8July2008
Upgrades are for people with a surfeit of time…
Posted by Christopher under: Linux & Open Source.
About a month ago I started reading Linux Hater. I have to admit I love it. It takes a few posts for the realisation to sink in that its actually written by someone who deeply cares about Linux, has a great deal of knowledge about the inner workings of a Linux distribution and actually wants it to succeed. He/She/They try to hide it beneath a barrage of bad language and breath-taking insults but its great to see someone voicing the anger which I’m sure some of us involved to any degree in Free Software all feel at times. A friend of mine who had a particularly awful experience with Linux recently (not Fedora thankfully, blame Lexmark) will no doubt enjoy it as much as I do. I think people who dismiss it immediately as insulting are missing the point. Linux Format magazine used to run a section (can’t remember the name) where an anonymous contributor voiced the fears and concerns that someone with a real name and face could not.
Anyway, I digress. I’ve read a lot of upgrade woes, relating to current distributions and their ability to complete and upgrade from a previous version. For anyone not understanding the process of upgrading an operating system I’ll say it once and only once.
It’s not simple, may well break and if you don’t feel confident doing it then don’t.
One reviewer even bemoaned the fact that a system once running FC5 didn’t handle the upgrade from F8 to F9 well. So here’s a clue to those who just want to use a computer and not struggle with post-upgrade installation issues.
Backup /home, /etc, & /var and do a fresh install. The time reconfiguring your O.S. will be greatly less than fixing broken dependencies, repositories, packages and other issues. You will then never need to post about how you don’t understand why a new distribution with new toolchain, kernel, package management system and desktop environment doesnt work out of the box.
