To upgrade or not to upgrade?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

As the title says, I’m wondering if I should upgrade my OpenSUSE 10.2 64bit to OpenSUSE 11.0 64bit. The situation here is quite complex though:
The first time I installed OpenSUSE 10.2, I had to spend a lot of time for configuration and settings just to make my hardware compatible with the OS. After some work, the OS now runs quite smoothly. Though due to imperfect emulation systems I still prefer dual boot Windows XP. The 11.0 version, though, looks very promising. At least a thing or two better than the current 10.2 (New KDE and stuff like that!). Getting the DVD won’t be much of an issue, but now partitions are what worries me. In the first install (I installed OpenSUSE 10.2 first), the partitions accidently got like this:

  1. 21 GB partition for / (too less)
  2. 157 GB partition for /home (too much)
  3. 53 GB partition for Windows (moderate)
    So after I instaled Windows XP (Gah, it overwrote GRUB!), I started using the /home partition for general storage. And now that partition has 44GB of data. That’s a bit too much to fit to the Windows partition! If I took only the needed data there, it would take approx. 25GB, that is, still not small enough to fit on the Windows partition (as it only has 18.8 GB available).
    Though I could make it fit by using DVDs and copying the rest of the files to my 2nd PC, is it worth it? Remembering how hard it was to configure everything in the first place, it doesn’t seem to be a good idea, but on the other hand, I’ve done it before and I now know how to configure everything (ALSA, ATI FGLRX etc.) so it shouldn’t take that long, and might be worth for later reinstallations (as this time I’d partition it to 4 partitions - one for storage only). So what do you think I should do? From what I’ve heard, a non-fresh install will cause more problems than will be of use, is that right?
2

I think I would move my data off the drive from /home, then delete /home and /. Then I would resize the windows partition. Then I’d do a fresh install. Or if the windows partition is large enough, I’d make a separate storage partition, then do a fresh Linux install on the remaining unallocated space.

3

My mother’s PC has a 32-bit openSUSE-10.2 and I plan to update her PC in January-2009, … possibly to openSUSE-11.1 … or possibly to 11.0.

The reason is Novell/SuSE-GmbH support for 10.2 stops around Oct/Nov timeframe this 2008 year.

As harryc56 noted, if you go into the advanced/expert settings during the install, and tell openSUSE NOT to reformat your /home, but rather mount it again as /home, this will help a lot in keeping your settings.

KDE4 in openSUSE-11.0 is very rough around the edges in terms of bugs and stability. Its more for developers and those souls who like the latest and greatest in cutting edge stuff and don’t mind the rough edges and bugs. If KDE4 is what you want, I recommend you wait until Dec-2008 and go with openSUSE-11.1.

On the other hand openSUSE-11.0 KDE-3.5.9 works great!! Zypper software package management is very fast (quicker than apt on other distributions). openSUSE-11.0 yast has superior tablet support, and there are neat things about 11.0.

If you have not done so already, time to purchase an external USB hard drive and backup all of your data.

I was once foolish enough to put alot of my home family videos/pictures off line on an external (fat32 formatted) hard drive, and then the external hard drive failed ! and of course, that was my only copy as I was in a “transitional” state of moving data around. Major disaster. I managed to recover all data with an MS-Windows data recovery tool. But since I did not have another external hard drive handy (and the wife was being obstinate and threatened the family veto if I purchased another hard drive to store the recovered data while waiting for the computer store to decide if they would honour the guarantee) I ended up recovering the data to 45+ dvds. 45+ !! The wife never heard the end of that, and she now allows me to purchase new external hard drives when I want (they are cheap!!).

openSUSE-11.0 has been out for almost a couple of months. Most bugs are now known. You could update to openSUSE-11.0 KDE-3.5.9 (or to gnome) … but if kde4 is what you want, wait until openSUSE-11.1.

If you decide to update, make copies (on to a usb stick or external hard drive) of your /boot/grub/menu.lst, /etc/X11/xorg.conf, /etc/cups directory, /etc/fstab, your bookmarks, email addresses, /etc/modprobe.d/sound … and many other configs of custom apps. Printed copies of the config files is useful. Have a print out handly of the output of: df -h #and also of: su -c ‘fdisk -l’ #so you know what structure you had in place before the openSUSE-11 install.

4

Don’t think I have patience to wait for the 11.1 :slight_smile: 11.0 sounds good enough already.
So, you mean OpenSUSE 11 will be quite happy with reformatting /home as another /home? But then again, I need another partition, like 100GB size, that would be for storage and shares between OpenSUSE, Windows XP and the secondary laptop. And the only place I can get those 100GB is from the /home partition… If only there was a way to resize partitions without reformatting them… But even if it was, I would need to make backups.
Hmm, KDE4 isn’t currently that good, eh? Ah well, I still want to try it. Plus, it will still take some time to download the huge DVD of OpenSUSE, and maybe in that time more patches and fixes will be distributed.
USB drives are sold only in very small sizes here in Lithuania… I do have 2 drives that can hold 1GB each though, but that’s apparently not enough. And as I said, I have a 2nd computer, a laptop, that I could use to store data (connected over wireless LAN). But it’s of old build and has a mere 30GB overall, and only 15GB available now. So not too much of use. Though having critical data on DVDs might be a good idea.
Thanks for the list of critical files, I’ll definitely back up these ones and others that I’ll need.

5

GreatEmerald wrote:
> Don’t think I have patience to wait for the 11.1 :slight_smile: 11.0 sounds good
> enough already.
> Hmm, KDE4 isn’t currently that good, eh? Ah well, I still want to try
> it.

you came here and asked advice on whether to upgrade to 11.0 or
not…and, you received GOOD advice to skip 11.0…

yet, you write you plan to ignore that good advice ???

i’m gonna try again: IF you wanna play with 11.0 and KDE4, grab
yourself a Live CD and play…but do NOT install it until you have used
the web forum’s search page <http://forums.opensuse.org/search.php> to
find all threads with any of these terms in the title

freez* OR locku* OR lock-u* OR crash* OR hang* OR KDE4

(that is, after putting the above in the “keyword(s)” blank, then SPIN
the just below selector to “Search Titles Only”)

if you do that, and do a LOT of reading i think you will find that:

  1. KED4 is EXPERIMENTAL software, it is NOT ready for real use…it is
    prone to LOTS of problems and is known to be unstable…[this is not
    “talking bad” about KDE, it is just FACT, the KDE development teams says
    so themselves]

  2. like all x.0 releases of major software i have EVER seen, 11.0 may
    just be the worst in introducing so many problems…

  3. on the other hand, some of both 11.0 and KDE4 is said to be SUPER!!

if you MUST diddle with your system i’d recommend you upgrade from 10.2
to 10.3, which is what i did, about a month or so ago…

if, however you soon go to SuSE 11.0 and KDE4.0 you will be greeted by
PLENTY of other unhappy users when you come back here for aid,
assistance and understanding…

i’m gonna try to remember “GreatEmerald” so when i see you come back
here with a truck load of woe, i can say: told you so.

–
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
A Texan in Denmark

6

:confused: What’s with all the harshness, DenverD? I didn’t say that I will definitely use KDE4. If it actually is experimental (I didn’t check this out yet), and if it does state in the installer that KDE4 is experimental and will cause a lot of problems, then sure, I’ll keep KDE3 and go on KDE4 on 11.1. I don’t see any problems here and any reasons to shout.

7

I know just what you mean about downloading dvd’s they are just too large. However if you do download the KDE4 version you will probably end up having to do what I did which is to seperately download the KDE3 libraries and files later (unless you can put up with KDE4 - I can’t). I am not sure, but this might add up to just as large a download as the DVD would be in the first place (I haven’t checked this - someone might know for sure).

I don’t think waiting for 11.1 is much of an option (unless you want to use the Alpha which is already out but probably not recommended if you want a stable platform rather than a testing one). Firstly it is not due for release until mid December and secondly there is a question mark over how much (if at all) KDE4 will have improved by then.

The lowest bandwidth solution to a sensible desktop on a new distribution these days is to download the Gnome version and (if you don’t like Gnome) add XFCE4 to it, which is very much better than KDE4 (though not quite as good as KDE 3.5.9). (thinking about it the Suse disk might include xfce by default I am not sure about that).

8

sorry, i don’t see any harshness or shouting…

perhaps it is because i’m sending via thunderbird and nntp…

no problem…there was no harshness in my intent…sorry you thought
there was…

of course, if you want KDE4 and v 11.0, go for it…

–
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
A Texan in Denmark

9

As far as I can see, there is only one option for download? Just the installation DVD? Isn’t the old KDE included there?
Well, although my bandwidth isn’t too high, but if I have patience and use torrents it will be done quite soon. Though if I will need to download KDE3 again, it might not be on a torrent and I might have some problems… (When my connection timeouts, I get corrupted data that destroys the download if it’s not on a torrent…)

DenverD, good to have this settled.

10

> installation DVD? Isn’t the old KDE included there?

yes, the DVD has kde3, kde4, gnome, and several others…(smaller, need
less resources, faster BUT less capable…is more than enough for some
folks)…

–
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
A Texan in Denmark

11

Yea, I know about the alternative window systems. And I might even consider installing one on my laptop, as it’s really old and can’t actually seem to work with WinXP any more… But sometime later.

12

I successfully upgraded 10.3 to 11.0 by wiping the root partition and leaving /home untouched. I did a backup of it just in case. I do not know if you can resize your partitions the way you want them. However, other than a faster Yast I can’t say I noticed anything new or ‘can’t live without this’ in 11.0. In other words, I don’t think I would have upgraded if I had known this. It was a lot of effort for little noticeable gain.

So my answer to your upgrade or not upgrading is: No, I wouldn’t bother if I was happy with my system. Upgrading NEVER goes as smoothly as it was planned. At least not my upgrading. :slight_smile:

Just my 2cts.

13

I think that is an excellent observation, and you make an excellent point.

I think everyone before updating should research what they hope to achieve, before taking the time and effort to update.

I am considering updating my mother’s PC (in Jan-2009) from openSUSE-10.2 KDE-3.5.x to either 11.0 KDE-3.5.9 or 11.1 KDE-3.5.10 ? (due in Dec-2009) because:
a. I want the faster zypper software package management, and
b. support for openSUSE-10.2 stops around Oct/Nov-2008. I want that support on my mother’s PC.

I updated my test PC from 10.3 to 11.0 because
(a) hard drive was dying, and
(b) I wanted to test 11.0

I’ve been playing with the KDE.org liveCD of openSUSE with KDE-4.1 (not to be confused with the Novell openSUSE-11.0 KDE-4.0 live CD). I am now tempted to update my main PC to 11.0 KDE-4.1 but I probably will not until either:
a. clean update path from 4.0.x to 4.1.x is well documented, and noted to be relatively trouble free, or
b. I wait until Dec-2009 openSUSE-11.1 DVD with hopefully a more stable KDE-4.1.x with out the need to do a 4.0 to 4.1 upgrade.

The reason I may update to 11.1 is I want KDE-4.1.x and I want the fast zypper package management, and I want the superior YaST tablet support in 11.0 (and also likely 11.1).

14

My point is: I want the support (almost nothing new is created for 10.2 now), see what’s new, the green skin (green is my favourite colour! :slight_smile: ), faster package management (At last!) and I already have downloaded almost half of the DVD!
Now I’m thinking that if I deleted the / partition, created a new one there, stored the data from /home, deleted /home, made 3 partitions from it, and I wouldn’t have that much to backup… But on the other hand it’s probably just easier to back up the files from /home to another drive/DVDs. But either way, I can’t leave /home partition as /home as that way it will still be left huge, instead of being split in 2. There’s no way to resize it without formatting it?

15

Major typo. This should read: “due in Dec-2008”.

16

Another typo. Freudian?? :rolleyes: Should read Dec-2008.

17

> 2. There’s no way to resize it without formatting it?

not sure, but i think you can resize without formatting…that is, you
can make a partition smaller without losing all data on that
partition…i think…

–
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315)
A Texan in Denmark

18

Would be very good if it was possible. Anything to confirm that?
Also, another idea… I could copy everything from the /home directory, 7zip it somewhere (first clean up to make it fit), delete /home and / partitions, make new /home, / and storage partitions, and then restore the 7zipped /home data to /home, and then install 11.0 over that?