An upgrade script would be nice

[eco2geek]

For those of us who installed Knoppix (or Kanotix, or...) on our hard drives, it'd be great to have an upgrade script from one "official" version to the next, that didn't involve reformatting and reinstalling everything. The script would just update your existing Knoppix installation to the latest "official" version, leaving your home directory and anything that hadn't changed intact.

Yes, that would conflict with the idea of Knoppix as "only" a live CD, by making it more like a real distro. But it would be nice to see Knoppix (or a Knoppix variant) released as a real distro.

[cameik]

I'm all for the live-distro of linux also being the way it installs to the harddrive. The fact that someone can see Linux run from a cd, then say, hmmm maybe it would even run better (which it will) from the harddrive, and just click to install, no looking for instructions or anything, I think that could aid the spread of linux more than just about anything. It almost gets linux on to people's computers accidentally. I think that there are many existing apps that, for a new user, simplify the install process hugely over a regular install, and creating an interface to install in the x-window environment should be easier, with better results, than a regular-type install. Just one thing, make it work, and then to make it work better, and make it updateable far into the future. (a windows 98 copy still goes on the same as it always did, but then when you put in all those updates and add-ons, it becomes something more, Linux needs to learn from that lesson to become more widely used.) I've used a knoppix-variant called Overclockix, that had a simple desktop icon to initiate 'install to harddrive' which was very impressive. (The result was full of eye-candy, but the distro itself needed a little polishing) The actual install wasn't bad at all, and was easily accessible. One more thing though... That lilo... ugh! if you are going to commandeer the boot-up of the computer, best to make it look nicer!

[baldyeti]

Let's not re-invent that wheel, shall we? Once installed to HD, knoppix/kanotix/mepis/morphix/whatnot _is_ a debian system, which arguably has the best package management of all linux distros. Painless dist-upgrades are more likely with kanotix (or mepis) which is purely sid-based, whereas knoppix mixes several debian levels and is bound to more conflicts. I personally never do massive blind updates, but just glance through the changelogs of newer knoppix releases to see what's worth apt-getting. Never forget the golden rule: no need to fix a system that works!

[Cuddles]

BaldYeti,

I agree with some of what you say, and some of what you say, I don't...

Yes, Knoppix is great, I wouldn't go anywhere else for my Linux, given that, I have had way too many apt-get horrors, probably due to the fact that IT IS unstable/testing/stable all rolled into one, but, none the less, IT WOULD be nice to be current. This coming from someone who knows the first apt-get install /or/ apt-get upgrade _is_ going to try and mess up my system. Being on v3.3, and having a few "packages" that are "out-of-date", like KDE, the kernel, etc... to what is "currently" on the apt-get, like v3.4 - I fear the first time I loose my bearings, and don't think, I am going to scramble my system, to the point that, re-install with the new version will be the ONLY option, whereas, now, I can be happy knowing that almost every package I want to install, will cause a "major" upgrade that "will" scramble the system.

True, I have a choice: stay back in "old version" world, and not be able to use some of the newer packages that will only install with dependancies that can only be met in v3.4 - OR - I can blow away my complete system, and install v3.4 from scratch - OR - as you say, attempt, to use the dist-upgrade, and pray it doesn't FORCE me to do the second option I mentioned.

All of this would be much easier, if, as Eco2Geek suggested, a upgrade option was available from a version of Knoppix, when someone CHOOSES to have it on there hard drive. It can't be that difficult, M$ has done it for years with 3.x to Win95, from Win95 to Win98, not sure if it goes any higher, I stopped with M$ OS's in Win98 - but they do it, it can't be that hard to do the same in Knoppix, and it would save a lot of headaches for those of us who chose to install, instead of just playing with the Live CD.

Its a valid idea, and I feel it is one that has been missed in any of the versions of Knoppix...

Just my thoughts,
Ms. Cuddles

[baldyeti]

Lots of things would be nice to have if only someone put some effort into making them available to us! Even if Klaus went throught the pain of documenting his every incremental steps from one release to the next, what about people who have skipped intermediate versions? Running successive upgrades possibly months after their release date would require tapping in debian snapshots, since the current official pools wouldn't represent what was available then... Nothing's impossible of coure, I am just trying to point out how much extra work this would be, when after all, there is _some_ upgrade path by using the debian infrastructure in place. And since knoppix is a bleediing-edge mixture of sw package, most of which come from unstable, one simply would be naive to expect seamless upgrades imo.

When you think about the sheer number of moving parts, sid is a little engineering miracle. It has made live-CDs possible, and is the very reason why knoppix has such frequent releases. This, and herr Knopper dedication, of course! Other live cd's strive for better upgradability by sticking to one debain level, or leveraging other packaging systems (eg PClinuxOS with mandrake), but none releases that often. Somehow I can't help thinking that "bleeding edge", " easily upgradable" and "stable" are another case where one can only pick two out of those three qualities at a time.

System upgradability in general is suboptimal with linux, and the best we can do is advise newbies to foresee a separate /home partition when installing to hard disk. Maybe this should be better stressed in a Wiki page?

Oh and I don't think the MS comparison is fair here, since we're talking work-in-progress OS snapshots. Windows upgrades are only expected to work between stable releases, but then again so do most commercial linux versions, or debian stable for that matter.

[eco2geek]

Lots of things would be nice to have if only someone put some effort into making them available to us!

Very true, especially where open source is concerned. As a person for whom programming and scripting aren't easy to do (or understand), I definitely appreciate the amount of hard work this would involve.

Even if Klaus went throught the pain of documenting his every incremental steps from one release to the next, what about people who have skipped intermediate versions?

In order to be reasonable, it would just be an upgrade from released version to released version. Anything else would be too much.

Actually, what I would really like to see is for Knoppix to become a "real" distro in its own right. An upgrade script would be a beginning.

Knoppix was created to be a live CD. One would not expect Mr. Knopper & Co. to make it more than that. So it would be up to someone else to take it upon themselves (or get a group together) to build a "real" installer (i.e. one that resembled that of other Linux distros); track and mirror changes in Knoppix; etc. Kanotix is already going in this direction, with its numerous scripts available to turn a hard disk install into a more "normal" Debian Sid system.

(Maybe I should post this idea to the Kanotix forums.)