[LAU] Distro upgrade vs: new install

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 2013-05-30 at 16:05 -0700, Len Ovens wrote:
> So, fresh installs are still the best

Hi Len :)

I like it to make fresh installs from time to time, it's like a spring
cleaning. I always made new installs of Ubuntu, never updated from one
release to the next and I stay with an Ubuntu release for a while,
instead of installing always the latest release. For Ubuntu I build my
own kernels.

I prefer Arch Linux, the rolling release model usually does work
perfectly good. I just hold Ardour and Virtualbox packages, but there
are no issues until now, at least not with Virtualbox, I didn't use
Ardour for a long time, so I'm not sure if it's still ok.

Because there are often kernel updates, I install new kernel-rts, but
keep old packages for the kernel-rt, until now I didn't need to
downgrade a kernel-rt for my current Arch install.

So IMO there's no need for a fresh install, if you run a rolling
release.

I agree regarding to the disk space. Multi-boots and backups aren't
issues. FWIW my old drives have one primary partition, but for new
drives I switched to 3 primary partitions. Classic MBR, no LVM etc., the
only exception is an unused FreeBSD.

Regards,
Ralf