[ale] supported upgrading for debian and ubuntu [was: Re: Ubuntu help]

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On 01/25/2009 10:14 PM, James Sumners wrote:
> I call BS on that. Ubuntu is derivative of Debian. Unless they have
> royally screwed up apt, then editing the sources.list and doing
> `apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade` will upgrade any older
> version to any newer version.

Actually, debian doesn't support doing upgrades across multiple releases
at the same time either.  e.g. if you had a sarge machine, and tried to
do the upgrade directly to lenny (skipping etch), it wouldn't be
guaranteed to work, and if you reported bugs about such an upgrade, the
likely response would be "don't do that; upgrade from release to release".

At any rate, even for release to release upgrades, it's not apt itself
that makes debian's upgrade process so famously smooth and stable; it's
actually debian's well-formulated policy (and rigorous adherence to it)
that provides the baseline guarantees.  apt is a necessary technical
component, but it's not sufficient.

ubuntu uses apt, but it does not explicitly adhere to debian's policies
afaict.

	--dkg

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