Re: Potato to Woody dist-upgrade problems

[Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>]

Theodore Tso <tytso@thunk.org> writes:

[snip]
> BTW, this is also the problem with suggesting that people should just
> not use "apt-get dist-upgrade", and use "dselect" instead.  Just for
> yucks, I suggest that you try taking a naive user and see if they can
> upgrade a Potato system to Woddy using any means you suggest, whether
> it be apt-get or dselect.  The only rule is once they get started,
> you're not allowed to help them out.  That means no giving them hints
> about how you need to edit /etc/X11/fs/config, etc., or figuring out
> arcane key bindings, or making "one-line" changes to xdm configuration
> files.  Let them see if they can figure it out on their own, or how
> many hours it takes before they can find the relevant information in
> either some HOWTO or Debian-provided documentation.  I suspect that
> anyone who tries this experiment will find it a very painful
> experience.
> 
> This is one of the things which Microsoft gets right --- they pay
> naive users to be subjected to their software, and videotape the
> results --- and then force the developers to watch the videotapes.

If you mean to say that a "naive" MS user has no difficulty upgrading
between major versions of Windows, you're way off.  Even an expert can't
make it work right.

Upgrading an entire distribution of software is a very complex and
difficult task and should only be carried by someone with at least half
a clue.  Upgrading Debian isn't perfect, but it's certainly smoother
than any other OS distro I've tried.

-- 
Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>