Re: Upgrading from Ubuntu to Debian
Andrei Popescu <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> writes:
> 2. change your sources.list to point to debian testing and do a
> dist-upgrade. GOOD LUCK!!!
...
> The second method is VERY error prone. You might get into dependency
> hell, config hell, ... and this (should at least) replaces all
> Ubuntu packages with their debian versions. So not very far from a
> reinstall either.
I've done this, and it actually went much more smoothly than that.
_However_ to deal with the few exceptions that may arise, you should
know how to use apt-get to work around dependency problems (using
aptitude helps because it can suggest possible solutions).
In my case, there were only a few problematic packages, in particular,
ubuntu's different package organization for python and x (window system).
I eventually got around the latter problem by downgrading to xfree86 in
testing then upgrading back up to xorg after I was safely in
debian-land; however this is the sort of thing a novice probably
wouldn't know to try, and of course downgrading is always potentially
dangerous. [The alternative would be to simply uninstall x and later
re-install it, but this would cause many other GUI type packages to be
uninstalled, so one would need to keep a list of things to re-install
afterwards.]
Other than those things, basically everything just worked. I didn't
need to do any "manual hacking" of anything, just futzing around with
apt-get (well, actually aptitude, which makes things nicer). It was
certainly far, _far_, ___FAR___, less annoying than a re-install. For
anybody that is facile with apt-get/aptitude, I'd certainly recommend
the "upgrade away" route over a re-install.
I think the particular problems I encountered may be less of an issue
these days, because debian seems to have moved towards a packaging of
python and x that is more similar to ubuntu's.
One thing I realized after all that, btw, is that the difference between
debian and ubuntu is a lot smaller than people often seem to think.
-Miles
--
"Though they may have different meanings, the cries of 'Yeeeee-haw!' and
'Allahu akbar!' are, in spirit, not actually all that different."
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