Hi all,

I have been a Mepis user since mid 2004, every time I would like to do a upgrade instead of a painful erase/re-install each time when new mepis is release, any one has any idea the best way to to an upgrade?

Kido

A lot has changed in Mepis since mid-2004. IMO you would be better to install the latest version (3.3.2) from scratch - it's no big deal, and you can preserve your /home partition and all your personal settings, data, etc.

Agree. In fact I need to do the same -- still using 3.3

actually if your using a 2004 version of mepis its actually safer than the 3.3.x releases, why? 2004 was based on testing, 3.3 is not its based on unstable, a lot is happening in unstable at the moment so hold off on that. now what you need to do is edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list as root, if you dont know how to do this, goto the run command and type kdesu kwrite /etc/apt/sources.list

now here is what the new sources needs to be
now open up a konsole and su to root
type these commands:

apt-get update
apt-get -t unstable install simplymepis
apt-get install aptitude
aptitude dist-upgrade

make sure to read what it wants to remove before saying yes to that last step. carefully consider if that is what you really want to do.
for anyone wondering, aptitude handles dependancies a lot better and is better for large upgrades than apt by itself.

My one experience w/ dist-upgrade was a total disaster, eventually had to wipe the partition & start over. Granted it was w/ Woody & did not involve aptitude.

For safety, if you want to try this, I recommend cloning your current install to new partition & doing the dist-upgrade on it. Run the 2 side by side for a month, then decide.