On Wednesday 05 October 2005 08:08 pm, Mark A. Taff wrote:
All,
Being relatively new to apt4suse, and with openSuSE 10 coming out tomorrow, I have a few questions perhaps some apt guru would be kind enough to respond to.
1. From 9.3, would a dist-upgrade give me a suse10 system for all practical purposes?
2. What are the benefits for doing regular dist-upgrades versus reinstalling from scratch as each new version of suse come out?
Hello Mark, Don't know as I qualify as an apt guru but have been using apt for several years now. I upgraded from 8.0 to 8.1 to 8.2 successfully using apt. (Bought 9.0 and 9.2) ( SuSE should have some financial support) It is a hassle depending on whether there are any major changes in the format of the distro. (2.4 to 2.6 kernel as an example) YES, it is possible to upgrade from 9.3 to 10. using apt. You will have to wait for the 10.0 repository to be posted and then change your sources.list to 10.0. It could be easy - it could be hard, depending on how much things have changed within the distro. It will be successful though, depending on your patience and desire. The REAL value in apt is keeping your current distro up to date. I am running 9.2 but it is as current (and maybe more so) than most 9.3 versions out there. That includes the kernel, kde, qt, etc. etc. My 9.2 does not even remotely resemble the original install. That is the apt advantage. Right up to date with the latest and greatest. I expect that the changes in 10.0 will show up as upgrades to 9.2 and 9.3 eventually. When I did the 8.2 to 9.0 with the boxed set I did the upgrade install. Was a little better than upgrading via apt, but not much. When I did the 9.2 install I did a new "clean" install. Much nicer and no leftover stuff mucking things up, but of course I had to restore all of my "special" stuff. Much easier though and less troublesome. My philosophy has changed. Rather than having the latest distro I am content with having the older one with all of the advantages of the newer one by continuous updating with apt. We will see soon if 10.0 is really that much better and if apt can make it comparable. When it really comes time to upgrade to a new version I would buy the new ofering or wait for the posting of the new version, download it, and install it "clean". Been there - Done that Bob S