-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Brian
Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 5:09 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [newbie] Update help please
Hello I am the one who started this post and after getting some feedback
here are my thoughts:
First off I would like to thank everyone for their help,one of the
strengths of linux is the friendly support from other users.
Now the not so good.
I have been using Debian for a year and after getting a new hard drive I
thought I would give Mandrake a try as I heard alot of good things about
it. The install was easy, setup all my hardware (even my Logitech web
cam) and runs very smooth. Everything was going good then I tried to
update to 8.2 and wanted to know if I can update it over the net. My the
net and not cd? I have a cable modem so downloading is not a big deal
and I do not have a cd burner so making ISO disks all the time will not
work.The answers that I have seen so far about updating have to do about
a fresh install. To me this seems like alot of work to keep your system
updated.The other way is to update individual packages until the whole
system is updated, again seems like alot of work. In Debian all I have
to do is 'apt-get update' and the system is updated for me. No need for
boot disks or reinstalling the whole system.
This is not meant to be a knock against Mandrake, I think for the most
part it is very good,but for people with no linux experience updating it
will prove a challenge. Once again I thank all those who have replied to
my question.
Brian
>
> Just an opinion. Do a fresh install, not an upgrade. If you
> have a separate /home dir partition, don't re-format it during the
> install and you might probly be OK ;) A better method is to save a
> copy of your current /home dir, and just move back into the new 8.2
> /home dir things like personal files and directories, and trusted app
> config and storage files, eg, like /Mail for Kmail. Checking for any
> problems as you do so.
>
> My two main reasons for this are you should be backing up at least
> /home on a regular basis anyhow, and some stale old 8.1 config files
> may cause unexpected or unwanted results runnin on a newer release.
> Generally application files will be OK, it's the system config files
> which may present unfortunate situations. Takes just a few minutes
> longer, but think of it as spring cleaning, and quality assurance ;)
>
> Well, actually there's other reasons. Any software apps not
> shipped with the distro probly have newer versions available. So d/l
> the new one and install it rather than tryin to save the older one.
> FWIW, I always install the new distro into one big '/', but I keep a
> storage partition (/stor ;) in which I regularly keep a bakup copy of
> /home.
>
> Last but not least, if you use closed source proprietary (ie, non
> free as in speech) applications or drivers, install them last.
> There's good reasons besides being closed source they're not included
> in the distro. By their nature, they can't be supported or checked
> for compatibility and security. So if ya just have to have 'em, it's
> your responsibility to check that they don't cause conflicts or other
> problems.
Actually if you go into the Mandrake Package Manager, one of the choices at the top is Mandrake update. If you click on that the program will go to the network and your selected mirror and determine which packages are available for updating what is installed on your computer. This works fine for most cases and could work for what you want to do although I have not tried it that way. Dependencies should be automatically detected and added to the list. Do not use it to upgrade a kernel, however cause that can and will often, trash your current kernel and mess you up bigtime. If need be do the kernel with urpmi kernel-4.x.x.i586.rpm etc and that will install next to the existing kernel. Then add the new kernel to lilo and then do the upgrade. HTH
Dennis M.
