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Fedora Linux Might Drop Incremental Upgrades (happyassassin.net)

Posted by Soulskill on from the how-to-save-an-hour-a-year dept.

prisoninmate writes: As you might know, Fedora and many other GNU/Linux distributions require users to do an incremental upgrade when attempting to move from an older version of the operating system to the most recent one. For example, if you want to upgrade from Fedora 21 to Fedora 23, you will have first to upgrade to Fedora 22. Lately, Fedora upgrades have become more stable and reliable, mostly because of some brand-new technologies, such as the DNF package manger. Fedora's Adam Williamson theorizes about an innovative method that might support official upgrade of the Fedora Linux operating system across two releases in the future.

3 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. I've been doing this for years by daremonai · · Score: 3, Informative
    I routinely skip versions when doing Fedora upgrades. In fact, I just recently upgraded five systems from Fed 21 directly to Fed 23 without any real issues.

    Yeah, occasionally, when there are major changes, like when systemd (peace be upon it) was introduced, this might not work, but I've gotten through quite a few version skips just fine.

  2. How about slashdot fix the headline.. by thesupraman · · Score: 3, Informative

    Impressively bad new-slashdot headlining here.
    Is it really worth plumbing the depths of false 'shock headlines' just to pull in views?

    They are not DROPPING anything, they are looking at ADDING the ability to skip updates.
    You can still incrementally update of course, there is no hint of dropping that.
    They may allow you to instead update two versions in one go.

    If anything, you could say they are dropping the REQUIREMENT for incremental updates.

    But hey, the heyday of Slashdot editors is, as we know, long gone. Such a pity.

    1. Re:How about slashdot fix the headline.. by urdak · · Score: 4, Informative

      IThey are not DROPPING anything, they are looking at ADDING the ability to skip updates.
      You can still incrementally update of course, there is no hint of dropping that.

      Indeed! I was really surprised to read this headline, which implied that "incremental upgrades" are no longer being supported. It turns out, however, that the poster simply has a completely different concept of "incremental upgrade" than I do: For him, the normal upgrade is just "upgrade", and an "incremental upgrade" is when the distro forces you to upgrade in several small steps instead of one big step. The plan is to stop forcing you to take these small steps. And that's it! Upgrades - the normal upgrades that have always been supported - will NOT be dropped.