Matthew Barnes <mbarnes redhat com> wrote: >I'm still a little confused as to why so many users seem to feel the >need to backup and restore their personal data just to upgrade their >operating system in place. Backing up of course is a prudent safety >measure, but if the upgrade goes smoothly there should be no need to >restore the backup. >Are there actually distro installers that don't allow you to upgrade >without nuking your home directory, or do some installers not make that >option clear enough, or am I just misunderstanding the problem? AFAIK all mainstream distros do non-destructive in-place upgrades. I've upgraded openSUSE from 11.0 to present (12.1) without restoring anything. I think this stems from a clinging to the obsolete practice of periodic re-install. I have no idea why users do this but it is very prevalent amoung the ones I talk to; they reinstall all the time. >There does seem to be a large concentration of Ubuntu users reporting >these kinds of problems, but that might just be a statistical anomaly >rather than something Ubuntu is doing wrong. I don't believe it is anomalous; it jives perfectly with my first-hand experience. Ubuntu users in-the-main inherit the worst practices of 1990s era PC users. It is very frustrating to try to help them even in person - turn your back for a few minutes and the are reinstalling to see if that will magickally fix thier problem (whatever that is).
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