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Trying to upgrade an operating system is almost always a good way to ensure you're going to have a bad time. Copy any files you care about off, wipe the disk,

by douche 10y ago

Trying to upgrade an operating system is almost always a good way to ensure you're going to have a bad time. Copy any files you care about off, wipe the disk, and install from scratch. This is also usually worth doing with an OEM machine, to get rid of all the crap and weirdly configured partitions they set them up with.

pwelch 10y ago
I agree but I'm mildly surprised when an upgrading OSX or Linux instead of a fresh install always works fine.
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  That's not true for Linux - I've had many instances where repo refs broke because they didn't have packages for updated version, or where the new version kernel introduced a bug breaking my WiFi, audio, graphics, or random stuff failing - it's probably worse than doing a Windows upgrade. I've only used macs for a year and only did 10.5 -> 10.6 which went smooth IIRC. Mac approach of owning the hardware and the OS certainly has it's advantage - being able to clone image to an external HDD from my MB pro and then boot a iMac to the exact same image is a magical experience. Setting up a master image on my laptop and then redeploying to an office of 40 something various mac devices using IP broadcast and doing it in an hour - hearing that apple chime 40 times was really cool :D
- dingaling 10y ago
  I had a spectaculr Ubuntu LTS upgrade failure on a server earlier this year because I had inadvertently left a terminal open running a command with 'su'. It transpires that the sudo binary cannot be upgraded when su is active, so the entire upgrade cascade-failed and left me with a broken and unbootable system. Had to start from bare-metal.
pjc50 10y ago
This is infeasible when upgrades are monthly or biweekly.
acdha 10y ago
> Trying to upgrade an operating system is almost always a good way to ensure you're going to have a bad time. That's a really strong assertion to toss out without supporting evidence. I've had the opposite experience with Debian/Ubuntu (100s of systems, starting in the late 90s) and OS X (dozens of systems, starting with 10.0) — the process is almost always start the update, reboot, resume work with rare exceptions for something like previously-undetected filesystem corruption. Even my experience on Windows has not supported that conclusion – you might always want to be ready to reimage the machine but it hasn't been rocky for at least a decade. The difference might starting and staying clean: avoid OEM Windows installs, apply updates regularly rather than putting it off for years, don't install system-level hacks (Mac users were terrible for awhile about using “haxies” and then complaining about Apple when some random binary monkey-patching broke on the next major release), and be careful about installing software from irresponsible sources.

by douche 10y ago

pwelch 10y ago

I agree but I'm mildly surprised when an upgrading OSX or Linux instead of a fresh install always works fine.

rubber_duck 10y ago
That's not true for Linux - I've had many instances where repo refs broke because they didn't have packages for updated version, or where the new version kernel introduced a bug breaking my WiFi, audio, graphics, or random stuff failing - it's probably worse than doing a Windows upgrade. I've only used macs for a year and only did 10.5 -> 10.6 which went smooth IIRC. Mac approach of owning the hardware and the OS certainly has it's advantage - being able to clone image to an external HDD from my MB pro and then boot a iMac to the exact same image is a magical experience. Setting up a master image on my laptop and then redeploying to an office of 40 something various mac devices using IP broadcast and doing it in an hour - hearing that apple chime 40 times was really cool :D
dingaling 10y ago
I had a spectaculr Ubuntu LTS upgrade failure on a server earlier this year because I had inadvertently left a terminal open running a command with 'su'. It transpires that the sudo binary cannot be upgraded when su is active, so the entire upgrade cascade-failed and left me with a broken and unbootable system. Had to start from bare-metal.

pjc50 10y ago

This is infeasible when upgrades are monthly or biweekly.

acdha 10y ago

> Trying to upgrade an operating system is almost always a good way to ensure you're going to have a bad time. That's a really strong assertion to toss out without supporting evidence. I've had the opposite experience with Debian/Ubuntu (100s of systems, starting in the late 90s) and OS X (dozens of systems, starting with 10.0) — the process is almost always start the update, reboot, resume work with rare exceptions for something like previously-undetected filesystem corruption. Even my experience on Windows has not supported that conclusion – you might always want to be ready to reimage the machine but it hasn't been rocky for at least a decade. The difference might starting and staying clean: avoid OEM Windows installs, apply updates regularly rather than putting it off for years, don't install system-level hacks (Mac users were terrible for awhile about using “haxies” and then complaining about Apple when some random binary monkey-patching broke on the next major release), and be careful about installing software from irresponsible sources.