Re: upgrading ubuntu to debian

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On Fri, Aug 31, 2007 at 11:55:52AM +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
> Michael Pobega <pobega@gmail.com> writes:
> > Unless you REALLY know what you're doing, upgrading from Ubuntu to
> > Debian (And vice-versa) is nearly impossible and unsupported by the
> > Debian community (If you did try it, we probably wouldn't be able to
> > help you). Too many things are done differently between the two
> > operating systems, for example, while Debian uses root to do many tasks
> > by default Ubuntu has no true root user and instead uses sudo.
>
> I dunno, I've done debian<->ubuntu (both directions) with few problems
> (this was a year or two ago).
>
> As I recall the only issues were due to some python packaging
> differences (and as I understand it, the python packging on the two
> system has converged since then).... [Gee, come to think of it about 95%
> of the packaging problems I see these days (even with a pure debian
> system) seem to be related to python!]
>
> The impression I was left with from that experience was that the two
> systems are _very_ close to each other in most respects, and that a lot
> of the difference is essentially window dressing and random minor bug
> fixes here and there.
>
> Anyway, it's certainly good to know what you're doing, but it seems
> silly to say it's "nearly impossible."
>
> -Miles
>

Well I guess it really depends how long you've been using the Ubuntu base system. If you install Ubuntu as a minimal system and upgrade into Debian, sure, it'll have little to no problems. But what if you've been using Ubuntu for seven months now, you have all your applications install, with all the libraries with version numbers like "2-3.2-ubuntu-1"? You'd run into a lot more problems that way. I've heard stories of people trying to dist-upgrade into Sid and hosing their entire system.

Of course, everything I say is theoretical; Being that I only have one computer (My laptop) I haven't had the chance to actually try a dist-upgrade in this fashion. But you'll be sure that it'll be the first thing I do when I buy a new computer.

• -- If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.
  • Richard Stallman -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

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