Just got my copy of 9.2 from BestBuy last night, and have been itching to install it on both my desktop (HP 742c Pavillion) as well as my laptop (IBM T40).
The question is this:
Should I simply insert and upgrade, or should I go with a clean install. I have a number of updated programs, i.e. Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc. and would rather not loose them, but in the interest of keeping everything running smoothly, I would rather reinstall them instead of working on a less-than-stable platform.
Any comments/suggestions?

I had nothing but problems doing an upgrade. I would suggest a fresh install.

If you have not installed any 3rd party packages and have maintained your RPM's from official SuSE releases for your 9.0 box then you should not encounter any serious issues with an upgrade session. However, if conditions are otherwise then I would agree with amfoster and strongly suggest that you go for a clean system. It will save you many headaches.

My 2 cents: Personally, I *always* go with a clean install. If nothing else, the older version may be using packages that have been discontinued and/or otherwise are not part of the newer version, and there's no real point in retaining them. An upgrade process may remove them, but maybe not, and there's no point in holding on to stuff that you no longer need and won't be using. -- J.W.

I agree that a full format and upgrade is usually a safer way to install an os, however on my machine I have a database, multiple servers, a couple of dev environments and some funky stuff with a triple headed matrox video card.

Obviously I don't want to reinstall all of that, so I thought I'd try the upgrade first just to see. I have to say I'm very impressed. Not only did the video card keep itself together, but my personal firewall settings are also still doing fine.

I do have to re-install my cisco vpn kernel, but you have to do that everytime you change kernels. The upgrade process was fast, very easy and I'm pleased with the end result.


Jason Henriksen

I had problems with updates back in the 7.x and 8.x days, but have had great success with 9.x updates.