Upgrade

PetarSerbia · 2019-08-04 08:20

Upgrade from Q4OS 2.7 to Q4OS 3.8?

Dai_trying · 2019-08-04 08:41

It is possible, but it is recommended to re-install to be certain of a stable system.

jessexschilling · 2019-08-04 12:06

I can vouch for this. Tried upgrading on one system, did a clean install on a different system. Borked the upgrade system. Ultimately it was much easier to just do a clean install than to sift through the errors and fix broken packages (I do use quite a few packages, and nVidia proprietary drivers, and a RT kernel, so YMMV). If you backup any customized configs, many of them can just be dropped into the new system.

cjoliprsf · 2019-08-04 16:26

A little while ago I did an upgrade on one of my computers with Linux Mint 17.3 to 18. Mint provides a downloadable routine named mintupgrade for this.
It worked fine for me. It did take a long time (4 hours to complete) however I believe this upgrade was easier and faster for me to do than all the fiddling a new install would have required with all the small setups that one do after having used a computer for a number of years...
Only thing that needed retouching after the upgrade were the 3rd party PPAs.
Just my 2 cents... For my part, I prefer to have the possibility to upgrade, and if this fails, well then go for the clean install.

crosscourt · 2019-08-04 16:56

Even Linux Mint doesnt really recommend upgrading from 17.3 to 18 even though its possible. Upgrading from 18 to a version in the same series is pretty much seamless. I upgraded last night from 19.1 to 19.2 that both use the same base. Would agree with Dai that reinstall is a much safer and stable bet.

Dai_trying · 2019-08-04 16:59

I have learnt that tweaking any OS is going to cause me headaches further down the line and so I choose the OS that I like and just use any themes available from the developers (there are quite a few with Q4OS) so that if I have to re-install (which I find myself doing quite a lot) I can simply install the applications I need to get back to having a system how I left it.

I am currently in the process of making "my perfect debian distro" using live-build, I have so far managed to get a complete iso with all my prefered apps (qemu-kvm, pycharm, arduino-ide and others) pre-installed and configured how I like them, although I cannot yet do this with Q4OS I am hoping I will get to that at some stage down the line.
The only downside to this is that every time I make a change it takes me an hour (+/- 10mins) to recompile the iso image for testing, which is the main reason it is still a "works in progress"

cjoliprsf · 2019-08-04 17:17

crosscourt wrote:

Even Linux Mint doesnt really recommend upgrading from 17.3 to 18 even though its possible. Upgrading from 18 to a version in the same series is pretty much seamless. I upgraded last night from 19.1 to 19.2 that both use the same base. Would agree with Dai that reinstall is a much safer and stable bet.

True, they say something like "do it at your own risk". However I think their mintupgrade routine is pretty good.
I think their warning is mostly to make the user understand this is not a sure and failsafe procedure, and that he must be ready in case of failure. Nevertheless, I think the routine is successful for the vast majority of cases and only a relatively small percentage of upgrades will actually fail and cause problems. It is also adviseable to do a bit of clean-up before proceeding, like uninstalling all programs that you don't use, to avoid having to update them unnecessarily.

I also agree that the upgrade to a higher version in the same series is much safer and faster. Actually when I did that upgrade, I started from Mint 17.1, from which I upgraded to 17.3, then from 17.3 to 18 (this is what took the most time), and finally from 18 to 18.3. I didn't do the next jump to 19 as 18 is still supported for 2 years, so what is the point? Additionally, there seems to be some bugs with samba in 19 which are still unresolved (and I need samba)...

crosscourt · 2019-08-04 17:57

Havent had any Samba issues with 19.1-19.2. Back to upgrading, its so much faster to do a fresh install so I prefer to just take the easy road, then make any tweaks and add what I need. Sure I can go thru the lengthy process from say 17.3 to 18 and take hours to reach that point with the chance that the install may end up having a problem anyway. Troubleshooting a new install for me is a lot easier than trying to backtrack.

Most of the improvements in 19-19.2 have really cleaned up some of the annoyances in 18, particularly with Cinnamon.
Linux Mint isnt my regular distro though even though Ive used it quite a bit.

Last edited by crosscourt (2019-08-04 17:58)

cjoliprsf · 2019-08-04 18:29

crosscourt wrote:

Havent had any Samba issues with 19.1-19.2. Back to upgrading, its so much faster to do a fresh install so I prefer to just take the easy road, then make any tweaks and add what I need. Sure I can go thru the lengthy process from say 17.3 to 18 and take hours to reach that point with the chance that the install may end up having a problem anyway. Troubleshooting a new install for me is a lot easier than trying to backtrack.
Most of the improvements in 19-19.2 have really cleaned up some of the annoyances in 18, particularly with Cinnamon.
Linux Mint isnt my regular distro though even though Ive used it quite a bit.

This is not a Mint forum, so maybe better to go back to Q4OS discussion before the moderators ask us to do so...

Obviously the 2 opinions coexist in the community: those who prefer a clean install, and those who prefer to upgrade. I think both options deserve to be respected. All this to say that for my part, after having had a good experience with an upgrade, I think it could be a good idea if Q4OS would provide an upgrade routine or script or procedure for those that are more inclined in that direction.

crosscourt · 2019-08-04 18:41

My apologies to the moderators but given that Q4OS already updates itself to newer versions within the same series, just as in the case of Mint, most dev teams arent going to push upgrades between different major versions, Scorpion to Centaurus for instance. The teams are small and youre trying to limit as many unintended issues as possible.

I prefer upgrades within the same version but once I move from Scorpion to Centaurus its going to be a fresh install. Understand where youre coming from and the devs can weigh in themselves.

Dai_trying · 2019-08-04 19:49

cjoliprsf wrote:

I think it could be a good idea if Q4OS would provide an upgrade routine or script or procedure for those that are more inclined in that direction.

I think the biggest issue would be taking into consideration all of the desktop environments available now, considering the fact that you can have Trinity, Plasma, Xfce, Lxde, Gnome (and I think others but have not checked lately) it would be problematic at best to allow for all the configurations available, and then there are all the non standard (not in Debian or Q4OS repositories) software that is available for installation via the Software Centre which I'm pretty sure would give a few more problems.

Having said that I do recall a user or two upgrading by simply changing the repositories and apt update/upgrade/dist-upgrade and only having minor issues, but as with anything YMMV

crosscourt · 2019-08-04 20:04

Knowing where you should put your efforts with a small dev team is the single biggest factor, let alone what Dai mentioned in the above post. I have a lot of respect for the small dev teams who churn out so much content.

cjoliprsf · 2019-08-04 20:55

crosscourt wrote:

Knowing where you should put your efforts with a small dev team is the single biggest factor, let alone what Dai mentioned in the above post. I have a lot of respect for the small dev teams who churn out so much content.

Oh I totally agree with you on this. And I didn't mean this suggestion of providing a way to make such an upgrade to a major version should be given a high priority.
However, not being a "Linux expert", I have strictly no idea of how difficult or complex such a procedure would be. Maybe it would be easier than I think - Dai was talking about simply modifying some repositories followed by apt update/upgrade/dist-upgrade...
Maybe simply a tutorial in the "Tips and tutorial" section of the forum would be all that is needed?

Dai_trying · 2019-08-04 21:38

WRT upgrading by simply changing repositories, it can work, but would require the user to monitor the update/upgrade/dist-upgrade process meticulously to spot any potential problems, I have to admit I have never tried it purely because it is not what the developers advise and I would guess that it would take longer than performing a fresh install.

Any one could place a guide in the tips section, but I haven't done so as it is not a recommended way to do things, and I thought it would lead to a lot of posts when things go wrong (which is almost inevitable). I would not want to have to try and troubleshoot a non-recommended procedure and I would not want to put the extra burden on the devs to have to do the same.

The other option that is available is to dual boot, I always have a Stable and Testing version of both Q4OS and Debian on my machine for comparison.
This would be a little over the top for most users though but a simple dual boot to enable user to have both versions installed and then once you are sure everything is configured correctly and all previous tweaks have been copied over you could remove the old installation.

cjoliprsf · 2019-08-04 22:06

Dai_trying wrote:

WRT upgrading by simply changing repositories, it can work, but would require the user to monitor the update/upgrade/dist-upgrade process meticulously to spot any potential problems...

As a matter of curiosity, how do they do it in a rolling release like Manjaro?

The other option that is available is to dual boot, I always have a Stable and Testing version of both Q4OS and Debian on my machine for comparison.
This would be a little over the top for most users though but a simple dual boot to enable user to have both versions installed and then once you are sure everything is configured correctly and all previous tweaks have been copied over you could remove the old installation.

My intention is to do something similar on one of my computers. The one in fact that I recently upgraded to Mint 18. This is a pretty old and slow computer, but I like it as it is a very small laptop that I can bring with me wherever I go. I just ordered for it a new 500 G SSD drive that should increase its speed and that will leave some free space. So after cloning the old disk, I'll prepare a partition in the free space to install Q4OS and see what sort of performance improvement I'll get compared to Mint...

cjoliprsf · 2019-08-04 22:30

Dai_trying wrote:

I always have a Stable and Testing version of both Q4OS and Debian on my machine for comparison.

This raises a question - can you share the same home directory between these different OSs?
They would each have their own root directory naturally, but if you define one partition as home for your computer and this is used by all installed OSs - is this possible? For the documents I am sure this would be OK, but for the hidden folders like .config how would that work?
Then, if I install a program in one OS, and make configuration changes, if I install the same program in another OS, it should see the configurations I did on the first OS. Is this something that can work?
Same for swap partition - can one single swap be used by many OSs?

Dai_trying · 2019-08-05 00:03

cjoliprsf wrote:

This raises a question - can you share the same home directory between these different OSs?

You could, but it would likely mess up at some stage especially if there is a version mis-match between OS's that have a different configuration file (or options).

cjoliprsf wrote:

They would each have their own root directory naturally, but if you define one partition as home for your computer and this is used by all installed OSs - is this possible?

Again it would depend on the OS's and their package versions but it would be likely to cause issues.

cjoliprsf wrote:

For the documents I am sure this would be OK, but for the hidden folders like .config how would that work?

I always have a data partition and inside that I have the folders Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Videos, Music, bin and a few others that I symlink to each installations home folder, this allows me to have all my documents, scripts etc available to all distro's but each keeps their own config files.

My home dir (Debian Buster at the moment) :-

root@Busteri3:/home/dai# tree -L 1
.
├── bin -> /media/dai/DATA/bin
├── Desktop
├── Documents -> /media/dai/DATA/Documents
├── Downloads -> /media/dai/DATA/Downloads
├── Music -> /media/dai/DATA/Music
├── palemoon
├── Pictures -> /media/dai/DATA/Pictures
├── Public
├── Templates
└── Videos -> /media/dai/DATA/Videos

I also have .moonchild productions folder (palemoon profile) in my Data partition and use a sym-link to keep all my browser bookmarks etc in sync.

cjoliprsf wrote:

Then, if I install a program in one OS, and make configuration changes, if I install the same program in another OS, it should see the configurations I did on the first OS. Is this something that can work?

In theory yes, but see first two answers.

cjoliprsf wrote:

Same for swap partition - can one single swap be used by many OSs?

Yes, but be careful when installing a new distro as some want to format the swap partition which can cause you a 90 second delay when booting the others, it can be easily resolved be editing fstab (for each OS!) and replacing the UUID with the new one (generated when formatting) and is a P.I.T.A.

cjoliprsf · 2019-08-05 02:17

Dai_trying wrote:

I always have a data partition and inside that I have the folders Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Videos, Music, bin and a few others that I symlink to each installations home folder, this allows me to have all my documents, scripts etc available to all distro's but each keeps their own config files.

Yes, this is what I am used to do between for example Windows and Linux in a double boot system, or also between a host OS and VM guest. I was wondering if possible to go a step further when both are Linux and share even more. If it could have worked, it could have made some things easier... and could have helped for an upgrade in major versions.
There are however some hidden folders in /home that may be shared between different OSs - I have tested with the .cache/thumbnails and that works - so I don't need to have a specific set of thumbnails for each OS considering I have a some thousands of photos on the system.
Anyway, thanks for the insights.

Yes, but be careful when installing a new distro as some want to format the swap partition which can cause you a 90 second delay when booting the others, it can be easily resolved be editing fstab (for each OS!) and replacing the UUID with the new one (generated when formatting) and is a P.I.T.A.

If I understand you well here, when installing a new distro and telling to use such partition for swap, the installer would format the partition which would modify its UUID? Then all previously installed distros would not be able to find it anymore.
I guess then best would be to say at install not to use any swap, and add a line in fstab for it after install?

Dai_trying · 2019-08-05 08:56

cjoliprsf wrote:

Anyway, thanks for the insights.

You're welcome.

cjoliprsf wrote:

Dai_trying wrote:
Yes, but be careful when installing a new distro as some want to format the swap partition which can cause you a 90 second delay when booting the others, it can be easily resolved be editing fstab (for each OS!) and replacing the UUID with the new one (generated when formatting) and is a P.I.T.A.
If I understand you well here, when installing a new distro and telling to use such partition for swap, the installer would format the partition which would modify its UUID? Then all previously installed distros would not be able to find it anymore.
I guess then best would be to say at install not to use any swap, and add a line in fstab for it after install?

It is always best to check what the OS is going to do, usually there is a summary page before the actual install that will tell you if the swap partition will be formatted and you will have the opportunity to "go back" and adjust it if necessary, it is the main reason I use live-cd for installation, it has easier (IMO) and more understandable options to configure the installation.

q4osteam · 2019-08-05 09:18

Concerning to upgrade Scorpion -> Centaurus. Actually, it's Debian Stretch -> Debian Buster upgrade. As far as we know, no official guidelines exist at the moment, however there are plenty of directions on web you could follow, see for example:
https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-upgrade- … -10-buster
https://www.itzgeek.com/how-tos/linux/d … uster.html

The Q4OS specific bits and Trinity desktop should pass the upgrade without a harm, however we don't provide any guarantee.

cjoliprsf · 2019-08-05 14:32

q4osteam wrote:

Concerning to upgrade Scorpion -> Centaurus. Actually, it's Debian Stretch -> Debian Buster upgrade. As far as we know, no official guidelines exist at the moment.

Yes, there seems to be an official guideline here
https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/ … ng.en.html
which is part of the release notes for Buster. They don't make it look easy!

Q4OS Forum

#1 2019-08-04 08:20

Upgrade

#2 2019-08-04 08:41

Re: Upgrade

#3 2019-08-04 12:06

Re: Upgrade

#4 2019-08-04 16:26

Re: Upgrade

#5 2019-08-04 16:56

Re: Upgrade

#6 2019-08-04 16:59

Re: Upgrade

#7 2019-08-04 17:17

Re: Upgrade

#8 2019-08-04 17:57

Re: Upgrade

#9 2019-08-04 18:29

Re: Upgrade

#10 2019-08-04 18:41

Re: Upgrade

#11 2019-08-04 19:49

Re: Upgrade

#12 2019-08-04 20:04

Re: Upgrade

#13 2019-08-04 20:55

Re: Upgrade

#14 2019-08-04 21:38

Re: Upgrade

#15 2019-08-04 22:06

Re: Upgrade

#16 2019-08-04 22:30

Re: Upgrade

#17 2019-08-05 00:03

Re: Upgrade

#18 2019-08-05 02:17

Re: Upgrade

#19 2019-08-05 08:56

Re: Upgrade

#20 2019-08-05 09:18

Re: Upgrade

#21 2019-08-05 14:32

Re: Upgrade

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