Escaping "upgrade hell"

[Jeff Vian]

Alexander Dalloz wrote:

>Am Di, den 04.05.2004 schrieb John Aldrich um 19:59:
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>>I think he's probably talking about Debian and related distros where you just 
>>do an "apt get" every night and it "automatically" updates everything to the 
>>latest version and there's no need to wipe and reinstall the way that it's 
>>often easier to do with RedHat / Mandrake / etc style distros.
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>I fear he could mean that. But that is a wrong impression, by two
>meanings:
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I read his post differently.
I thought he meant a non-linux OS, and his notion there is wrong as well.  

I do not know of ANY os that does not do an upgrade (read new version 
release) periodically.  Even if you can do the upgrade version of the 
new release it does have some limitations, and may not work well without 
upgrading the applications.  Many applications that worked in 1995 may 
not work on an upgraded version in 2003 or later..  And many drivers 
that worked for the hardware in 1995 will not work with the new versions 
of the OS. Most applications written for todays versions of an OS will 
NOT work on an os from 1995 so you are stuck with old versions of the 
applications as well..  

Thus, as you upgrade the OS you are also stuck with upgrading the 
applications you use as well, and vice-versa.

As a result I am not really sure what he is claiming, and I would like 
more information about what his thoughts are and what he is comparing 
RH/Fedora to.

>1) Running Debian you have not "most current versions" like Bob claimed
>in his original posting. I am speaking here about the stable release.
>Running "Debian unstable" you are certainly some kind of most current
>but at the price of a bleeding distribution with very often fights
>against the system and to get it proper working. "Debian testing" might
>be taken a good choice by many Debian users, but it is neither stable
>nor does is have security updates.
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>2) You could upgrade Redhat releases the same way like Debian too. There
>are a lot of people who upgraded from former releases step by step. Of
>course, Debian is an exception because it ships a new stable release
>only once per decade, so upgrading is more rare. But upgrading means for
>all distribution: changes on the base system. Debian is no exception in
>that way. And if you did customize your system in a huge way you will
>face upgrading difficulties with each distribution.
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>I do not want to bash Debian. But Fedora meanwhile has with up2date and
>yum apt like tools on board too. And apt lovers can get it for the RPM
>system too from external.
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>Alexander
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