Age makes you more cautious. I used to carry Debian CD's with me & do all my upgrades while in flight without electricity or Internet — just to test myself I could hack my way out of a screwed up GRUB or problematic #Linux build.
I'm taking my spouse's laptop all the way from #Debian buster to trixie this morning (going through bullseye to bookworm first), & I'm actually nervous. I *think* it's just because it's my spouse's machine.
Ironic thing is upgrades are so much safer these days.
Lars Wirzenius
in reply to Bradley M. Kühn • • •Lars Wirzenius
in reply to Lars Wirzenius • • •Lars Wirzenius
in reply to Lars Wirzenius • • •Elena ``of Valhalla'' likes this.
Bradley M. Kühn
in reply to Lars Wirzenius • • •Lars Wirzenius
in reply to Bradley M. Kühn • • •I would have to consult a lawyer, but I would try to claim it's a volunteer disaster recovery test: how good are their reinstallation and factory reset procedures. I have a price list for that.
(I would not actually do that for real. I'm just tempted.)
Multimilliardaire
in reply to Bradley M. Kühn • • •It's far easier nowadays, no doubt.
Wish you & your beloved plenty of love & happiness with #Debian
PS 1 : Upgrading without a plug is still not recommended, AFAIK. 🙂
PS 2 : it's sometimes easier and faster with a fresh install & data transfer +
Reminder that you can have a separate /home (which is a good choice, IMO).
Bradley M. Kühn
in reply to Bradley M. Kühn • • •Neal Gompa (ニール・ゴンパ) :fedora:
in reply to Bradley M. Kühn • • •Bradley M. Kühn
in reply to Bradley M. Kühn • • •Deep Pandya
in reply to Bradley M. Kühn • • •Glad to see that you have updated your #Debian system. Btw, I see you first upgraded to Bookworm from Bullseye. Bullseye (2021) already reached EOL more than a year ago. Although it is still supported by Extended-LTS team as "oldoldstable".
Are you dealing with large project team and hence couldn't update in past two years. As Debian says it is fine to continue oldoldstable in such cases.
Nik | Klampfradler 🎸🚲
in reply to Deep Pandya • • •bullseye is not ELTS. It is still under regular LTS.
Deep Pandya
in reply to Nik | Klampfradler 🎸🚲 • • •@nik Oh! I see it is regular LTS till 2026 and thanks for correcting me.
By the way, I learned that LTS is maintained by separate volunteers than Debain Security team and stills I think it's official, right? whereas ELTS is entirely unofficial and handled by freexian.
Bradley M. Kühn
in reply to Deep Pandya • • •@Pandya @nik I went all the way to Trixie, I just walked through prior releases.
I'm sure #Debian upgrade processes are robust enough to skip releases but I never do.
Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to Bradley M. Kühn • •@Bradley M. Kühn @Nik | Klampfradler 🎸🚲 @Deep Pandya afaik no, Debian upgrade processes are robust, but only if you don't skip upgrades: things that are used to migrate stuff forwards aren't always available in more recent versions of the packages.
and to be sure, I'd also take care to reboot between each step, just to be sure that the most recent version of systemd or similar stuff is compatible with the kernel that is running when it gets installed.
Bradley M. Kühn
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla'' • • •Yes, I did reboot after each version and all was good. Other than her GNOME menu moving to the bottom instead of the left, spouse reports all good.
It was really weird that it locked to that kernel I'd built by hand back in 2021. However, I easily installed the Trixie kernel and rebooted and all worked.
@nik @Pandya