On Wednesday, February 28, 2018 11:41:34 PM David Christensen wrote: > There are two schools of thought for Debian major version upgrades: > > 1. Do an in-place upgrade. > > 2. Do a fresh install and migrate. > > > Years ago, I tried the former. Invariably, I ran into problems I could > not trouble-shoot and ended up with systems that I had no confidence in. > Yours is just another in an unending stream of posts demonstrating > that my experience was not unique, and still persists. I can only > conclude that an in-place upgrade of something as complex as a real, > working, and productive Debian system is an exercise in futility. > > > So, now I do the latter. This is facilitated by, and integrated into, > my backup/ restore, archive, and imaging processes. I have confidence > in the results.
+1 I'm not sure it's really an exercise in futility, but it is somewhat "scary". Several times I've read the upgrade notes (not sure of the right name) about the gotchas that you have to deal with before, during, and after the upgrade and decided that the hassle was just not worth it. What I typically do is install the new OS to a new (at least new to me) computer and run it in parallel for some period of time until (1) I have confidence that everything works and until I've moved all my "real user files" (photos, videos, documents, ....) from the old to the new. I then start to gather the parts for my next new computer by watching places like Newegg, TigerDirect, ebay, and sometimes yard sales, Craigslist, and similar for sales and bargains. I used to be able to get the parts for a not completely state of the art computer for about $200, buying the case, power supply, RAM, and hard drive separately (but I often buy the CPU and motherboard as a combination). I have noticed that I don't find sales quite as good, especially on RAM, motherboards and CPUs, so I expect my next computer might be closer to $300 or slightly more. Another possibility is to buy a "refurbished" system (I'm not sure what "refurbishment" gets done maybe just a good (I hope) cleaning. Now I have cases that I happy with in terms of side (mid to small size towers) so I no longer look for new cases--just empty the case and put new parts in.
