Re: upgrading ubuntu to debian

[Miles Bader <miles.bader@necel.com>]

Michael Pobega <pobega@gmail.com> writes:
> But what if you've been using Ubuntu for seven months now, you have
> all your applications install, with all the libraries with version
> numbers like "2-3.2-ubuntu-1"?

Sure, it's not really a big deal.  Those usually don't seem to be any
more incompatible than any other minor upgrade of the same package.

> You'd run into a lot more problems that way.

Not in my experience.  After my "adventure" (running ubuntu for a few
months, and then returning to debian), there were a few packages hanging
around for ages with "...-ubuntu-..." versions, but they didn't cause
any obvious problems, and eventually went away in a normal upgrade.

As far as I can tell, Ubuntu is reasonably careful about keeping their
packages largely debian compatible, such that any such differences can
be handled by normal apt mechanisms.  [I don't know to what extent this
is intentional policy though.]

> I've heard stories of people trying to dist-upgrade into Sid and
> hosing their entire system.

No doubt.  But it's not a given.  I can't really say much more given my
sample size of one...  :-)

-Miles

-- 
.Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.