In-place OS upgrade - Linux vs Windows
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I can't remember the last time I did a full, clean install of windows - it was generations ago, possibly Win XP ... And I don't really have problems: 11 installed OK on both desktop and Surface (and didn't take up much extra space on the Surface). It's certainly a whole load quicker and easier than reinstalling all my apps (once I've found the licences, and persuaded them to accept it's the same computer again) and getting things back to the way I like them (which always feels "off" for a couple of weeks for reasons I can't detect by which niggle at me anyway).
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Wait! So you're saying you have a desktop that came with Windows XP (or you did a fresh install of XP on it) and since then (circa 2008?) you've done numerous hardware updates (replacing nearly everything?) yet you've only ever performed Windows updates to reach a modern version (Win 10 or 11)? That's pretty wild.
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First off, I'm not a Linux fanboi. I like to tinker with it, I've played with countless distributions, both mainstream and obscure, and have built more Linux VMs than I can remember. For the first time ever, I'm doing an in-place upgrade right now, of Debian 11 to Debian 12, on a system I'm actually using (hosting Pi-Hole - and that's it). About a total of 8 commands, waiting, a reboot, then all good to go. Actually I'm not sure a reboot will even be necessary; I'm currently still on the waiting phase as packages are being installed... I don't know, I can't quantify it--but I can't shake the feeling that an in-place Linux upgrade leaves the system in much better shape than an in-place Windows upgrade has ever been able to do. Maybe it's the placebo effect. But I always feel dirty upgrading Windows, in that there's probably gigabytes worth of crap the upgrade leaves behind, that Windows has no means of thoroughly cleaning up. Yes, it keeps a WINDOWS.OLD folder, and yes, it will eventually delete it on its own over time...but it still leaves me with a nasty feeling that Linux doesn't. It's not just the disk space, but probably some stuff left running, or badly configured, that can only be avoided by wiping/repaving. After many bad experiences over the decades, I *always* do clean installs of Windows. I just can't bring myself to fully trust it, even if the upgrade is entirely successful. Am I imagining things? Is Linux *truly* more apt (pardon the pun) to do a better job of not leaving unnecessary crap behind?
Management 5th amendment: "it all depends" I have had both go swimmingly and both fart loudly. Recent up date of Debian 11 to 12 wound up in a loop trying to configure the kernel. Had to use Timeshift to go back and remove 2 packages that had patched the kernel, then redo the upgrade. I like to keep my home folders on separate partition, and data on its own as well. Did an upgrade of a domain controller (CA 2010) and had to start over when it rolled over and died. Fortunately, that was a VM and backed up. What failed? Beats me. We do Windows servers in VM's for a reason. I think a format/install is best but it all depends on how much stuff you have added and how easy to recover. I also think lack of a registry in Linux makes it easier, but have no empirical data to prove it. Just an old fart's feelings. :)
>64 Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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den2k88 wrote:
Same ****, different brand.
True. I have seen completely borked Linux installs, and I'm much less qualified here to try to recover than from a failed Windows install. \\_(ツ)_/
dandy72 wrote:
and I'm much less qualified here to try to recover than from a failed Windows install.
I hope you did backup your data before upgrading :rolleyes: :-D
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Management 5th amendment: "it all depends" I have had both go swimmingly and both fart loudly. Recent up date of Debian 11 to 12 wound up in a loop trying to configure the kernel. Had to use Timeshift to go back and remove 2 packages that had patched the kernel, then redo the upgrade. I like to keep my home folders on separate partition, and data on its own as well. Did an upgrade of a domain controller (CA 2010) and had to start over when it rolled over and died. Fortunately, that was a VM and backed up. What failed? Beats me. We do Windows servers in VM's for a reason. I think a format/install is best but it all depends on how much stuff you have added and how easy to recover. I also think lack of a registry in Linux makes it easier, but have no empirical data to prove it. Just an old fart's feelings. :)
>64 Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
Yeah, the registry's gotta be a mess for an upgrade to process... Incidentally, I have a domain controller (2008 R2) that I've been needing to upgrade to the latest for...a few years now? Being a DC, I don't want to restart with a clean install...and I dread the in-place upgrade. OTOH the VM only has that one role, and it's only used to authenticate a few users here in my home environment, very little else. You'd *hope* the upgrade would be straightforward...
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dandy72 wrote:
and I'm much less qualified here to try to recover than from a failed Windows install.
I hope you did backup your data before upgrading :rolleyes: :-D
M.D.V. ;) If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about? Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Yeah, the registry's gotta be a mess for an upgrade to process... Incidentally, I have a domain controller (2008 R2) that I've been needing to upgrade to the latest for...a few years now? Being a DC, I don't want to restart with a clean install...and I dread the in-place upgrade. OTOH the VM only has that one role, and it's only used to authenticate a few users here in my home environment, very little else. You'd *hope* the upgrade would be straightforward...
You'd hope the upgrade would be straightforward...
Shirley, you jest. We went from 2003 to 2008 to 2010 to 2012 and will go to 2019 in a week or two. Most were accompanied by new hardware but the all had VM's and went well with one big exception. As long as you follow the Windows server upgrade bouncing ball, it should go well. Fortunately, here they have few users/systems. I helped an accountant's office recover from ransomeware, they were still running Server 2003 SMB. I think they had only 5 users, so I just did a full reinstall. I have recovered/helped recover from 3 events. None are fun but all had very recent, protected backups of at least data. One was weird, they only encrypted office files and pdf's. The pbx system never flinched. Fun filled weekends. I am now running a domain with a Debian 12 server using Samba for the domain controller. Testing for future.
>64 Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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First off, I'm not a Linux fanboi. I like to tinker with it, I've played with countless distributions, both mainstream and obscure, and have built more Linux VMs than I can remember. For the first time ever, I'm doing an in-place upgrade right now, of Debian 11 to Debian 12, on a system I'm actually using (hosting Pi-Hole - and that's it). About a total of 8 commands, waiting, a reboot, then all good to go. Actually I'm not sure a reboot will even be necessary; I'm currently still on the waiting phase as packages are being installed... I don't know, I can't quantify it--but I can't shake the feeling that an in-place Linux upgrade leaves the system in much better shape than an in-place Windows upgrade has ever been able to do. Maybe it's the placebo effect. But I always feel dirty upgrading Windows, in that there's probably gigabytes worth of crap the upgrade leaves behind, that Windows has no means of thoroughly cleaning up. Yes, it keeps a WINDOWS.OLD folder, and yes, it will eventually delete it on its own over time...but it still leaves me with a nasty feeling that Linux doesn't. It's not just the disk space, but probably some stuff left running, or badly configured, that can only be avoided by wiping/repaving. After many bad experiences over the decades, I *always* do clean installs of Windows. I just can't bring myself to fully trust it, even if the upgrade is entirely successful. Am I imagining things? Is Linux *truly* more apt (pardon the pun) to do a better job of not leaving unnecessary crap behind?
A colleague of mine always did a clean install instead of in-place upgrade on Ubuntu in the early 2010s because more than once burned himself with incompatibilities in Gnome. So, GUI Linux was different. There is a lot of crp under Linux, too, here and there, as seen personally on a Raspberry Pi after upgrading. The feeling? Do you have the same understanding of your Linux as you have of your Windows installation? Maybe crp is considered magic on the first, and did not touched.
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There is merit to it. Don't hold your breath to find too many Linux experts on CP tho.
Jeremy Falcon
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First off, I'm not a Linux fanboi. I like to tinker with it, I've played with countless distributions, both mainstream and obscure, and have built more Linux VMs than I can remember. For the first time ever, I'm doing an in-place upgrade right now, of Debian 11 to Debian 12, on a system I'm actually using (hosting Pi-Hole - and that's it). About a total of 8 commands, waiting, a reboot, then all good to go. Actually I'm not sure a reboot will even be necessary; I'm currently still on the waiting phase as packages are being installed... I don't know, I can't quantify it--but I can't shake the feeling that an in-place Linux upgrade leaves the system in much better shape than an in-place Windows upgrade has ever been able to do. Maybe it's the placebo effect. But I always feel dirty upgrading Windows, in that there's probably gigabytes worth of crap the upgrade leaves behind, that Windows has no means of thoroughly cleaning up. Yes, it keeps a WINDOWS.OLD folder, and yes, it will eventually delete it on its own over time...but it still leaves me with a nasty feeling that Linux doesn't. It's not just the disk space, but probably some stuff left running, or badly configured, that can only be avoided by wiping/repaving. After many bad experiences over the decades, I *always* do clean installs of Windows. I just can't bring myself to fully trust it, even if the upgrade is entirely successful. Am I imagining things? Is Linux *truly* more apt (pardon the pun) to do a better job of not leaving unnecessary crap behind?
I have (mostly) successfully upgraded Linux (Debian) one release at a time with no serious after-effects. However in one case it killed the main app it was for (NextCloud) because it changed the php and Python versions and a lot of the app is version specific - regressing to php v7 was a total pain, it took me three days of fiddling to get it done properly. Python was easier. Another upgrade that went sideways was my Domoticz server, however that was fixed by a simple re-install. So, in conclusion.... for Linux, it all depends. As for windows, I upgraded from 95 to XP and then to 7 with very little trouble, upgrading that to 10 caused one or two driver problems and USB behaviour became very flaky. Since I needed a 64bit OS for some software this was the occasion to finally do a clean install. I have kept a pared-down copy of the final 7 version as a VM since 10 killed some software.
So old that I did my first coding in octal via switches on a DEC PDP 8
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A colleague of mine always did a clean install instead of in-place upgrade on Ubuntu in the early 2010s because more than once burned himself with incompatibilities in Gnome. So, GUI Linux was different. There is a lot of crp under Linux, too, here and there, as seen personally on a Raspberry Pi after upgrading. The feeling? Do you have the same understanding of your Linux as you have of your Windows installation? Maybe crp is considered magic on the first, and did not touched.
Peter Adam wrote:
The feeling? Do you have the same understanding of your Linux as you have of your Windows installation?
Good point. No, I definitely don't know Linux as well as Windows. That, in itself, probably explains the bias I have against Windows and don't trust it as much not to screw up an upgrade. Maybe if I knew more about Linux, I'd come to the conclusion it's just as likely to screw something up. I know it can. I just have nothing to come up with the likelihood of it happening. As an aside - that Debian 11 -> 12 upgrade went on without a hitch, and didn't even require a reboot. Try that on Windows...
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I did it twice, once on Ubuntu and once on Debian: the whole system became completely unusable and I had to do a fresh install. Same ****, different brand.
GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X The shortest horror story: On Error Resume Next
My experience has been similar. I upgraded 5 Win7 computers to Win10. All worked without a hitch. Last week I upgraded a Fedora system and a Ubuntu system. The Fedora upgrade was flawless. Ubuntu trashed itself, so a new install of 22.04.3 was required. I always keep my data on a separate partition from the OS, so there were no other casualties. But Linux does not have a squeaky clean record on upgrades...
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Oh I have - there isn't a single part that was in it a few years ago ... I migrated my HDD to SSD (thanks AOMEI!) and that was the hardest part.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Same here. I was running my original WinXP installation from when it first came out to 2017, when after multiple Windows upgrades and image moves (with AOMEI, etc.) to hard drives and SSDs, I was forced to do a clean install after repeated refusals to install Win10 botched up my installation. Almost 17 years with the original installation.
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First off, I'm not a Linux fanboi. I like to tinker with it, I've played with countless distributions, both mainstream and obscure, and have built more Linux VMs than I can remember. For the first time ever, I'm doing an in-place upgrade right now, of Debian 11 to Debian 12, on a system I'm actually using (hosting Pi-Hole - and that's it). About a total of 8 commands, waiting, a reboot, then all good to go. Actually I'm not sure a reboot will even be necessary; I'm currently still on the waiting phase as packages are being installed... I don't know, I can't quantify it--but I can't shake the feeling that an in-place Linux upgrade leaves the system in much better shape than an in-place Windows upgrade has ever been able to do. Maybe it's the placebo effect. But I always feel dirty upgrading Windows, in that there's probably gigabytes worth of crap the upgrade leaves behind, that Windows has no means of thoroughly cleaning up. Yes, it keeps a WINDOWS.OLD folder, and yes, it will eventually delete it on its own over time...but it still leaves me with a nasty feeling that Linux doesn't. It's not just the disk space, but probably some stuff left running, or badly configured, that can only be avoided by wiping/repaving. After many bad experiences over the decades, I *always* do clean installs of Windows. I just can't bring myself to fully trust it, even if the upgrade is entirely successful. Am I imagining things? Is Linux *truly* more apt (pardon the pun) to do a better job of not leaving unnecessary crap behind?
I had much rather the opposite experience. In the past, for example, I tried to use Fedora on a laptop of mine. Coming out with new versions rather frequently (twice a year), I had problems each and every time, starting from around Fedora 16 or 17 until Fedora 24. Each time something wouldn't work, hang the computer on reboot or even the installer. WiFi pretty much never worked afterwards, I had to manually install it over and over again. Luckily, with Linux Mint, things got better. Though I am currently at the same point, where it won't update to the latest version, always complains about some weird dependency changed (I am just using Linux to develop applications, I don't even have time to fuzz around with the OS itself). Same for my RPi4, just downloaded the latest image and will have to do a clean install, it just won't do a proper in-place upgrade, while it starts so, it will in the end mopper about something not being updated and leaves me where I started. Did dozens of updates for example from Windows XP to Windows 7 (skipping the nonsense that was Vista) just fine. Maybe a newer printer or scanner driver, deleting the Windows.Old folder and the user kept going without issues. Same when people upgraded from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. Very little issue, maybe some user application didn't like the newer .NET crap and had to manually install an older version by hand (looking at you Intuit/TurboTax). Haven't bothered with any upgrades to Windows 11 yet, though a couple of clients fell for the M$ bullying and clicked the upgrade. Though the most common complain was that the ClassicShell was deactivated and they had to deal with that horrid, nonsense start button/tile-kind of user interface instead of a proper Start Menu "like it used to be". And those fancy cartoon icons...
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Do you call it "ship of Theseus"?
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated. I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
Theseus' PC: Totally original except bought running Win XP, now on Win 11, upgraded memory, SSD instead of HDD, new motherboard and CPU (needed for TPM for Win 11), replacement power supply (and case), better graphics card, OLED screen replaced CRT monitor, wireless mouse & keyboard instead of wired versions.
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Theseus' PC: Totally original except bought running Win XP, now on Win 11, upgraded memory, SSD instead of HDD, new motherboard and CPU (needed for TPM for Win 11), replacement power supply (and case), better graphics card, OLED screen replaced CRT monitor, wireless mouse & keyboard instead of wired versions.
Yep, except I also replaced the case, and the mains lead.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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First off, I'm not a Linux fanboi. I like to tinker with it, I've played with countless distributions, both mainstream and obscure, and have built more Linux VMs than I can remember. For the first time ever, I'm doing an in-place upgrade right now, of Debian 11 to Debian 12, on a system I'm actually using (hosting Pi-Hole - and that's it). About a total of 8 commands, waiting, a reboot, then all good to go. Actually I'm not sure a reboot will even be necessary; I'm currently still on the waiting phase as packages are being installed... I don't know, I can't quantify it--but I can't shake the feeling that an in-place Linux upgrade leaves the system in much better shape than an in-place Windows upgrade has ever been able to do. Maybe it's the placebo effect. But I always feel dirty upgrading Windows, in that there's probably gigabytes worth of crap the upgrade leaves behind, that Windows has no means of thoroughly cleaning up. Yes, it keeps a WINDOWS.OLD folder, and yes, it will eventually delete it on its own over time...but it still leaves me with a nasty feeling that Linux doesn't. It's not just the disk space, but probably some stuff left running, or badly configured, that can only be avoided by wiping/repaving. After many bad experiences over the decades, I *always* do clean installs of Windows. I just can't bring myself to fully trust it, even if the upgrade is entirely successful. Am I imagining things? Is Linux *truly* more apt (pardon the pun) to do a better job of not leaving unnecessary crap behind?
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But did you do it correctly and was it using a desktop environment or not?
Jeremy Falcon
Yes and yes, I've been a Linux sysadmin for years before doing both the afore-mentioned botched upgrades, I was also a senior member of my local LUG and performed dozens of installations during Linux days.
GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X The shortest horror story: On Error Resume Next
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First off, I'm not a Linux fanboi. I like to tinker with it, I've played with countless distributions, both mainstream and obscure, and have built more Linux VMs than I can remember. For the first time ever, I'm doing an in-place upgrade right now, of Debian 11 to Debian 12, on a system I'm actually using (hosting Pi-Hole - and that's it). About a total of 8 commands, waiting, a reboot, then all good to go. Actually I'm not sure a reboot will even be necessary; I'm currently still on the waiting phase as packages are being installed... I don't know, I can't quantify it--but I can't shake the feeling that an in-place Linux upgrade leaves the system in much better shape than an in-place Windows upgrade has ever been able to do. Maybe it's the placebo effect. But I always feel dirty upgrading Windows, in that there's probably gigabytes worth of crap the upgrade leaves behind, that Windows has no means of thoroughly cleaning up. Yes, it keeps a WINDOWS.OLD folder, and yes, it will eventually delete it on its own over time...but it still leaves me with a nasty feeling that Linux doesn't. It's not just the disk space, but probably some stuff left running, or badly configured, that can only be avoided by wiping/repaving. After many bad experiences over the decades, I *always* do clean installs of Windows. I just can't bring myself to fully trust it, even if the upgrade is entirely successful. Am I imagining things? Is Linux *truly* more apt (pardon the pun) to do a better job of not leaving unnecessary crap behind?
Depends on your use-case. I've had more Debian in-place upgrades fail than I care to remember. About half of them. It depends heavily on what packages you use: - do you have additional apt sources configured? - do you package code to fill in dependencies that aren't readily available? - do you rely on closed source drivers? Any of the above can cause issues. Also, when it breaks, it often breaks spectacularly, with no way to recover. That is why I moved from Debian and Debian-based to Arch. At least with the rolling releases, it breaks in a way that's easy to fix. Since WSL1 however, I'm sticking to Windows Pro exclusively. I love running shell-based Linux without needing an hypervisor. WSL2 has no value for me though, because that's basically running a VM.
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Yep, except I also replaced the case, and the mains lead.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Trigger's broom? Grandad's hammer?
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Yes and yes, I've been a Linux sysadmin for years before doing both the afore-mentioned botched upgrades, I was also a senior member of my local LUG and performed dozens of installations during Linux days.
GCS/GE d--(d) s-/+ a C+++ U+++ P-- L+@ E-- W+++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- r+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X The shortest horror story: On Error Resume Next
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh man, I remember the LUGs. I wonder if they still have those meetings. I haven't been to one in forever.
Jeremy Falcon
