Biting the bullet?

[M. Fioretti]

On 2015-05-11 18:40, jd1008 wrote:
> On 05/11/2015 12:45 AM, 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?
>> ....
>> 
> Well, for one thing, installing from scratch requires possibly a large
> number of config files, which would require remembering which ones
> they are, search for them in the backup and overwrite the newly 
> installed
> config files, or worse: merge them into the new config files, or go 
> through
> a painful edit to see what setting from the old make sense in the new,
> since not all settings in the old would make sense in the new.

I DO know and confirm that things are exactly like that, because,
as somebody else in this thread put it:

> It's not the upgrading process that's the problem. It's that the newer
> software tends to be broken in anything but the default configuration.

My point is simply that all this "remembering which old configuration 
files
should be reused, or painfully edited to merge them into the new ones" 
etc..

still is, in many real world cases, much less painful, frustrating, time 
consuming...

than forcing an obsolete system to morph into something else, all by
yourself, with nobody, from mailing lists to online tutorials, able
to help you. You get MUCH, MUCH more help and answers to questions like:

1) "I just installed the CURRENT version of this software. It doesn't do 
X,
  how can I configure it for that task too?"

than to questions like

2) "I have this 5-year old sw, with a config file in a format long 
abandoned,
how do I make it run just as it is, but in a totally new environment?"

because, if nothing else, when you ask type-1 questions there are way 
more
people online with the same questions, and the related answers, in the 
same
moment, than with type-2 questions.

That's why, in my experience, reinstalling from scratch, then "painfully 
editing"
ends up being quicker, more reliable and MUCH less painful than 
upgrades. At
least with upgrades that are NOT to the immediately next version.

Marco
-- 
http://mfioretti.com