WARNING:DO NOT UPGRADE TO CORE 4

[Ben Steeves]

On 7/13/05, Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> IMO Mode on:
> 
> A better argument is that if Linux is ever to overtake W* as a user-friendly
> OS, it had better find a way to upgrade W/O smashing all user data.

It's called putting your /home partition on a separate disk or
partition and being smart about your system planning.  Back up /etc
and /var before upgrading (preferably, back them up periodically even
if you're not planning on upgrading!).

Don't upgrade, re-install.  It's cleaner and you'll have less
problems.  I've run every version of Red Hat and Fedora since RH 7.3,
and even switched to Debian, Ubuntu, and SuSE at various times without
losing a byte of user data.  It's possible.  It's easy if you know
how.  And there has been at least one discussion on the possibility of
adding a user-level backup/migration tool to GNOME that I know of, so
it's not like the idea hasn't been floated before... but developers
are needed.

(And I dispute that Windows (there, I said it) is any better when
upgrading than Linux is, it just happens less often is all.  But
that's not something I'll argue on this list.)

> Period.
> 
> End of argument.
> 
> If overtaking W* is not a goal, then whatever floats your boat is fine.

(Why would we want to overtake Windows?  That's just not going to
happen.  The expectation that Linux is designed to do so is just
ridiculous.  But again, that's not what we're here to discuss.)

-- 
Ben Steeves                     _                    bcs at metacon.ca
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