Upgrade or Clean Install?

[megamaced]

I've tried several upgrades before with SUSE and (K)ubuntu, but the results have always been mixed. Upgrading SUSE 10.0 to 10.1 was horrific, with KDE menus and window boarders not displayed properly. Not to mention the lack of stability after the upgrade.

Kubuntu was a much nice affair, although I decided to just wipe the upgraded version and install a fresh copy of Dapper anyway :)

Ubuntu's upgrade from Breezy to Dapper wasn't so pretty. Nautilus (GNOME's file manager) regulary crashed whilst browsing NTFS, NFS and removeable media drivers.

So generally speaking, I prefer to install a fresh copy, rather then upgrade my existing installation

 

[Anti-Trend]

So generally speaking, I prefer to install a fresh copy, rather then upgrade my existing installation

Upgrading Debian from Sarge to Etch was completely painless; I didn't have a single issue. If you have KDE related issues though, delete your ~/.kde directory to give KDE a fresh start.

 

[pelvis_3]

I generally try to upgrade first. Installing fresh is a bit painful as i hate
re-customising my settings all the time.

 

[Anti-Trend]

I generally try to upgrade first. Installing fresh is a bit painful as i hate
re-customising my settings all the time.

Just backup your /home/ directory. It's not Windows; there's no registry. You just drop it back in place and it should work.

 

[ThePenguinCometh]

Just backup your /home/ directory. It's not Windows; there's no registry. You just drop it back in place and it should work.

Or, even simpler, just have your home directory on a separate partition and your settings will automatically transfer over. If you do the same with /usr/local/ then, in theory, you don't even need to re-install any extra programs that don't come with the distro.

As for your original question, I suspect that the chioce depends on the distro. The distros that are designed to be user-friendly such as SuSE are probably best being re-installed while stability-orientated distros like Debian and Slackware are more likely to be easily upgraded.

 

[Anti-Trend]

[ot]Hi TPC, it's been a while. :)[/ot]

Yes, TPC is correct, the best solution is to have your system partitioned so that /home/ is not on the root partition, so you can simply install a new distro without disturbing your ever-important /home directory. In fact, I always partition my system in such a manner except on HDDs =<4gb. But my original point still stands, your /home directory should be able to carry on throughout all of your installations. The ony caveat here is that if you do a major upgrade of software such as KDE, you might have to delete your per-user settings for that particular piece of software; sometimes old configurations don't work well with new software.

 

[jester45]

an even split on votes im not running linux becuase im haveing troble installing it but im going to have a only linux computer soon so yea i wish windows could update from 98 to xp but microsoft is to money hungry