I came from Windows 98 and would have continued using it, but soon found any upgrades to my existing software said it didn’t support Windows 98 anymore. I considered upgrading to Vista, but after reading their Terms Of Spying (TOS), I decided to check out Linux. I had some problems with understanding the new concepts, but have made some progress. I’m well pleased for the most part. Just having some issues I hope to get worked out.
I have upgraded from 11.1 to 11.2 and found a number of issues. Some of the biggest was mysock , which the preinstall said it would be moved to a different folder, but didn’t. I think I ended up modifying php.ini to point to the old folder. Some of the comments were that the upgrade does not always go cleanly and that’s why they always do a clean install. This also enables you to check out the new system and still be able to use the old while working out any issues.
I’ve obtained 11.3 many months ago, found it works great with my ATI card and so don’t expect having to go through all the trouble of compiling things to get the system to work as I did with the previous two versions. Still, I need to use my system and don’t want down time while fiddling with it. And, since there seem to be significant changes, I’m worried a regular upgrade may not upgrade everything let alone fixed the problems from before.
I have several partitions. Which the upgrade to 11.2 had a problem with and I had to do something with follow hard symbol links before upgrading. I spent a lot of time before 11.1 trying to decide how many partitions to use and then it seemed like it caused problems. So, now I don’t know what I should have, but it’s looking like I need another set for the new system. I’m thinking you have a current set, a new set, and then when it works, you switch over and the old set becomes the next new set. Needing some help here knowing what I should have for partitions and the general idea of how to use them to install/upgrade and switch over.
Maybe another issue, but directly connected is how do I get my software and user data switched over or upgraded. I see in my home directory (separate partition), there is .kde and .kde4 and believe there are some leftover things that are interfering. For instance, I can’t run dolphin in superuser mode most times and if it does work, it takes a long time. Typing things like kdesu kwrite also takes a long time to come up. I used another drive to look at 11.3 and superuser mode comes up right away. How do I clean out all the dot things without losing user settings of relevant software I’m going to be using on the new system?
I’ve also installed software that looked good from the list, but sometimes nothing is installed on the menu. Looking at the YAST file list, I see commands that can be executed from the command line (though I’ve been cautioned that’s not always a good thing to do). Some commands are useful, but some are forgotten. How do I know what software I’ve installed versus what is part of 11.2 or 11.3 so I can make sure I install it on the new system too.
A more relevant example is mysql. I can think of it now, but what if there are things that are necessary which I don’t think of? Do I wait until error messages to know I need them or is there some way to get everything ready ahead of time without installing software of 11.2 which I may never have used and isn’t on 11.3? In Windows, I used an install software which kept track of what I installed. Is there something for Linux?
Thanks for any help