Well, I haven't used gentoo, but I have used Redhat, Fedora, Centos, AIX, HP-UX NCR-MPRAS, Ultrix, DG-UX, Ubuntu, OSF1/Tru64, Solaris, Slackware, yggdrasil, and probably bunch I'm forgetting. Oh yeah and a bunch of MS windows systems. Sometimes upgrades work, but most times it's easier to do the fresh install. With a fresh install you know you're using the latest drivers and library's, not some old ones that are still laying around and were missed in the delete, or because they were being used during the upgrade. Another thing a fresh install does, is get rid of all that extraneous crap, like tons of upgrade files. When you upgrade stuff, you don't know if it's working and using all the new stuff, or because it's using some old stuff lying around. Fresh installs aren't perfect either, so sometimes you have to skip and upgrade, anyone remember redhat 8. And as some say, if it ain't broke. As one Control Data Business plan proved, when we went to a proprietary system to Unix. Management said everyone will want the new stuff. 80% said, it wasn't broke. Thus the end of a great product. Because CDC stopped making the old equipment. LOL -----Original Message----- From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us [mailto:plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us] On Behalf Of Matt Graham Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 3:02 PM To: Main PLUG discussion list Subject: RE: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic" Alpha4 and the Intel video drivers... > Bob Elzer wrote: >> The best way to upgrade an OS is to do a fresh install. How extraordinarily annoying. I have installed Gentoo once on my laptop, when I got it, 3 years ago, and have kept it up to date with the portage system. In most cases, that approach Just Works from what I can see. I'm a huge fan of the gradual update process as done in Gentoo, since it rarely breaks everything and you can almost always tell what broke and then fix it. (Like a few months ago, when libexpat upgrades made all KDE and GNOME apps throw a wobbly. revdep-rebuild to the rescue....) From: Michael Butash > don't like having to spend a night reinstalling and tweaking to get it > back to where I had it. I don't mind fixing problems when they arise > after installs, as I see them as adventures in learning more about > systems, but they're no less annoying when they arise. > > I guess I'm lame in assuming or expecting that if they're going to > offer an upgrade function, that it work. Ubuntu's problem AFAICT is that they're trying to be New! Shiny! and Awesome!. This is a worthy goal, but it can lead to the system being as stable as a stegosaurus on rocket-powered roller skates. Debian seems to be much better at the whole upgrade thing because they're so conservative in moving forward in stable. -- Matt G / Dances With Crows The Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress/ There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss --------------------------------------------------- PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss