[conspire] Ubuntu 9.04 (re-sending due to previously accidentally sent to Bcc instead of Cc conspire group)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Adrien Lamothe (alamozzz at yahoo.com):

> Most Debian users will recommend doing a fresh install when upgrading
> to a new major release (like from Debian 5 to Debian 6.) Rick, please
> correct me if this advice is incorrect.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend that.

The Debian architecture is specifically set up to facilitate
problem-free -- and, indeed, mostly automatic, upgrades from one stable
branch to the next.  If you are tracking 'stable' and have lines like
this in your /etc/apt/sources.lists file (or equivalent in an
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory tree)...

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

...and you occasionally do 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade',
then your system transitioned from stable = lenny (5.0.x) to stable =
sequeeze (6.0.x) without your taking special steps, and maybe even
without your being fully aware of that fact.  Likewise, when in the
future the Debian 'stable' symlink gets repointed to 'wheezy' (7.0.x),
you might not even notice -- the main clue being a much larger than
usual number of package updates.  It's the job of each development
branch's Debian Release Manager to make sure that such upgrades _are_
functional when the flag goes up.  Their record so far suggests they 
know what they're doing.

That matter aside, personally, I no longer care about the Debian
'stable' branch, and wouldn't care to use it, because the rolling
testing/unstable package repos are in my experience just a much more
satisfactory experience.