On 09/20/17 08:32, jpff wrote:
I seem to need to upgrade to Debian stretch to install my printer as it needs hplip 3.16.11, ad I was running wheezy. ...
While some people succeed at major version upgrades, the few times I have attempted it resulted in breakage, frustration, and lots of wasted time and energy.
Now I backup my configuration settings, remove the old system drive, take an image of the old system drive, install a new/ zeroed/ secure erased system drive, do a fresh install, migrate my configuration settings, and test each subsystem as I go. If everything works, I'm done. If not, I lower my expectations, find another distribution, and/or build another computer, and restart from "do a fresh install".
I have reached two conclusions:1. Upgrading software is the act of replacing an existing, partially-known set of bugs with a another set of bugs -- some old, some new, some known, some unknown.
2. Software distributors never fix 100% of their bugs -- they make a new release, abandon the old release, and declare victory.
David