Re: Update Suse through Yast?
- From: Ulick Magee <ulickatmaildotcom@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:28:54 +0100
JannaB wrote:
I am running 10.3, and new to Suse (linux in general) is there a way,
through Yast, to upgrade to the latest & greatest without having to
make an ISO image and blah blah? -Janna B
It used to be there in 9.x and the early 10.x, can't remember if it was
still there in 10.3. I've just installed 11.1 and there's no upgrade
distribution option in Yast.
<houghi mode on> What is your reason to upgrade? If you have some
hardware that's only supported in a later version, or need the latest
version of some package and it's a hassle to install it on an older
distribution, then fine. 10.3 is coming to the end of its support for
security updates this autumn, but there's no need to move until support
actually ends, the exact date hasn't been set yet and is usually several
weeks longer than predicted anyway.
As you're new to Linux in general and openSUSE in particular, I would
say unless you have a big reason to upgrade now, don't. Stick with what
you have, learn as much as you can, and don't upgrade until you have to.
When you do decide to upgrade, backup your /home, and any system files
such as xorg.conf or fstab that you may have customised. By default,
openSUSE places /home on a separate partition from / , so you can
install a newer version of openSUSE by formatting / and installing onto
that partition, without formatting /home.
I've done this successfully to upgrade from 32-bit 10.3 to 64-bit 11.0
to 64-bit 11.1, keeping my /home partition intact all along. Do make a
backup of it though just in case (on the 11.1 install I accidentally
formatted /home but just restored it from my backup.) USB hard disks are
cheap and good for making backups in this situation.
Even better is to have a second / partition for your new version. You
can then boot into the old or the new until you are happy to stop using
the old one. I'm on a MacBook and restricted to 4 partitions, 2 of which
are used up for the bootloader and OSX, and as I prefer to keep / and
/home separate, it means I can have only one Linux distribution
installed at a time.
My reason to move to 11.1 was to get ath9k Atheros wireless support
integrated into the kernel. Incidentally I had a lot of hassles until I
dropped networkmanager and used the traditional ifup method - I did the
install a week ago and today is the first day with a stable wireless
connection :/
You have several options open to you when you do decide to upgrade.
- Purchased DVD. Costs money, but comes with support, and you get a warm
feeling inside from supporting the openSUSE project :) you get a printed
start-up guide, but not the excellent dead-tree manuals that older
versions had :(
- Downloaded DVD. Has lots of packages included (although not everything
that is available on the repos) but it's a 4.5 GB download, and you will
probably be downloading lots of stuff you won't actually need.
- Live CD. Lets you try it out before you install, comes with enough
packages for a very basic desktop, after it's installed you can download
anything else you need.
- Net install CD. The smallest initial download, and during installation
you only download the packages you actually want, but the install
process takes a long time unless you have a fast internet connection (in
which case, you might as well download the live CD)
--
Ulick Magee
Free software and free formats for free information for free people.
Open Office for Windows/OSX/Linux: http://www.openoffice.org
OpenSUSE Linux: http://en.opensuse.org
.
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