Re: upgrading ubuntu to debian

On 8/30/07, Miles Bader <miles.bader@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Michael Pobega <pobega@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
Unless you REALLY know what you're doing, upgrading from Ubuntu to
Debian (And vice-versa) is nearly impossible and unsupported by the
Debian community (If you did try it, we probably wouldn't be able to
help you). Too many things are done differently between the two
operating systems, for example, while Debian uses root to do many tasks
by default Ubuntu has no true root user and instead uses sudo.

I dunno, I've done debian<->ubuntu (both directions) with few problems
(this was a year or two ago).

As I recall the only issues were due to some python packaging
differences (and as I understand it, the python packging on the two
system has converged since then).... [Gee, come to think of it about 95%
of the packaging problems I see these days (even with a pure debian
system) seem to be related to python!]

The impression I was left with from that experience was that the two
systems are _very_ close to each other in most respects, and that a lot
of the difference is essentially window dressing and random minor bug
fixes here and there.

Anyway, it's certainly good to know what you're doing, but it seems
silly to say it's "nearly impossible."

I agree with this. I have never done a full Debian -> Ubuntu or
Ubuntu -> Debian transition, but I have often pulled in one or two
packages from the other distro.

My main machine is currently Sid, with Gnome, GTK and hplip
packages from Ubuntu's dev version. In the past I have installed
large numbers of packages from Ubuntu, and then gradually
moved back to pure Debian as the Debian packages caught up
or passed the Ubuntu versions.

You have to know what you are doing regarding resolving
dependency conflicts (aptitude's ncurses interface being
invaluable for this), but it is definitely possible.


Cheers,
Kelly


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