5 ms·

Debian upgrades between major versions are supported and tested (contrary to other OSes). Reading the release notes of 11 is a good idea though :).

user5994461 5y ago
In theory it's supported, in practice you might lose the machine. Tried on 3 tests VM last month, nuked 1 out of them, failed somewhere mid process after removing half of the system packages. That machine never rebooted.
- blibble 5y ago
  you've been pretty unlucky I must have upgraded at least 1000 times over 20 years and I've only had a machine become unbootable once
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    If Debian were Windows, that would be 3+ millions of users with unbootable PCs.
    - blibble 5y ago
      the machine it broken on was prehistoric, vs. the Microsoft approach for Windows 11 of not supporting machines less than 5 years old also: Debian and its derivitaves likely runs on more machines than Windows does
      - user5994461 5y ago
        For the anecdote, it's possible to upgrade a windows machine in place from XP to Windows 7 to Windows 10. I've done it at home for multiple computers and it works. I don't do that sort of things at work however. There are obvious limitations on the hardware if you really want to go all the way from XP (32 bits), don't expect it to take SSD or high core modern CPU. P.S. Debian has order of magnitudes less desktops/servers than Windows. There's a tremendous amount of embedded devices on Debian but that's a completely different use case, if anything they never get an upgrade from the manufacturer.
        rixed 5y ago
        > Debian has order of magnitudes less desktops/servers than Windows Source for Debian running orders of magnitude fewer servers than Windows ?
        lostmsu 5y ago
        I doubt this myself, but here you go: https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-share https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-sh... TL;DC; 2018: 48% Windows 34% Red Hat 18% rest. Again, servers are probably largely irrelevant for dist upgrade. On desktop the prevalence is clear.
        blibble 5y ago
        yes, that link is total bunk how many "sales" of Debian are there?
        lostmsu 5y ago
        This was first relevant result in the search. Can you find better?
        user5994461 5y ago
        My bad, I meant desktops and servers combined. Servers are negligible due to the much larger amount of personal computers (billions). Wikipedia has some stats with sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste... There's about 300 millions Windows devices shipped a year for the past half decade. They must be mostly desktops, unless Windows mobile made a return that eluded everyone :D Funny enough, for servers, both Windows and Linux (all distributions) have 27% market share.
      - lostmsu 5y ago
        I am not sure what are you trying to argue here. The topic was upgrade process. Even Windows 11 hardware requirement, which is sad but too recent to be relevant, does not stop it from upgrading from Windows 10 on unsupported machines. And even if Debian runs on more machines than Windows (which I doubt), most of them are probably VMs, that have only a few apps installed, and just get rebuilt instead of being upgraded. Which means that fact is also irrelevant for dist upgrades.
        blibble 5y ago
        it's not a like for like comparison, Debian runs on many more platforms and supports far more exotic hardware configurations that Windows I've also never had a Debian upgrade trash a filesystem entirely either, but have had that happen on a Windows 10 "upgrade", when it decided to overwrite the MS dynamic disk software RAID superblock with garbage (not to mention the random registry corruptions that seemed to plague Windows installations in the not-too-distant past without even needing to do an upgradep)
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      One time I had Windows become unbootable because I hibernated it.
- goodpoint 5y ago
  I've been upgrading company servers and personal desktops and laptops for 21+ years without getting an unbootable machine.

user5994461 5y ago

In theory it's supported, in practice you might lose the machine. Tried on 3 tests VM last month, nuked 1 out of them, failed somewhere mid process after removing half of the system packages. That machine never rebooted.

blibble 5y ago
you've been pretty unlucky I must have upgraded at least 1000 times over 20 years and I've only had a machine become unbootable once
- lostmsu 5y ago
  If Debian were Windows, that would be 3+ millions of users with unbootable PCs.
  - blibble 5y ago
    the machine it broken on was prehistoric, vs. the Microsoft approach for Windows 11 of not supporting machines less than 5 years old also: Debian and its derivitaves likely runs on more machines than Windows does
    - user5994461 5y ago
      For the anecdote, it's possible to upgrade a windows machine in place from XP to Windows 7 to Windows 10. I've done it at home for multiple computers and it works. I don't do that sort of things at work however. There are obvious limitations on the hardware if you really want to go all the way from XP (32 bits), don't expect it to take SSD or high core modern CPU. P.S. Debian has order of magnitudes less desktops/servers than Windows. There's a tremendous amount of embedded devices on Debian but that's a completely different use case, if anything they never get an upgrade from the manufacturer.
      - rixed 5y ago
        > Debian has order of magnitudes less desktops/servers than Windows Source for Debian running orders of magnitude fewer servers than Windows ?
        lostmsu 5y ago
        I doubt this myself, but here you go: https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-share https://www.t4.ai/industry/server-operating-system-market-sh... TL;DC; 2018: 48% Windows 34% Red Hat 18% rest. Again, servers are probably largely irrelevant for dist upgrade. On desktop the prevalence is clear.
        blibble 5y ago
        yes, that link is total bunk how many "sales" of Debian are there?
        lostmsu 5y ago
        This was first relevant result in the search. Can you find better?
        user5994461 5y ago
        My bad, I meant desktops and servers combined. Servers are negligible due to the much larger amount of personal computers (billions). Wikipedia has some stats with sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste... There's about 300 millions Windows devices shipped a year for the past half decade. They must be mostly desktops, unless Windows mobile made a return that eluded everyone :D Funny enough, for servers, both Windows and Linux (all distributions) have 27% market share.
    - lostmsu 5y ago
      I am not sure what are you trying to argue here. The topic was upgrade process. Even Windows 11 hardware requirement, which is sad but too recent to be relevant, does not stop it from upgrading from Windows 10 on unsupported machines. And even if Debian runs on more machines than Windows (which I doubt), most of them are probably VMs, that have only a few apps installed, and just get rebuilt instead of being upgraded. Which means that fact is also irrelevant for dist upgrades.
      - blibble 5y ago
        it's not a like for like comparison, Debian runs on many more platforms and supports far more exotic hardware configurations that Windows I've also never had a Debian upgrade trash a filesystem entirely either, but have had that happen on a Windows 10 "upgrade", when it decided to overwrite the MS dynamic disk software RAID superblock with garbage (not to mention the random registry corruptions that seemed to plague Windows installations in the not-too-distant past without even needing to do an upgradep)
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    One time I had Windows become unbootable because I hibernated it.
goodpoint 5y ago
I've been upgrading company servers and personal desktops and laptops for 21+ years without getting an unbootable machine.