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Ditto on that, I always do clean installs, and load back my data etc from backup. Richard A Sharpe Database Analyst and Administration (DBA) Sqlserver/DB2 Amherst Technologies 40 Continental Blvd Merrimack, NH 03054 PHONE .......(603) 579-6180 / (800) 431-8031 Cell phone ..(603) 320-7785 FAX ...........(603) 578-1072 EMAIL .......rsharpe@amherst1.com / Webpage ...www.amherst1.com "Tenemos que tener fe" ("We must have faith")
-----Original Message----- From: Jerry Feldman [mailto:gaf@blu.org] Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 10:22 AM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: Re: [SLE] Can of Worms: 8.0 to 8.2 - Upgrade or Clean?
On Mon, 05 May 2003 06:17:16 -0700 CMF
wrote: I just received my 8.2 Pro and I'. wondering about the virtues of an upgrade vs. clean install. I would like to keep my stuff going (esp. the DVD player), but I want to make sure that an upgrade install will allow the new HW rcognition. I think that Marion had a good reply, but... I personally prefer doing a clean install regardless of the OS (SuSE Linux, Commercial Unix, Windows...). One reason is that over time some configuration files tend to change. Additionally, one tends to accumulate other things in the root file system. And, while SuSE does a pretty decent job with upgrades, you can sometimes have a mixed bag.
Again, back up your /home and /usr/local directory trees. For the most part, they should be separate partitions independent of the OS, but we've had this discussion.
Then make sure you save your other config files. I personally like to install into a fresh available partition so I can test the new version first. On my laptop, I do not have enough space to have 2 root partitions, but on my desktop, I do and install to that partition. This however can cause some problems with things like KDE. I had installed 8.0 on my desktop in a separate partition. I did not like the installation, but when I booted back into 7.3, my desktop would not work under 7.3 (KDE2). I eventually repaired it, installed SuSE 8.1 on the spare partition. I found that it was good (with Sendmail), so I made it the default. By doing it this way, I always have a known good system. If, for some reason I trash my primary OS, I always have an OS I can boot into. -- Jerry Feldman
Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9