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On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 9:57 PM, bad apple <ifindthatinteresting@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 26/11/11 21:41, Grant Sewell wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> Just performing an "upgrade" of my Ubuntu laptop - going from a >> heavily modified 10.04.2 to a stock 10.10, and if that works then up >> to a stock 11.04 and then 11.10. By the sheer number of errors I'm >> getting, I'm not expecting the 10.04.2 -> 10.10 step to work smoothly, >> so I'm downloading Debian Testing netinst images to burn. Now, the >> laptop in question is a dual-core AMD64, however I've never actually >> run any 64bit OSes on it - I guess I was put off by the "problems" >> faced early on. Many years have passed since then, but have things >> got any better? >> >> So, I ask you, fellow LUGgers: is it worth installing AMD64 Debian on >> an AMD64 machine, or should I stick with i386 Debian? >> >> Answers on a postcard, or failing that here will be sufficient. :D >> >> Cheers. >> Grant. >> > > Good luck: you are going to need it. I've done several of these > operations upgrading ubuntu through 3 or 4 successive versions and it's > never pretty. It will probably work, but only for a certain value of > 'work'. Libraries will be mangled, files will be orphaned and your > system will be a mess. Save yourself the pain, check your /etc and /home > into version control, backup everything else you want and reinstall > clean. Seriously. Just a fortnight ago I did a P2V conversion on an > ubuntu server @ 10.4, cloned it, and then for an experiment upgraded it > successively to 11.10 through all versions. this was a very simple > system with few modifications, no GUI and only ~500 packages installed > and although the operation was ultimately successful, the finished > system was a mess. If you've got a "heavily modified" 10.4.x system with > - I'm guessing - a full GUI/Xorg install it's going to be an > unrecognisable mess when you've finished. A huge amount of subsystems > and dependencies have changed radically in ubuntu between 10.4 and 11.10. > > Anyway, just my 2p worth. As for AMD64 vs i386, that's much easier. Do > you have more than 4Gb RAM in your laptop? If so, AMD64, obviously. If > not, i386. Simple. There is one proviso maybe: if you do a lot of work > on other AMD64 systems and use your laptop to compile software for them, > it would make sense to go AMD64 unless you particularly like > cross-compiling or messing with Debian multiarch stuff. > > Actually, make life easier for us and tell us what your laptop > model/specs are! > > Mat I previously did 8.04 -> 8.10 -> 9.04 -> 9.10 -> 10.04, and there it stayed until tonight. So the system has been through several successive upgrades previously already, but apt never complained quite so much as it is tonight. I've been toying with the idea of moving back to Debian for a while - don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu, I'm just finding the original attraction that took me away from Debian in the first place is becoming less and less important and I'm finding more and more irritations with the Ubuntu system, so I think it probably is time to get back to Debian. I was thinking of giving Slackware another go - haven't played with that in many years, but last time I spent more time "tinkering" than I did actually using the system productively! The more I think about it, the more I think I'm a Debian person. Anyho, laptop specs ahoy: It is an HP G6092EA with: AMD64 TK-57 dual-core proc. 1GB RAM (I know! How old school! :p) nVidia GeForece 7000M GFX Atheros AR5001 WiFi And I think that's the most significant specs needed. The things that put me off back in the day was things like getting Flash to work - Adobe (or was it Macromedia still) didn't have an AMD64 Linux plugin, only an i386 Linux plugin, and that didn't play nicely with any AMD64 browsers, so people ended up installing i386 browsers on their AMD64 distro so they could have the i386 Flash plugin working. That, and other similar awkward situations. I am pretty much a "desktop" user, but not necessarily your "average" desktop user. ;) If there really aren't any significant advantages in it, then i386 is good with me. Familiar territory and all that jazz. Grant. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq