On 05/21/2017 05:40 PM, David Christensen wrote:
As I understand it:
* 'apt-get upgrade' is for rolling forward to a new minor revision --
e.g. Debian 8.7 to Debian 8.8 -- and/or new packages -- e.g. icedove
1:45.6.0-1~deb8u1 to thunderbird 1:45.8.0-3~deb8u1).
* 'apt-get dist-upgrade' is for rolling forward to a new major
revision -- e.g. Debian 7 to Debian 8.
I do the former regularly -- once or more per week.
I avoid the latter, as it's caused me grief in the past (when I want to
do a major version upgrade, I backup, move the system disk aside, do a
fresh install, and restore).
My issue is likely tied to some software corner case due the the
hardware -- e.g. 32-bit laptop with an off-spec 64-bit processor jammed in.
I've always used dist-upgrade for years without any problems. It's an
old habit by now. If I don't, I learned there are some packages I *do*
want to upgrade that get held back (ie. not upgraded) if I don't do
dist-upgrade, such as new kernels (which I like to keep the kernel the
newest out there). I haven't yet had any real major issues (even minor
issues I've always found a work-around and 99% of the time it was just
something I myself needed to configure, and not really a bug). I run
stable so maybe that is why I have such good luck. On test VMs I do
dist-upgrade basically because I know I can always start over if things
go wrong. And Virtual Machines are the test systems anyway.
