Has anyone "upgraded" from PointLinux (jessie) to stretch

[gulbrain]

Hi forum,

I'm new to this, but have been using PointLinux with MATE for a while, keeping it up to date manually with Synaptic Package Manager.

I want to address Spectre and Meltdown on my home PC and it looks like I need to move to a proper Debian, rather than sticking with pointlinux - built on jessie.

There are other niggles that I'm hoping will be fixed by using the latest OS.

I just wondered if anyone had tried a similar upgrade and run into any gotchas. I couldn't see anything pertinent in the documentation, but I may not have been looking for the right words.

I am trying it out on an old laptop first to get the process described and run through in a fashion I can understand. I've already run into a couple of things that I believe I've worked around OK - mostly around configuring sources.list.

If anyone could suggest a summary of the process they would recommend or a good resource for researching this sort of thing, that would be great.

Thank you all,
Tim

[arochester]

Not Debian then.

Have you tried the Point Linux Forums? >>> http://forums.pointlinux.org/

[gulbrain]

My reasoning for posting here was that I believe I need to move to a Debian proper install, from a pointlinux system that is based on an old Debian because pointlinux does not appear to be updating their releases (the latest appears to be June 2016). Therefore, to have a chance of addressing the current (and future) widely advertised vulnerabilities I need to move to an operating system that is still being maintained.

[bw123]

My reasoning for posting here was that I believe I need to move to a Debian proper install, from a pointlinux system that is based on an old Debian because pointlinux does not appear to be updating their releases (the latest appears to be June 2016). Therefore, to have a chance of addressing the current (and future) widely advertised vulnerabilities I need to move to an operating system that is still being maintained.

I think that makes sense, but to 'move' to debian is to install it fresh. You can try and 'upgrade' from another distro, it might seem to work initially, but it might not be good long-term.

Troubleshooting problems later would be tricky, because you would have to eliminate the possibility of something left over. I don't think many people on here would recommend it or want to help you with it.

[stevepusser]

You should be able to use Debian stable release kernels with the Meltdown mitigation backported to them, or a Liquorix 4.14 kernel backported to Jessie from my repo. There is some concern that kernels prior to 4.14.12 use an inferior mitigation method to the ktpi in those, plus 32-bit kernels currently also have no fixes at all. You can also see if you can update your browsers to Spectre-hardened versions, which should be easy on a Jessie base if Point Linux is also using the Debian repositories.

[None1975]

I think it's easier to do a clean install of Debian9.3 and stick with Debian. New projects are born and dying, but Debian is always rock solid in terms of stability and security.

[gulbrain]

I knew I'd asked this somewhere ....
Update: Recently, browsers stopped handling videos and I was forced to work through this.
In the end, I installed the latest Debian afresh, replacing the previous OS disk.
I copied the OS disk to another drive before starting - this helped greatly when copying back browser and email profile folders etc.

Should anyone else wish to try to avoid re-installing everything - good luck. Start with taking a good backup and, unless you know exactly what you're doing, be prepared to give up and end up re-installing everything.

[arzgi]

I agree it's easier to do a fresh install, and copy user data from backups.

While Debian supports upgrading from old stable to new, it is always advisable to read the release notes.

For example browsers stop working soon, as you said about videos. You could solve this by moving browser settings to somewhere else, and then starting again. bookmarks are good to save. But there might be also other caveats, which will show up when you don't know what to do, or you don't have time to troubleshoot.

[CwF]

It's EASY!

Code: Select all

$  cat /var/log/installer/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Debian
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Debian GNU/Linux installer"
DISTRIB_RELEASE="8 (jessie) - installer build 20150422+deb8u4"
X_INSTALLATION_MEDIUM=cdrom
$  cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="10"
VERSION="10 (buster)"
VERSION_CODENAME=buster
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

or another one;

Code: Select all

$  cat /var/log/installer/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Debian
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Debian GNU/Linux installer"
DISTRIB_RELEASE="9 (stretch) - installer build 20170615+deb9u2+b1"
X_INSTALLATION_MEDIUM=cdrom
$  cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux bullseye/sid"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

...there are more, those are up at the moment.