Upgrade or reinstall?

[Frank616]

In the past I have always done a full reinstall when upgrading to a new version of Kubuntu. On one of my machines, however, I've done an in-place upgrade every 6 months from 10.04 through 10.10, 11.04, 11.10, and now most recently to 12.04. It was easy, and most everything seems to work.

In theory, this should always work. However, config files get messed up over time.

So, what has been your experience? Do you just upgrade, or do you reinstall? Why? Have you seen a real difference?

I should reinstall on this laptop, but I'm getting lazy....

Frank.

[SecretCode]

My general practice is to install the new version on another partition and make it my primary system only when everything is working the way I like it. This ensures that I can always boot to a known working system even if something goes wrong with the installation, including such things as finding I need to downgrade drivers or fiddle with /etc to get wireless, power, etc to work.

If upgrading I would do the same - make sure I have another working installation on the same machine in case of problems.

[Frank616]

Secretcode:

My general practice is to install the new version on another partition and make it my primary system only when everything is working the way I like it.

Yeah, I did that years ago when playing with Fedora 8. It is good in many ways. The limiting factor is that you have a separate partition for your system. I never seem to be able to hit the 'sweet spot' on that where I get equal usage out of the / and /home partitions.

I also have the advantage of 8 home and business machines that I administer, one of which has swappable hard drives. I just pop another one in, and let it go.

Frank.

[SecretCode]

My rule is 25GB for system partitions. That way they rarely get more than 60% used (ie 10GB free). (This is including the basic /home folders - all the .folders at least - because it's not safe to mix config files between different versions. My own files are on a /data partition.)

On the current machine, with a 500GB hard drive, I have 5 OS partitions (not all of that size) and 300GB for data.

[oshunluvr]

My general practice is to install the new version on another partition and make it my primary system only when everything is working the way I like it. This ensures that I can always boot to a known working system even if something goes wrong with the installation, including such things as finding I need to downgrade drivers or fiddle with /etc to get wireless, power, etc to work.

If upgrading I would do the same - make sure I have another working installation on the same machine in case of problems.

+1

[GreyGeek]

Step #1 -- backup my home account onto DVDs or what ever USB will hold it.
Step #2 -- clean install (I usually start with the alpha release and follow it through to Gold and continue on).

[Frank616]

GreyGeek:

Step #1 -- backup my home account onto DVDs or what ever USB will hold it.
Step #2 -- clean install (I usually start with the alpha release and follow it through to Gold and continue on).

I'm probably going to try that this time with my wife's machine. I will back up the /home directory, perhaps to a thumb drive, or if not, then to an external USB hard drive (I have several kicking around). The clean install will then take place, but I may never restore her hidden config files in /home, but rather let her start again. This is one way of making her clean out her Thunderbird email folders. If she REALLY needs something off the old /home directory, I can always copy some or all of them back temporarily.

Her machine is the only one that has its brains scrambled at the moment, and perhaps the only one that I will need to do a clean install on. In any case, it is also getting a new 750 GB 7200 rpm HDD. My own laptop (Dell M6600) just got a new SSD system drive, and a fresh install of Kubu 11.10. I may just upgrade this one, as it is working fine at the moment.

Frank.

[Frank616]

SecretCode:

My own files are on a /data partition.

I do that as well, but I've varied the approach depending on the machine and the configuration. I have a /data PARTITION on my testbed machine, as it has two physical drives. The OS goes on one (removable), and the data on the other.

On my laptop, I have a /data DIRECTORY off of root that I use for that. This is more for the sake of backing up than anything else. I mirror data across about 5 machines with rsync, all of which have /data directories somewhere. /data is then broken down into /common, /extended, and /seldom. I can then back up portions of the data structure according to machine. My music and pictures go in /data/extended. I don't back that up to my netbook, for instance. Otherwise, the data structures are the same on most of my machines, both on site and off site.

Frank.

[GreyGeek]

.... never restore her hidden config files in /home, but rather let her start again. ..

Old config files is a big reason why many version upgrades fail. Often, if done in a konsole, the user is asked if they want the new config file to overwrite the old. Answer no and you may have problems with old settings interfering with new software. Answer yes and the opposite is true. Having the new config file with the new app is what happens with a clean install.