On Wed, May 29, 2024 at 06:58:32PM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> >> I think it is bad choice to deliberately have different behavior for
> >> freshly installed and upgraded systems. Offering upgrades has always
> >> been one of the major selling points of Debian, and imho this
> >> implicitely includes that you do not get a worse or second class Debian
> >> installation when you upgrade it than if you installed from scratch.
> 
> > I strongly disagree: it is a bad choice to change on upgrades a default 
> > which may cause data loss.
> 
> That is false dichotomy. data-loss will occur when people use /tmp or
> /var/tmp for persistent data-storage because "This has (for a couple of
> years) worked on Debian systems" not because "This has (for a couple of
> years) worked on *this* *specific* Debian system.".

Both perspectives are valid, and that is part of why this change is
concerning to me.  Transitioning the filesystem configuration of an
existing system is inherently dangerous and can lead to data loss, as
Marco points out.  But leaving a system to diverge from the default
Debian base configuration leads to configurtion drift that may trigger
obscure bugs, untested configuration, difficult upgrades, etc.  I'm not
convinced the change is worth the risk.

noah

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