clean install: you make a backup, nuke the computer, install a fresh upgraded copy of the distro you want from a live usb, copy your data again to the computer.
upgrade: you wait ‘till the distro’ developers release an upgrade you can directly install from your soon to be old distro, you use a command like sudo do-release-upgrade
and why do you upgrade like that?
It depends. For Fedora I just do a in place upgrade. However once in a blue moon I do a reinstall.
I always clean install. I have my stuff backed up properly. I’ll go through and make a checklist of frequently used software so I can start off on the right foot. I like that new fresh smell of free space.
Wait for a bugfix release after a major release. Then upgrade.
need moar bugs fixed, just to be safe
I upgrade Fedora from one version to another as doing a clean install would be a lot of work. Maybe I’m just too much of a rookie, but I don’t see the advantages of a clean install.
Even if I installed Fedora on a new computer, I’d just use my clonezilla backup if possible. But I haven’t tried it so I don’t know if this would work.
I almost always prefer clean installation when possible, while making sure to backup important content from highly accessed folders like Desktop, Downloads and Documents (on Windows), for example.
It just feels nice! Nice and fresh.
Fedora, I usually wait 1-2 weeks for the last bugs to be found+fixed and extensions to catch up, and then just upgrade in-place. Haven’t had a major upgrade problem for years now, it’s mostly as smooth as any other offline update. And I don’t feel like I have to reinstall the OS every few years on Linux either.
It depends on how many versions I am away from the latest, and how much I’ve messed with the distro.
Usually I stay on an Ubuntu LTS and upgrade from LTS to LTS when that upgrade path is ready. I upgraded from 20.04 to 22.04 this way.
But this time I wanted Pipewire in 24.04, and didn’t want to wait for a 22.04 to 24.04 upgrade to be ready. I’m using a bluetooth headset and Pulseaudio is pretty terrible at switching headset profiles. Between not wanting to upgrade an upgraded install, and having messed with Pulseaudio quite a bit trying to get it working, I went ahead and clean installed 24.04 and moved some configs over.
I usually roll on desktop/laptop and upgrade on headless. Just seems most practical.
Xp to 7 was upgrade. 7 to 10 was clean
11 to Mint 21.2 was, obviously, clean
The only time I don’t do a regular upgrade is for Windows Server. Too much weird shit happens. I like to keep my servers running clean.
I’m using a rolling release at the moment, but when I used a more stable release, I always did the upgrade (following the official instructions) because it’s faster and more convenient.
I learned the hard way to always keep a backup of my important stuff, regardless of the OS.
The only time I redid a clean install was when I accidentally fucked up my entire filesystem’s permissions.
I backup and then upgrade through the mechanism provided. Why? Lazy. I should take the time to set up a NAS and run most of /home from that, but never have been motivated enough to try it.
I usually let myself lag behind on Fedora to wait until the kinks have been worked out. I just jumped from 38 to 40 in an upgrade and totally regret it. Python is screwed up in distrobox and making problems, but I can roll back too.
I follow the official upgrade method. Can’t be bothered to mess around with anything more complicated than that. Besides, the devs probably understand the system better than I do, so there has to be a reason why that is the preferred way.
This is my plan A. I’ll only go to plan B if something goes wrong — which has happened to me a couple times. I tried to upgrade Ubuntu (LTS, I forget which version) years ago, but it failed hard. I still don’t know why. It wasn’t something I could figure out in half an hour, and it wasn’t worth investing more time than that.
Come to think of it, it’s possible all my upgrade woes came down to Nvidia drivers. It was a common problem on Suse (TW), to the point where I pinned my kernel version to avoid the frequent headaches. I’ll try a rolling distro again when I switch to AMD, maybe.
“clean install” is Windows-user logic. Doesn’t apply to Linux.
I feel like that may be true nowadays, but I remember back when I used to use ubuntu that the upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 was pretty bad. Fedora has always worked great for me, but these days I only use rolling release distros in which case there aren’t any major version updates in the first place, so the problem largely doesn’t exist in the same context.
Canonical makes ubuntu makes upgrades break on purpose so they can sell you ubuntu pro that has the fix in it. For example the upgrade you mention broke grub but only the paid support release ring/branch has a fix
I upgrade when it’s a distro that releases new versions regularly (for example Fedora with two releases per year). I obviously also upgrade rolling distributions.
Why? Because it’s less work and I haven’t had many problems with it.
I usually clean install long-term distros like RHEL (or RHEL-based). These don’t always have a good upgrade path and I usually only use them on servers.
