Biting the bullet?

[M. Fioretti]

On 2015-05-11 12:43, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> M. Fioretti wrote:
> 
>> Why not backup everything,
>> then completely ERASE the old installation, installing over it
>> the current version from SCRATCH, then configure it to work as you 
>> need?
>> 
>> Seriously. Wouldn't it be a much more reliable path, and consume much
>> less time in the end?
> 
> Briefly, No.

Hi Timothy,

By what you write later, I don't think a full "no" is correct. Your 
solution,
which I approve and sometimes do myself, is perfectly compatible with 
mine,
if not the same thing in practice.

What I REALLY wanted to say in my first email (and yes, I should have 
said it
better!) is that upgrades can be much more painful and slow than 
installing
from scratch and re-configuring the resulting new environment. 
Regardless of
whether the new install is done on the same disk/partition as the old 
one
(i.e actually erasing it, as I wrote) or on another one.

But of course in both cases, even if I didn't write it explicitly, it 
would
be stupid not to copy/reuse as-is, whenever possible, the configuration 
files
from the old installation.

Marco
> Surely we all have enough space on our disks nowadays
> to create a new partition, and install the new version there?
> This gives you a safety net, as you can go back to the old version,
> if things don't work out.
> Also, you can copy /etc/hosts and similar (with some care)
> from the old version.
> 
> I did this recently, with an ancient computer (Thinkpad T43),
> which I'd left in another house for a couple of years,
> and which was running an old version of Fedora, I think Fedora-16.
> I was quite surprised it still seems to work fine -
> the internal speaker is much louder than any of its successors,
> so it's better for listening to the news, etc.
> 
> 
> --
> Timothy Murphy
> gayleard /at/ eircom.net
> School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin

-- 
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