I’m thinking of downloading the whole OpenSuSE 11.2 DVD ISO and installing this weekend when I rebuild my systems. I know it’s prerelease software but from using the CDs I’m finding it really stable and considering I also use Arch it doesn’t bother me having the occasional crash.
Is it possible to upgrade 11.2 to the final when it’s released without having to download the DVD ISO or reinstall again, I’ve never done this with OpenSuSE, does it just download updates from the repos and continue doing so after the final is released or do I have to change anything?
As long as you have a separate /home partition, and don’t compile a lot of your own software, I don’t think there’s that much to be gained from upgrading vs just re-installing the OS.
As long as you’re careful during the partitioning process, that is. You have to make certain that your new version gets installed on the same partition as your old one was, and that the old /home partition gets mounted on /home
If all goes well after the new install your desktop will look the same and all your user data will still be intact.
Yes this is what I will do if not (I do compile a lot of my software but that’s no bother I’ve got a few scripts I’ve made over the years to speed this up).
I’m simply wondering if I download OpenSUSE 11.2 M7 will it automatically update to the newest development releases and then change it’s identity to final when it is actually released?
You don’t know what you’re saying :O. People, like me, running NFS, NIS, and FTP-server, a webserver, dozens of mysql databases, having hundreds of users and samba-users, would loose about everything that was configured. Those configs are not in /home, they are in /etc, which would be overwriten following your advice.
And yes, you should be able to upgrade. Simply insert the DVD, boot from it, and go for the option ‘Upgrade installed system’. That way you precious settings would be preserved.
Most respectfully, users like you that are sophisticated enough to be customizing configuration scripts in /etc are almost certainly smart enough to back up those files before reinstalling, and are unlikely to post a question about how the upgrade procedure works.
In my experience, the upgrade procedure tends to get confused when you have packages installable from multiple repositories, and it’s always been far simpler for me to install the new version and then recompile the 4 or 5 programs I use that are not in any repo. For a new, or “plain vanilla” user, this is what I recommend, because it has worked well for me in the past.
YMMV, of course.
As an aside, has the “Upgrade” option improved enough that it no longer has a problem with the same package being present in two or three different repositories?