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Re: upgrade to testing



On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 05:26:29PM +0000, Wil wrote:
> How do I upgrade from Debian stable to Debain testing?

Hi Wil,

Don't - at least not directly.

If your /etc/apt/sources.list says "stable" anywhere in it, you probably 
want to change that to reference "buster" today, anyway. Bullseye - Debian 11 -
is likely to be released within 8 weeks and will become the new "stable" immediately - 
at whihc point, there will be a huge amount of package churn.

If you want to update to what is _currently_ Debian testing - now is a 
relatively safe time to do so because it's in a state of freeze before it 
is released as Debian 11. Look at the release notes for Bullseye and the
posts on Debian Planet for "what's new in Bullseye" and update carefully.
[Change /etc/apt/sources.list to suit: apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade ; 
apt-get autoremove ; apt-get dist-upgrade ; apt-get autoremove is one 
sequence that will get you there.

if you want to upgrade to what will be the new Testing, I'd honestly suggest
waiting six weeks or so, upgrading to Bullseye as it comes out and _then_ 
upgrading to Bookworm.

There's information on Debian codenames and also "Which Debian distribution
should I use" on the Debian wiki at wiki.debian.org. 

In general terms: if you can't handle breakage, which may occasionally last 
for weeks or months, don't run Testing until you are happy troubleshooting 
and dealing with upgrading/holding versions of packages. 

The package churn on testing is correspondingly higher and there is no 
particular security support.

Just my €0.02

All the best, as ever

Andy C


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