I saw a post about updating to Debian 12.9 -- and my reaction was, more or less, "What?! There's already a point release?" because I just installed 12.8 a few days ago. I went to check my version by looking at my Conky's OS line, and found there was no version number in it, but it was no longer too long for the alloted space (hadn't got around to adjusting the Conky width), so I dug up how to check the version directly from CLI -- and danged if it didn't come back as 12.9. No muss, no fuss, didn't even know I'd been through a point release upgrade; didn't even have a large update (probably because most of the changes were already in the repos and got installed by the Debian installer).
On Kubuntu, I wouldn't have gotten a point release without running a different update command (sudo apt dist-upgrade instead of sudo apt upgrade for normal updates) (because they often/usually involve kernel updates as well as significant version changes to a lot of the support libraries). I like this way better...
Well, I guess I should make sure I'm ready to get the best upgrade I can when 13 (Trixie?) drops.
From what I've been seeing on these forums, at the least I need to disable third-party repos (like the ones that supply SeaMonkey and a current/working version of BOINC) -- would I be ahead to purge those applications as well? And does that apply to things that used a *curl* command to write a .list file in /etc/apt/ ?
The alternative seems to be to just install over the old Debian and treat it like a new install.
What's best practice (aside from "never run foreign repos")?
Silent Observer wrote: 2025-01-27 23:43
Well, I guess I should make sure I'm ready to get the best upgrade I can when 13 (Trixie?) drops.
From what I've been seeing on these forums, at the least I need to disable third-party repos (like the ones that supply SeaMonkey and a current/working version of BOINC) -- would I be ahead to purge those applications as well? And does that apply to things that used a *curl* command to write a .list file in /etc/apt/ ?
The alternative seems to be to just install over the old Debian and treat it like a new install.
What's best practice (aside from "never run foreign repos")?
I am already running it for the last few months since it got the KDE 6.2.? files that I wanted to test out it works perfectly fine. For an upgrade make certain the programs that come from them third parties have new repositories for Trixie setup. If so it should just be a matter of changing the lines in your sources.list or even better convert to the new format .sources files before hand to save the bother and the warning from the new version of apt that will be installed during the process. The third party apps will just update as well to the versions in their repositories that are built for Trixie. An example of the new format if you have not seen it before.
root@9600k:~# cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources
## Debian 13 Trixie
## The new style method of using repositories to install software.
## This /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources is new style and location file
## The /etc/apt/sources.list.old.style contains the same as this.
## https://linuxconfig.org/ubuntus-repository-configuration-ubuntu-sources-have-moved-to-etc-apt-sources-list-d-ubuntu-sources
## Added extra fields from below.
## https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/1i9qe7h/my_source_list_ok/
## Normal trixie sources
X-Repolib-Name: Debian Main
X-Repolib-ID: system
Types: deb
URIs: http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian/
Suites: trixie trixie-updates trixie-backports
Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
Enabled: yes
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg
Architectures: amd64
## trixie security sources
X-Repolib-Name: Debian Security
X-Repolib-ID: system
Types: deb
URIs: http://security.debian.org/debian-security
Suites: trixie-security
Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
Enabled: yes
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg
Architectures: amd64
## Normal sid sources
X-Repolib-Name: Debian Unstable
X-Repolib-ID: system
Types: deb
URIs: http://ftp.ca.debian.org/debian/
Suites: sid
Components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware
Enabled: yes
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg
Architectures: amd64
As you can see I have the unstable enabled as it is moving target install that some of the time needs the packages from there to get the versions that have migrated to Trixie to install before all of the dependencies have made the move.
So new style is everything in its own .sources file inside list.d? Just go through all of them and change Bookworm to Trixie (after separating third party stuff into separate files), then
Silent Observer wrote: 2025-02-01 12:08
I don't suppose there's an automatic converter??
To fully upgrade the system? If so that is the automatic converter to get from the previous version to the next version of the OS. The full-upgrade command does the change to new distribution, the upgrade only does the existing packages on the machine using the old sources in place. You will never get to the newer version without the full-upgrade.
Edit: Well it is not quite automatic as it requires some user interaction, but it is as close as it ever gets to doing it automatically.
Edit2: Ooops got focused on the automatic. Yes individual files for each third repository is how I did it.
