Re: Migrating from Slackware to Debian?
"Gonzalo A. Diethelm" <gonzo@ing.puc.cl> writes:
>
> If I do get the Debian Linux distribution, how hard will it be to
> install it in my Slakware system?
Upgrading a Slackware system to anything (including a newer Slackware
system) is always "absolute madness", IMHO.
> My current system has been heavily
> modified by installing patches, new releases of existing software
> packages and new packages altogether.
You will probably find that the Debian software packages are, as a
whole, more complete and up-to-date than you could possibly keep them
yourself. I'm a former Slackware user and can remember spending a
significant amount of time patching and repatching software to fix
interoperability problems, serious security bugs, etc.
My Debian system, in contrast, is almost pristine. There's basically
nothing I've had to patch, because nearly every bug is fixed by the
time I find out about it.
Upgrading to the latest package versions is effortless. The "dselect"
front-end to the package manager "dpkg" can, via FTP, fetch the list
of "most recent" packages, determine which ones need to be updated on
your system, and retrieve, install, and configure them for you in one
pass.
> is there a recommended way of going about this business?
Backup, install, and restore. ;)
When I switched, I installed Debian on an empty partition, moved the
home directories over, and kept the dead Slackware partition around in
case I had to refer to some old configuration information.
To be sure, switching was a major undertaking, but the effort has paid
for itself over and over.
Kevin <buhr@stat.wisc.edu>
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