clean install: you make a backup, nuke the computer, install a fresh upgraded copy of the distro you want from a live usb, copy your data again to the computer.
upgrade: you wait ‘till the distro’ developers release an upgrade you can directly install from your soon to be old distro, you use a command like sudo do-release-upgrade
and why do you upgrade like that?
Wait for a bugfix release after a major release. Then upgrade.
need moar bugs fixed, just to be safe
Neither. I use a rolling release distro.
But if I have to use release based distros, I probably would clean install.
A rolling release distro is basically a requirement for me. I abhor major release upgrades. They’re usually labor intensive and often break things.
“clean install” is Windows-user logic. Doesn’t apply to Linux.
I feel like that may be true nowadays, but I remember back when I used to use ubuntu that the upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 was pretty bad. Fedora has always worked great for me, but these days I only use rolling release distros in which case there aren’t any major version updates in the first place, so the problem largely doesn’t exist in the same context.
Canonical makes ubuntu makes upgrades break on purpose so they can sell you ubuntu pro that has the fix in it. For example the upgrade you mention broke grub but only the paid support release ring/branch has a fix
Rolling with Gentoo here. Reinstall is not performed even when complete hardware upgrade has been done.
Well, I also use a rolling release distro, my disk died last week so I had to reinstall, so technically FULL hardware update might require a reinstall (safer than copying the root folder from one disk to another since the old one was bad), but yeah, before that I’ve replaced almost every piece of that laptop without a reinstall, even switched from Nvidia to AMD.
Well, yeah. Hard drive failure can force a reinstall. And with laptops there isn’t usually another place for a hard drive, from where to restore the system.
Brainfart, I said laptop meant desktop, obviously didn’t change the GPU on a laptop.
*Framework has entered the chat*
Fedora, I usually wait 1-2 weeks for the last bugs to be found+fixed and extensions to catch up, and then just upgrade in-place. Haven’t had a major upgrade problem for years now, it’s mostly as smooth as any other offline update. And I don’t feel like I have to reinstall the OS every few years on Linux either.
I always upgrade as I can’t deal with a clean install every so often. This warrants using a distro that does handle this well, though*. Which, thankfully, isn’t a big deal as most distros support this anyways.
Upgrade. Don’t wanna mess with restoring/preserving data and configs.
It depends on the distro. Some of them have some shitty ass upgrade process and it breaks shit, and others are just awesome. I personally use a rolling release so I don’t have to worry about upgrades. I do get some issues here and there with some big upgrades, but nothing really major. I’ve only had to reinstall twice in the last 2.5 years.
upgrades have been working fine here, both linux and windows, for well over a decade.
only if a system is also being repurposed at the time of the ‘upgrade’, or if i’m changing the connection type of the boot drive (such as from sata to nvme, or switching an older system to ahci mode) do i install ‘from scratch’.
I don’t think I’ve ever made a “clean upgrade” on Linux. I’ve done the opposite though, that is, bring an old install over to a new computer.
I backup and then upgrade through the mechanism provided. Why? Lazy. I should take the time to set up a NAS and run most of /home from that, but never have been motivated enough to try it.
I usually let myself lag behind on Fedora to wait until the kinks have been worked out. I just jumped from 38 to 40 in an upgrade and totally regret it. Python is screwed up in distrobox and making problems, but I can roll back too.
I upgrade when it’s a distro that releases new versions regularly (for example Fedora with two releases per year). I obviously also upgrade rolling distributions.
Why? Because it’s less work and I haven’t had many problems with it.
I usually clean install long-term distros like RHEL (or RHEL-based). These don’t always have a good upgrade path and I usually only use them on servers.
Depends on the distro. On Debian I upgrade cause I know it works well. On Ubuntu I always had issues after an upgrade so I
do a clean installdon’t use Ubuntu anymore.Upgrade. It works perfectly fine and when it doesn’t figuring out what’s going on learns me something and several times has resulted in fix commits to the packages.
E: there’s some people saying they do clean installs on Ubuntu. They’re right that ubuntu breaks shit all the time but I’ve solved that by simply not using the bad distros.
Upgrading Ubuntu LTS since 2014. It’s always a good idea to read the release notes in order to know what’s changed. In general LTS-to-LTS upgrades have been trouble-free.
I like you.
I’m using a rolling release at the moment, but when I used a more stable release, I always did the upgrade (following the official instructions) because it’s faster and more convenient.
I learned the hard way to always keep a backup of my important stuff, regardless of the OS.
The only time I redid a clean install was when I accidentally fucked up my entire filesystem’s permissions.
