Pleasantly surprised, upgrade vs. clean install

[Aqrabuamelu]

I've had a Dell Latitude for a while. I'd upgraded from bullseye to bookworm earlier this summer. I decided that since the system was rather old it might be a good idea to do a clean install. I just did that a couple days ago. Several surprises hit me. This laptop has run a bit hot from day one, even after the upgrade to 12. After the clean install, the temps dropped roughly 20-25°F. Hmm! Clean install vs. upgrade much better.
Performance was excellent before and I think it's a tad bit better now, but that's hard to tell without the proper benchmarks, which I didn't run - blarst!
Needless to say, I am very impressed!
My wife also upgraded earlier this year. I think I'm going to talk to her about a clean install on her HP All-In-One and see if she notices any differences. Her system is about as old as mine was.
Thanks Debian Team for a job well done!
BTW, this has been a non-Windows house since 2007 and neither of us have found any reason to regret that.

[Uptorn]

I wish you had run top before and after so that we could have had some idea what was driving up those temperatures. I've also been very happy with Debian's performance across all of the hardware that I've used. It tends to be the choice of desktop environment that makes more of a performance impact than anything else.

[reinob]

Clean install vs. upgrade much better.

This is not necessarily true. It is more likely that when you installed debian clean you didn't install all of the programs (and their settings) that you had in the updated/upgraded system. And this is assuming that you read and followed the release notes (which many people don't read) when upgrading from a major version to another.

There's no magic here. A program is either installed or not installed. Running or not running.

That's the good thing about linux, you can actually upgrade anything (which amounts to installing new versions of certain programs and/or libraries) and the behaviour is consistent. In theory any OS should be like that, but it's more-or-less true that in Windows some actions (installing a program, or even running a program) are irreversible, so can get worse over time.

[CwF]

Long term I think upgrades teach users more. The process of noticing changes and fixing those changes forces the deeper look otherwise never witnessed. Starting over is always the an option, the last one.

[None1975]

Long term I think upgrades teach users more. The process of noticing changes and fixing those changes forces the deeper look otherwise never witnessed. Starting over is always the an option, the last one.

What if a person wants to avoid problems? What if a person simply wants to work on an operating system?

[reinob]

Long term I think upgrades teach users more. The process of noticing changes and fixing those changes forces the deeper look otherwise never witnessed. Starting over is always the an option, the last one.

What if a person wants to avoid problems? What if a person simply wants to work on an operating system?

Then reinstalling the OS from scratch is definitely not the most productive option is it?

Generally, not knowing how a tool (OS) works is not the best way of using the tool (OS). It can be done, but you won't get very far.

[Uptorn]

The concept of fresh installing an OS is ingrained into people by Windows where that is common advice given as a "solution".

[steve_v]

TBH I don't think I've "reinstalled" any flavor of GNU/Linux, ever, in 20+ years of running it as my primary (and usually only) system.
Initial installs on new kit and a bit of distro-hopping back when (mostly before VMs), restoring backups when hardware fails or I bork something beyond my patience for fixing it, sure. But not "clean" reinstalls to "fix" things, that's what Windows users do.
We have package managers that make sense and flat-file configuration. No third-party installers, no registry, no shady executables from j.random website.

[CwF]

What if a person wants to avoid problems?

You draw a line I draw elsewhere. The person that will install an OS should be the same person to master upgrades. My line is between a operator/user of a system who knows loads more about the actual operation of the program, and would never install the system, let alone upgrade anything that's actually working.
I've always had great respect for the users of the machines I build or maintain. From computers to 20 ton vehicles of great sophistication I just make it work, they provide the grace.

The concept of fresh installing an OS is ingrained into people by Windows where that is common advice given as a "solution".

Also seems to be a valid tactic for arch and Ubuntu also.

Mastering the install to me is a waste of time. How many things do we "install" the system? Few, if any. Do you install to a phone, a router, any number of gadgets over the usb or serial port, or an ecm, tcm or control module? No, you flash them. Do you think computer manufactures have a minion installing the OS? No, they bulk image to the storage device before it's installed. The same way I do it.

Only once in the last 5 years have I "installed" Debian to check a factor that I worked out and then deleted. All the machines I have, use, or built out are based on images created before that and updated to current. When I boot a new computer it goes all the way to configured desktop first time. "Install" time 0:00.

Qemu/libvirt vm's makes this possible.

Truth be told, corporate installs of 2000/XP had an amazing ability to jump to new hardware. Not one thing in common and it will think, reconfigure, reboot, and just work. I knew that then. Debian has been nearly perfect in this ability to be a golden image for the ages, otherwise I wouldn't use it. Ubuntu does fail in this category btw due to its 'over configured and under tested' nature.

[steve_v]

corporate installs of 2000/XP had an amazing ability to jump to new hardware. Not one thing in common and it will think, reconfigure, reboot, and just work.

You must be using a different XP to me then... The number of times I've had to screw about in the registry from a livecd to fix broken disk controller or chipset drivers after a hardware change.

[CwF]

You must be using a different XP to me then...

Possibly.
The secret is the same as it is now, do the modifications, installation of drivers and all, before you make the move. With regard to Debians, the golden image to 'flashed' image step is just that, configure in a vm, write-out, install, boot. A process that does not include a prior machine. Jumping with XP, this vm step is done on the prior computer. Indeed storage controllers for the boot drive could benefit from a vm that could present both controllers - then add the new controller for a non-boot disk, then reboot with the boot disk on that controller and it will figure it out. Without that step you would need to manually mod the registry to make the jump. I would usually have made the original install disk so only if the span was crazy years, the drivers are likely there.

My current bare metal XP32 is dual 5687's (2x4) with 24GB and 4GB AMD GPU. Stupid overkill, then again maybe not! The fact that it works and is rock solid should hint that XP went further than many realize. It didn't suck. There was more than one out of support date.

[lindi]

I generally do a fresh install instead of an upgrade simply because it is way easier to document how the system was built that way.

[Uptorn]

Mastering the install to me is a waste of time. How many things do we "install" the system? Few, if any. Do you install to a phone, a router, any number of gadgets over the usb or serial port, or an ecm, tcm or control module? No, you flash them. Do you think computer manufactures have a minion installing the OS? No, they bulk image to the storage device before it's installed. The same way I do it.

Only once in the last 5 years have I "installed" Debian to check a factor that I worked out and then deleted. All the machines I have, use, or built out are based on images created before that and updated to current. When I boot a new computer it goes all the way to configured desktop first time. "Install" time 0:00.

Qemu/libvirt vm's makes this possible.

Truth be told, corporate installs of 2000/XP had an amazing ability to jump to new hardware. Not one thing in common and it will think, reconfigure, reboot, and just work. I knew that then. Debian has been nearly perfect in this ability to be a golden image for the ages, otherwise I wouldn't use it. Ubuntu does fail in this category btw due to its 'over configured and under tested' nature.

Your approach would also make the load on Debian's mirrors less strenuous if it were more commonly taken. I might start doing the same, after some consideration. But more because I am concerned with having a trustworthy point of genesis.

[limotux]

With all my due respect to OP and everybody.

I wonder why would anybody do a fresh install while it is possible to just upgrade.
Why would anybody need to reinstall any software he previously installed or reconfigure his system allover again.

This is one point of strength Linux has (at least for most distros). It is not Windoze!
My experience with Linux since I ever started in 2000, I recently preferred rolling distros just to install the system only once and not bother reinstalling and re-configuring. It just works and keeps working. But we all know what challenges we have with rolling distros. My latest was EndeavourOS, honestly I loved it very much (despite a few issues, the worst was Grub breaking).

But as I have been a distro hopper for like a couple years (just curiosity and eager to learn), I came to know that Debain as a rock solid and stable Linux would allow me to upgrade to the next release by doing some commands and no need to reinstall (which is why mainly I gone to rolling releases) so I decided to give it a try and I was impressed.

Personally I do not really care about having the latest software or the bleeding edge, I am not that techie, I am just a home user, browsing. listen to music, watch a video, work on a document or spreadsheet... just normal home use.

So, I found Debian is more than perfect for me, I am having a stable system, I don't worry things might break with an update, above all, Grub doesn't break!

[lindi]

One more reason to reinstall once in a while: LUKS disk encryption can take advantage of new algorithms when you reinstall, upgrading won't re-encrypt your drive.

[CwF]

upgrading won't re-encrypt your drive.

There is a way to do this separately from the upgrade, I could look it up...I did post on this maybe a year ago I thought, I relayed a mailing list post I think, as for myself I've moved away from using encryption on replaceable OS code.

I might start doing the same, after some consideration

I will be listening.