In-place OS upgrade - Linux vs Windows
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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
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Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh man, I remember the LUGs. I wonder if they still have those meetings. I haven't been to one in forever.
Jeremy Falcon
Mine split in two for petty politics and I told them (both) to un:elephant: themselves. Never participated since then. Consider that when I started using Linux, Mandrake 8.1 was shiny new. I witnessed the birth of Gentoo and installed it from Stage 0. I also abandoned any extensive use of Linux in 2011 and never looked back.
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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Mine split in two for petty politics and I told them (both) to un:elephant: themselves. Never participated since then. Consider that when I started using Linux, Mandrake 8.1 was shiny new. I witnessed the birth of Gentoo and installed it from Stage 0. I also abandoned any extensive use of Linux in 2011 and never looked back.
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
den2k88 wrote:
I also abandoned any extensive use of Linux in 2011 and never looked back.
Out of curiosity, what did you move to? Back to Windows? Mac? BSD?
Jeremy Falcon
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I have never had a problem doing a Windows inplace upgrade since W7 as long as I have done a thorough update (drivers, etc), tuneup and virus scan of the current setup. An upgrade is an upgrade NOT a repair.
AAC Tech wrote:
An upgrade is an upgrade NOT a repair.
There's a lot of wisdom in that. I have a system that was set up with Windows 10 (clean), for the very first time, back in June. From the get-go, it has NOT been able to install Microsoft's monthly cumulative updates (CUs) - starting from a clean state! None of the articles on failed updates I've come across have helped. Every month, I keep hoping *that* month's CU will somehow manage to get things sorted out. The October update seemed promising at first, when it tried to install itself, as it also included a servicing stack update. It ran for a lot longer than previous updates, and went farther (%-wise) than any previous update so far. But in the end, it still failed just the same. I'm probably just doing to bite the bullet and repave that machine. This is not unique to that system. I also used to have a Server 2019 VM that couldn't install any update, even from a fresh install. And given it was a VM, on Hyper-V, there was even fewer chances of a "bad" third-party driver or some-such that could cause some obscure failure. So, end-to-end, it was all Microsoft software, including the VM's abstracted hardware...I ended up nuking that VM, reinstalled from the same ISO, and that time around it worked fine...go figure.
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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.
Kate-X257 wrote:
WSL2 has no value for me though, because that's basically running a VM.
Yeah, that came as a surprise to me. I was rather impressed with the WLS1 architecture in that it would work at all...but then, to throw all of that away and essentially turn WSL2 into a plain ol' VM...? That was somewhat disappointing, since all-out VMs are so much heavier.
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den2k88 wrote:
I also abandoned any extensive use of Linux in 2011 and never looked back.
Out of curiosity, what did you move to? Back to Windows? Mac? BSD?
Jeremy Falcon
Back to Windows. I had bought a laptop with Win7 and had no internet connection + 13 exams to be passed in a year without any excuse. Well, I discovered that 7 was a beast of stability, no blue screens at all and was resilient to all kinds of software abuses. I quickly got used to it and never looked back. I had the chance to use Linux for embedded development twice in the past 3 years and :elephant: it all with renewed fervor, the various developers managed to insert Windows unpredictability in Linux's complexity - having the wifi/bluetooth drivers correctly activated on 50% of boots is Windows 98 levels of idiocy, and 98 was the one that couldn't resume from standby (until the famous 2nd edition. I was there, Gandalf...).
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
