others) and a small Mandrake one.
And I read books all the time, don't understand much at first, but I try what is suggested and sometimes get it to work. I also know people at the local LUG, they are a crazy friendly bunch !
:D

I have not used SuSE for years, but it seemed fine to me for about a year. I recently bought 9.3 pro and obviously did an upgrade. More time is going to be needed on this but I have no problems yet with any SuSE.

I still run RH 7.3 on my home system and it was upgraded from 6.2 which was working fine for quite a while. Never a problem except a few hard drive failures. I just put in another one and continue on with no reinstall due to the raid partitions.

The machine has only been rebooted for three hard drive replacements, and the other times were power failure. I started to log uptimes to a file a while back and it looks like this...

256 days
58 days
16 days
5 days
10 days
33 days
20 days
57 days
26 days
67 days
11 days
191 days

Currently at 37 days

Those power outages are a bummer.

No problems with the system. It does not need to be rebooted or reinstalled ever.

This machine has never locked up.

Compaq Deskpro 400MHz

I only reinstall when I wanna resize my partitions (but another drive has probably stopped that for now). My Gentoo install was from just before 1.4 came out and I reinstalled this March because I changed my partition arrangement (wanted to install a 4th OS). If I didn't do that, who knows?

I hardly reinstall my main distro unless something catstrophic has happened. I try by all means to avoid reinstalling, because it takes up a lot of time, to configure things the way they were before.

If you are organized, it doesn't take all that time to reset your computer the way it was.
As for me, I have little notebooks in which I keep records of everything I *tweak/improve/hopelessly break*
So, I reinstall veeeery often, because I still want to learn everything I can, so I break my test-system all
the time. It is a choice..:p
cheers

I haven't reinstalled on my desktop in over 3 years. It started with redhat 7 and has been upgraded to redhat8, redhat9, fc1,fc2,and now fc3. It has bits and pieces from other distros and tweaked along the way. Can't say it is a true Redhat/FC Setup. If I had to restart I don't think I could get it back to the way I like it now.

Notebook is a different story. Same procedure but hardrive was dying a few months ago. Installed a new one and a fresh copy of fc3. Got to experience the problems other had with a clean install. Never knew the all the isues fc3 caused since upgrading never caused these issues. Got it back to close as what I had before, but always missing a small utility or something along the way. But is very close to what I had before. In my spare time I compare files from the bad drive to the new drive to see what changes have changed and stayed over the time.

Brian1

I have been using SUSE since 6.2 (or 6.1, I can't remember ;) ). Reinstallation was never required. I ran a 7.2 samba server for 2 years, sometimes rebooted for kernel updates, but otherwise never touched it. Then I updated to 8.2. I do not maintain this server anymore, but I think it is still running.

The nice thing about Linux is that even if you really messed up your kernel, you can still repair it without re-installation.

I do keep a record of whats on the computer etc, but its just the effort of reinstalling and getting it to a previous state, that I can't be bothered with. Its a few hours that I could spend doing other things. I have a seperate system for experimenting with stuff, so I don't mind if things break or reinstalling on that one.