How do I upgrade from Jessie to Buster without reinstalling all my software?

[Linux for blind general discussion]

Tim here.  It depends on how far behind you are and what weird
things you've done.

If you're on Jessie, upgrading to Stretch should be pretty easy,
following the directions.  I think it goes something like

1) Make sure you're up to date

  # apt-get update
  # apt-get upgrade
  # apt-get dist-upgrade

2) backup your /etc/apt/sources.list file and modify it so that it
points at "stretch" instead of jessie

  # sed -i.bak '/jessie/{h;s/^/#/p;x;s/jessie/stretch/g}' /etc/apt/sources.list

(you can do this in your favorite text editor instead; the sed
command copies each line containing "jessie", commenting out the
original with a leading "#" and then changing "jessie" to "stretch")

3) update your package list and your distribution:

  # apt-get update
  # apt-get dist-upgrade

There's a more hand-holdy document at

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-upgrade-debian-8-jessie-to-debian-9-stretch

in case you want the extra precautions.

If you're more than one release behind, you'll want to upgrade to
each intermediate release if possible.  I have one blasted machine
that fell so far behind that it's likely better to repave it with
Stable or Testing because of some expired-GPG-key issues.

Alternatively, if you've taken a recent backup of your data and you
trust it, you can take a snapshot of your currently-installed
packages, blow away the machine with a fresh install of
Current/Testing and then reinstall those packages:

  oldmachine$ dpkg --get-selections > packages.txt

then backup that packages.txt file, reinstall, then mark those
packages for installation:

  newmachine$ dpkg --set-selections < packages.txt

and install them:

  newmachine$ apt-get dselect-upgrade

The nice thing about this is that you can audit the packages.txt file
if you want and winnow out any you don't really care about (when I do
this I usually find some that I installed to try but never really
continued using, so I like to purge them out).  The apt-get will
install any missing dependencies that you might have nuked
overzealously.

Just a couple ideas,

-tim
  

On April 17, 2019, Linux for blind general discussion wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I have a lot of software. Reinstalling it would be a real pain. Can
> I upgrade to Stretch or Buster without doing that? How?
> 
> Thanks,
> John
> 
> -- 
> John J. Boyer
> Email: john.boyer at abilitiessoft.org
> website: http://www.abilitiessoft.org
> Status: Company dissolved but website and email addresses  live.
> Location: Madison, Wisconsin, USA
> Mission: developing assistive technology software and providing
> STEM services that are available at no cost
> 
> 
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