9.10 Beta

[shadowfax1]

Considering doing a clean install of the beta. My question is will the beta upgrade to the 9.10 final in 10 days or will I have to re-install it again?

Thankyou

[cyorg]

This is the 1st beta distro that I've ever installed, and am wondering the same thing.

[shadowfax1]

I've got it as a dual boot and have soughted it all out to divorce myself from win 7 release candidate as its expiry is immenent and I don't want to go through setting it all up again just to find out that it needs to be re-installed again in 10 days.

[cb951303]

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade


will do

[-Zeus-]

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade


will do

Yup, you don't have to reinstall.

[mcduck]

Considering doing a clean install of the beta. My question is will the beta upgrade to the 9.10 final in 10 days or will I have to re-install it again?

Thankyou

The normal update process will bring you from beta to RC and, finally, the final release version. So there's no need to make a fresh install of the final version.

[Slim Odds]

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
will do

Not needed (the dist-upgrade part, just upgrade is all that is needed).

Please, folks, do a little searching in the forums. This topic is repeated endlessly every release.

If you have the beta installed, you will naturally get updated to the final release (it's NOT a DIFFERENT release).

[mcduck]

Not needed (the dist-upgrade part, just upgrade is all that is needed).

Please, folks, do a little searching in the forums. This topic is repeated endlessly every release.

If you have the beta installed, you will naturally get updated to the final release (it's NOT a DIFFERENT release).

dist-upgrade has nothing to do with upgrading to new release versions. :D Both "apt-get upgrade" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" are normal tools for updating your installed packages.

"apt-get upgrade" updates all installed packages,a nd adds new packages if required to complete the update.

"apt-get dist-upgrade" does exactly the same, but is also able to remove installed packages, if required.

Updating with the Update Manager behaves like "apt-get upgrade", while updating in Synaptic behaves like "apt-get dist-upgrade".

[cb951303]

Not needed (the dist-upgrade part, just upgrade is all that is needed).

Please, folks, do a little searching in the forums. This topic is repeated endlessly every release.

If you have the beta installed, you will naturally get updated to the final release (it's NOT a DIFFERENT release).

the recommended method is dist-upgrade because it also removes packages. you're more likely to mess up the system with normal update while going from beta to RC or Final.

[Slim Odds]

the recommended method is dist-upgrade because it also removes packages. you're more likely to mess up the system with normal update while going from beta to RC or Final.

Completely untrue. Updating from beta to RC or RC to final is just like any other update after a release.

If you're that concerned, you should do a fresh install.

[mcduck]

Completely untrue. Updating from beta to RC or RC to final is just like any other update after a release.

If you're that concerned, you should do a fresh install.

..and any normal update can be done with "apt-get dist-upgrade". Like I said in my post above, "apt-get dist-upgrade" is just a normal option used by apt-get for installing updates. Not any special command for release upgrades. You can safely use "dist-upgrade" instead of "upgrade" for every single update you do if you want to. Just like you can do your updates with Synaptic Package Manager instead of the Update manager.

And yes, cb951303 is correct and using "apt-get dist-upgrade" instead of "apt-get upgrade" is a good idea until the final release. There is still a fair possibility of changes that might require removing some already installed package to handle the update. Actually all the "partial update" problems people have been having every now and then when running Karmic Beta are easily solved by using "dist-upgrade" or updating with Synaptic Package Manager instead of the Update manager.

[cb951303]

@Slim Odds

quoting from apt-get man page



dist-upgrade
dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade,
also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions
of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system, and
it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the
expense of less important ones if necessary. So, dist-upgrade
command may remove some packages. The /etc/apt/sources.list file
contains a list of locations from which to retrieve desired package
files. See also apt_preferences(5) for a mechanism for overriding
the general settings for individual packages.


until the final release dist-upgrade is the safer choice.

[Slim Odds]

Why does upgrade exist at all then?

Why the distinction?

[mcduck]

Why does upgrade exist at all then?

Why the distinction?

To allow updates while at the same time making sure that nothing gets uninstalled during the process.

Sometimes it makes sense to minimize the changes to the system, even if it means that some of the possible updates need to be kept back. And on the other hand sometimes you want to make sure that everything gets updated, even if it means bigger changes to the system.

The difference between upgrade and a dist-upgrade is mostly meaningless during normal use of any Ubuntu release since there are no big changes happening and all the package versions are frozen expect for small updates for security reasons and to fix more serious bugs. But for any developer, or any person running a development version (or a distro with rolling releases) for some other reason the difference between the two becomes important.

Here's an example: You are developing a program "X" that depends on another program, "Y" that has two different libraries, lib-1 and lib-2. Then the Program Y changes so that both libraries are combined into one single library, lib-Y. However the program you are developing still assumes that there are two separate libraries (lib-1 and lib-2) around. If you do a "upgrade" then the update for program Y would be kept back, and you could continue working with your app without having to immediately change it to use the new lib-Y instead of lib-1 and lib-2. When you are ready to change to using the new lib-Y you can do a dist-upgrade which would be able to update the program-Y by uninstalling lib-1 and lib-2 and installing the new lib-Y in their place.

[Slim Odds]

Thanks for the explanation.

But, my earlier point remains. You will not see a "new release" option if you're using a beta and it goes to release.

It just keeps moving forward.

[mcduck]

Thanks for the explanation.

But, my earlier point remains. You will not see a "new release" option if you're using a beta and it goes to release.

It just keeps moving forward.

What do you mean with "new release option"? Like I said, "apt-get dist-upgrade" is not a tool for release upgrades. It just a slightly more powerful option for handling normal updates.

Release upgrades are handled either with "update-manager -d" (GUI) or "sudo do-release-upgrade" (CLI).

No apt-get option alone will ever move you to another release version. You'd have to first change your sources.list to point to the new release's repositories, and then do "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade". Both "apt-get upgrade" and "apt-get dist-upgrade" are just tools for updating packages in your current distribution version.