Re: Is that all there is to it??
Marc Shapiro wrote:
I have been running Debian since Bo, which was about
eight, or nine years ago IIRC. I have been through several system
upgrades and hard disc changes, but I just move the HD to the new
system, or copy it to a new HD and install that.
I've been doing that that since Slink.
The only reason that I
did a re-install this time was the large amount of cruft that had
accumulated.
That's what the Debian package called "cruft" is for. :)
In retrospewct, it may have made the change to udev and
XOrg easire, but people doing recent upgrades seem not to be having
trouble with that either. Now that I am using aptitude, instead of
apt-get, I am hoping that this will not be necessary in another eight,
or nine years.
It's never really necessary. I think it's a cultural thing fostered by
Microsoft as part of their business model. I've found it necessary to install
from scatch only when I'm curious about new versions on the installer. After
testing it on an unused partition I wipe the partition.
The only reason I can think of for reinstalling is a security compromise, but
how do you know if you have that problem? If you don't know then you have to
reinstall on a regular basis for security reasons. If you do know, then you
should be able to fix it without reinstalling. A catch-22.
Debian rocks!
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