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Upgrading Debian 8 to 9?

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khelben1979
Posts: 217
Joined: 2008-02-26 14:59
Location: Sweden

Upgrading Debian 8 to 9?

#1 Post by khelben1979 »

Hello all!

I'm wondering about the consequence of upgrading my Debian 8.11 up to the new Debian 9 version?

The reason why I have been holding back for so long is because of the AMD graphics drivers. I'm using
the non-free AMD Crimson driver and I know that the system will be using the AMD open source driver
provided by the Linux kernel instead, and I'm concerned that I will lose graphic features of my current
graphic driver once I do this. I'm used to be able to watch 2K videos on Youtube without any problems
and play some web browsed games as well which is dependent on flash acceleration which also
communicates with the Crimson driver.

My hardware is: HP laptop (2015 model I believe) with AMD Radeon 3200 (graphics card / graphic
chip switching) and I currently using AMD driver 15.20, Catalyst control center version 2.21.

I want to upgrade to the new Debian 9 system, but only provided the graphic performance don't
get too sluggish and that I won't lose important graphic features. What is your recommendation?
HP ENVY x360 15-ee0013no
OS: Debian 11 "Bullseye"

Bulkley
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Re: Upgrading Debian 8 to 9?

#2 Post by Bulkley »

Do you have a spare drive? My advice is to clone the system, all of it including Grub (boot loader). This will provide a fallback if you make a mess. We all do and learn to have backups. I prefer a clone but there are others. Do a backup now.

Try a live-CD or live-USB to see how it behaves on your machine.

Here's how I do a major upgrade. (Copied from a previous post) Note that it leans to the slow and careful.

When doing a major upgrade, such as Jessie to Stretch, I always exit X and work from a console. I don't want anything running that I won't be using. For the major upgrade I hash # everything in my sources.list except

Code: Select all

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stretch main
. That's all. Then do

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apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
. Reboot. Does everything work? If so, do

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apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
. Reboot and test again. Next, add contrib and non-free to the source line and do it all again. When it is all done you can un-block the second line in your sources.list.

Doing it this way breaks the process down into manageable stages and it makes it easier to troubleshoot. If you run into a problem you can deal with it before proceeding.

A word about non-free. You only need it for proprietary blobs for drivers like Realtek. Once you have them you might as well block non-free. I do the same for special sources

Of course, when you have good backup you can always do a fresh install and copy over important files.

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khelben1979
Posts: 217
Joined: 2008-02-26 14:59
Location: Sweden

Re: Upgrading Debian 8 to 9?

#3 Post by khelben1979 »

OK! Definitely looks like I'm gonna burn down a Debian 9 live CD and test from there! Not today though, but I should test it this week to see how it works out! Some guys over at Phoronix forums said months ago that the AMD open source drivers have evolved so much that it has surpassed the performance of the AMD non-free drivers, I have chosen to take that with a grain of salt :) but it's probably true for the tests they've done, doesn't necessarily involve the things I'm used to do.

If anyone of you guys have similar hardware as I do and have tested it with Debian 9, please feel free to add some of that to this topic!
HP ENVY x360 15-ee0013no
OS: Debian 11 "Bullseye"

Wheelerof4te
Posts: 1454
Joined: 2015-08-30 20:14

Re: Upgrading Debian 8 to 9?

#4 Post by Wheelerof4te »

That card will use the open-source radeon driver in Stretch. I have AMD R5 330m, this card defaults to radeon and I've seen good performance for common tasks when I switch to it (I have a hybrid Intel/AMD setup).

My advice would be to follow the official documentation regarding the update:
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/ ... ading.html

Just make sure you have everything important backed up somewhere. Also, get Debian 9 installation image ready, just in case upgrade fails.
EDIT: Almost forgot...you need firmware-amd-graphics non-free package, in order to have acceplable performance. Without this firmware, the card might lack hardware acceleration.

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apt install firmware-amd-graphics
You can also download the .deb file from the net at
https://packages.debian.org/stretch/all ... s/download
Might be more convenient, since it can be put on spare USB.

nigratruo
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Re: Upgrading Debian 8 to 9?

#5 Post by nigratruo »

Bulkley wrote:Do you have a spare drive? My advice is to clone the system, all of it including Grub (boot loader). This will provide a fallback if you make a mess. We all do and learn to have backups. I prefer a clone but there are others. Do a backup now.

Try a live-CD or live-USB to see how it behaves on your machine.
I like the idea of cloning very much, so you can try out if the upgrade works properly. If it does not, go back to the original. If it does, keep the new version.

Bulkley
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Re: Upgrading Debian 8 to 9?

#6 Post by Bulkley »

nigratruo wrote:I like the idea of cloning very much, so you can try out if the upgrade works properly. If it does not, go back to the original. If it does, keep the new version.
Exactly.

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