I am currently running OpenSuse 11.2 still having problems with sound, CD-burning and the like being a total newbie. But I am also a very curious person.
So my questions are: Is it
a) advisable to upgrade to the latest version when there are still problems to solve in the old version and after quite some work the most important functions are up and running
b) is it possible technically speaking to upgrade directly from 11.2 to 11.4 without risking too much.
Hello and welcome to our community.
Let’s start
a) I suggest you to upgrade to 11.3. 11.4 in my opinion is not ready and it has many bugs.
b)See answer a.
It’s always technically possible to upgrade from one version to another. The ease with which that happens can be another story though (that meaning, whether you do an upgrade in-place or a re-install can make things easier or harder for you, depending on the situation).
If it were me, I would take a backup of your /home directory, and anything else on the system that you deem as important before starting anything – “just in case”. Then you can try an upgrade – if that doesn’t work, then just install 11.4 from scratch. Have you done a lot of customization to your 11.2 install (that is, added a lot of additional software beyond the default, setup things like samba, a print server, etc)? Those configurations and settings might make it through an upgrade, but would have to be reconfigured with a re-install for sure.
I guess my best advice to you is – back up the things that you think are important (like /home, etc) then it’s up to you whether or not to do an upgrade or a re-install.
I disagree with stamos a bit — I have been running 11.4 since the day it came out and it’s been rock solid – for ME. Much more so than 11.3 and 11.2 were for the limited amount of time that I used them. System is snappy, KDE version is good (as well as the GNOME version, if you use that). Sure there are a few little bumps here and there, but nothing major IMHO – think of 11.4 as having bumps vs some of the older versions as having mountains to overcome.
Also you could always try one of the liveCD’s first just to make sure that you aren’t going to get any nasty surprises once you upgrade.
> So my questions are: Is it
>
> a) advisable to upgrade to the latest version when there are still
> problems to solve in the old version and after quite some work the most
> important functions are up and running
Some problems will be solved, and some new problems will appear
> b) is it possible technically speaking to upgrade directly from 11.2 to
> 11.4 without risking too much.
Via DVD upgrade, yes. Via live upgrade, possibly, but unsupported.
> Any comments are welcome
It is advisable to test the new version on another partition before
committing to upgrade, and do a full backup before going ahead.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
setting up 11.4 on a new partition for testing is a very good idea. I have quite a lot of disk space in my /home partition of 11.2. I think it should be no problem to make it smaller in order to accommodate 11.4?
What about sound and CD-burning in 11.4? Have there been improvements for newbies? I am asking because I have never managed to burn a CD or plug in USB headphones that muted the loudspeakers and let me listen the music from inside.
Burning CDs is easy on any version of openSUSE What software did You try to burn the CDs with ?
As for the question with headphones I guess this might be some misconfiguration issue. The alsa packages are newer in 11.4 so the problem might be solved there out of the box but it might as well be the same as on 11.2. If You want to solve that problem I suggest starting a new thread in the multimedia or hardware subsection.
On 2011-04-08 08:06, Nikolaus98 wrote:
>
> Hi Carlos,
>
> setting up 11.4 on a new partition for testing is a very good idea. I
> have quite a lot of disk space in my /home partition of 11.2. I think it
> should be no problem to make it smaller in order to accommodate 11.4?
My experience in resizing a partition is very limited, others can advise
you better with that. My test partitions are about 8 GiB, smallish; but I
plan for it on the initial partitioning.
My resizing method is old fashioned: I backup, delete, re-make, restore
from backup O:-)
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
