Right I installed SUSE 10.0 on my work machine 3 years ago. I never bothered trying to update to 10.1 10.2 10.3 and recently tried to update to 11.0 which went wrong and I had to do a clean install.
The reason I upgraded is yast just wasnt updating anything any more. I could not install firefox 3, because all the dependencies were wrong and generally no new software would work with out going through a long list of upgrades.
Now that I’ve upgraded to 11.0 I can upgrade and install new software through YAST and my system is working nicely.
Right now what should I do to keep my system up to date. I know alot of people suggest doing a clean install but I dont have time or this at work, and I like my GUI set up in a certain way and I know I can back up .kde but just putting it straight back in doesnt always work.
Should I try upgrading to 11.1 ? To do this do I reboot and choice the upgrade option ?
11.1 is working really well here with kde4.2rc1 from the factory repos.
I would not recommend updating with the upgrade option. I would do a clean install but choose to not format /home in the advanced partition option.
There are a few niggles with 11.1 like the cdr problem
Somewhere along the line, I’m missing some about the upgrade procedure for SUSE the idea of having to do a clean install seems rather foolish to me.
For instance I have installed many pieces of software on /opt/ should I not be doing this ? Some even suggested installing here. Should I be doing this in my home area.
I am networked to serveral network drives including some sort of university samba driving again I have put all this data in /etc/fstab/.
This will all be lost if I do a clean install. I will then have to set it up again. I cant be doing this every couple of months at work.
There seems to be a certain feeling amongst the linux comminity that if something is working well then keep it -> “11.1 is working really well here”
However after a year or so install new software becomes almost impossible due to everything being out of date.
Although I obviously couldnt do my work from a windows PC this is something microsoft seem to have solved you dont need to keep reinstalling windows XP to install current software.
scu98rkr wrote:
> Although I obviously couldnt do my work from a windows PC this is
> something microsoft seem to have solved you dont need to keep
> reinstalling windows XP to install current software.
On the other hand, you have to reinstall Windows every 12-18 months to
keep it working at all.
It’s advised to keep all your documents in the /home directory (that’s on seperate partition)… along with anything else you might want to preserve during an upgrade.
Take a note of the programs you installed after a default install and simply installing it ‘fresh’ then installing the programs pretty much equals an upgrade and this how most people do it.
This seems to be way advised here the most often.
I suppose it’s also why windows has to do an upgrade better as application are spread out all over the disk and registry.
You could try the upgrade option the DVD install offers, but it isn’t exactly flawless… and of course always backup your documents first.
So if you have a lot of applications that aren’t in the repositories it’s a bit of pain.
I also use the ‘fresh’ install method with /home on a different partition, and the only thing I have to keep in mind is /srv/www/htdocs and to backup my MySQL database before an update.