I have been using OpenSuse 10.3 for years. Now decided to upgrade to 11.3 (current latest).
My current box connected and configured with so many peripherals and software:
DLink wireless router,
HP Printer (networked),
Cannon scanner through USB,
Zoiper VOIP telephony application,
etc. etc.
Anyway, my question is whether it is recommended to upgrade straightforward from 10.3 to 11.3 ? Is there any known issues that I might be encountered after upgrade installation (e.g. loosing any previous data, configuration etc.).
There could be potential problems but there would be a number of old configuration files and obsolete applications around.
If you can I’d backup / (root) and /home Then do a clean format and clean install of 11.3 using the ext4 filesystem, assuming your system has separate partitions for / (root) and /home. At the least you should backup /etc and /var, /srv if you’re running servers. Then you can copy your /etc/hosts* and other configuration files to the new 11.3 system or compare the differences between the old and new configuration files.
Extra stuff in /home can also affect the system, IIRC when I did an upgrade from 10.3 to 11.1 the old alsa configurations files in /home/userid conflicted with the new PulseAudio system. Even though PA is still an appl looking for users
If you are using KDE, there are likely to be issues related to upgrading from 3 to 4; some KDE applications play nicely and will accept KDE3 settings etc. Others will expect some manual hand-holding; for example, you will need to place your hidden KWallet file in the appropriate KDE4 directory.
I have been using OpenSuse 10.3 for years. Now decided to upgrade to 11.3 (current latest).
You are one of those (like me) who are keeping a running system for quite some time. In this situation you may consider to wait until March 10 2011 and install 11.4. This would gain some 8 additional months of support and updates. Other than this I second what has been said: make a fresh install and configure from scratch. Then import user data from a backup. Even there watch out for formats which have changed (e.g. MySQL).
