Upgrading from Mandriva 2008 Spring to 2009

Is this possible in Mandriva, or do I have to do a fresh install? If so, how do I go about it? I've been using Mandy for about a year now but have always done a clean install when a new one comes out, and never even bothered to check if I can just do a system upgrade.

Let me know. Thanks in advance. :)

That's funny! you ask in a Ubuntu forum stuff about mandriva! that's silly, Mr BigSilly!!!

However, mandriva 2009 is really beautiful! a pity ubuntu is not so good looking. Cheers!!

yes it is possible. I successfully updated my spring desktop and my spring sub-notebook to 2009.0 using the wiki. Note however that both machines were using KDE3.5.9 and were upgraded to KDE 3.5.10 NOT KDE4 (I didn't want them to have KDE4). *I think if you use the upgrade feature on the DVD/CD, it will upgrade you to KDE4 if you currently use KDE3.*

The update wiki I used is here: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes#Upgrading_from_2008_Spring

I did an upgrade from 2008 spring to 2009 via the web. It took a long time though, 5+ hours!

fabietto0102 said: That's funny! you ask in a Ubuntu forum stuff about mandriva! that's silly, Mr BigSilly!!!

However, mandriva 2009 is really beautiful! a pity ubuntu is not so good looking. Cheers!!

Erk! Well I am registered on the Mandriva forums, but I knew the Mandy fans on the Ubuntu forums would be quicker to answer. ;)

Thanks for your replies dudes. I think I'll just do a clean install then. I don't see the point hanging around for 5 hours and over trying to update when a clean install takes 10 minutes.

Thanks again. :)

Vulpus said: I did an upgrade from 2008 spring to 2009 via the web. It took a long time though, 5+ hours!Ouch... 5 Hours?!?!?

My urpmi upgrade was only about 45minutes or so, but I had the full spring DVD version installed, so about 1300+ packages needed to be downloaded and upgraded.

Antman said: Ouch... 5 Hours?!?!?

Well the PC in question is a six year old HP Pavilion with a 667MHz Celeron processor and is powered by a team of specially trained gerbils.

Vulpus said: Well the PC in question is a six year old HP Pavilion with a 667MHz Celeron processor and is powered by a team of specially trained gerbils.

Ok... that explains it. :lolflag:

It's likely more the speed of the mirror you're downloading from than the speed of your system.

There is indeed a graphical in-line upgrade from 2008 Spring to 2009 (this is a new feature, we've never done it before). As I announced at the official forum, we temporarily disabled it late last night for a few days to fix some bugs that had become apparent once it got made public - mostly to do with mirrors being un-sync'ed or very busy, or with systems not having enough hard disk space to complete the upgrade.

AdamWill said: It's likely more the speed of the mirror you're downloading from than the speed of your system.

I am sure that plays a big part but believe me this is a slooooooow PC. Apart of the steam powered CPU the hard drive is living on borrowed time. You should see the HD activity LED flash when it is doing even the simplest of processes. I think if it wasn't for the fact I have all my data on an external HD it would have given up the ghost long before now.

Having said all that, it can run the latest Mandriva perfectly fine, I don't think XP would have a chance far less Vista!

I've always had better luck doing a clean install with all the OSes I've used. Something always borks for me when I do an upgrade.

vulpus: indeed, a slow hard disk will cause the process to take rather a bit more time, you're right there.

Vorian Grey said: I've always had better luck doing a clean install with all the OSes I've used. Something always borks for me when I do an upgrade.

Alas, this has proved the case for me. :(

Got back from holiday, and just thought "why not?", so I followed the wiki guide earlier in the thread and hoped for the best. Took nearly three hours, as halfway through the mirror seemed to slow right down, but when it came to rebooting it looked good for a moment. New GRUB screen, new art, but no OS. Tried safe mode, and got a warning about NVidia. So I'm going to have to do a clean install. I'll hang on till the .iso turns up on my next Linux Format mag and install it afresh then.

Never mind! :biggrin: Faint heart never won fair maiden etc, etc...

aw, c'mon, don't chicken out. =)

what was the warning?

Can't remember now. Something to do with the Nvidia kernel driver or whatever. Never mind, I've formatted the partition now and I'll clean install just as soon as I get my hands on the new iso.

It'd better be good! ;) :biggrin:

fabietto0102 said: That's funny! you ask in a Ubuntu forum stuff about mandriva! that's silly, Mr BigSilly!!!

However, mandriva 2009 is really beautiful! a pity ubuntu is not so good looking. Cheers!!

Feh KDE4 is only good for overly dark wallpapers and themes

I like the look of KDE. A dark theme is really nice on the eyes. Mandriva certainly has the best default theme

Meh, sod it. I decided to download the iso today instead of waiting for the magazine, and have just installed it. It's merrily updating at the moment as I type, and there's a lot of updates for such a recent distro, but I take that as a good sign. On very early impressions, it's just lovely. KDE4 isn't getting on my nerves yet, so we'll see how Mandy copes with that in the long term, but I have a feeling this implementation may be what I wanted from it.

I do so love Mandriva. I'm predisposed to liking it before I've installed the beggar! Hopefully this'll be a good one. It has a lot to live up to. The 2008 releases have proven to be the very best Linux has to offer imho.

Will post back later. :)

Hehe, I was impressed too. The main thing I don't like about KDE4 is the desktop doesn't work like it did in KDE3.5.x and the taskbar didn't have two rows (although you can fix the latter by

http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/multirows+task+manager?content=83177

Personally I used Krusader to copy and paste the files from the .deb archive rather than compile lol

You find apt-get in the repos :) But I never test how good it works.

KDE 4.2 will be impressive I think. In Cooker you find KDE 4.1.71 and there you can make your Desktop act like a real desktop :)

Regards, TeaAge

So far it's been all good to be honest. A couple of bugs with KDE4 on the panel. Well one bug, the clock went a bit funny coloured at one bit, but it's fine now and otherwise OK. Couple of things though; firstly how do I get Firefox to open fullscreen when I start it? I'm having to manually maxixmise the window every time I start it. And secondly, how do I add my favourite programs to the panel? I tried adding Thunderbird but it won't let me, and right clicking the Thunderbird entry in the K Menu just starts the program. There's no context menu on the right click.

Thanks all. :)

per Drag&Drop. Go the menu, click with left mouse button, hold it and drag it in the panel.

Alternative: Switch to the Kick-Off Menu (right click to the menu-button and choose the KickOff-Stil). There you can create a new panel entry with the rightclick method.

Regards,

Thanks for your tips TeaAge, however it's all gone wrong. :(

Was resizing the panel, and it sent the screen into fits. I had one bit of panel on top of the screen bleeding up from the bottom, and the screen just went completely white. Tried to reset to defaults, couldn't find an option, and tried manually reversing my changes, which didn't work either. So, gutted, I ctrl-alt-backspace and log back, only to find my panel is completely bozzed up, with items I'd added missing. After a bit of faffing about I thought, bugger it, and decided to install KDE3.5.10, which is OK for the most part, but I got a message about - ``` urpme --auto-orphans

urpme - command not found

What to do? I mean, I've been using Linux for a bit and I at least have a vague idea of where to look, but what would someone new to Linux do? My gut feeling is yet again this is a KDE4 issue, similar to one I experienced on OpenSUSE 11 a while ago.

It's a pity Mandy couldn't include KDE3 as default and just draw people's attention to KDE4 in the repository as a new look or something. As it is I'm a bit upset right now, as my usuallly stable and beloved Mandriva hates me. :( :biggrin: Any help anyone can offer, or should I just wait for PCLOS? :shock:

Try:

urpmi --auto-orphans

I agree with you about KDE 4. Well, I use it and havn't had big problems, but many funtions are missed. I also installed KDE 3.5 und GNOME, to have a fallback.

The Community tries to provide a KDE 3 LiveCD, maybe thats a workaround until 2009.1 with a perfect KDE 4.2 Desktop ... hey, hope never dies!

Regards, TeaAge

Blimey, what a few hours I've had with this. Figured out urpme --auto-orphans (run it as root or it won't work), but it just completely hosed my install. It removed some KDE3 packages that were essential, and I didn't notice until it was too late. I like the idea of a removal system like Ubuntu's and Debian's, but this obviously needs some serious work. KDE4 was gone, and sadly so was my KDE3, so I've just formatted the partition and used Super GRUB Disk to reset my Ubuntu GRUB menu. Back as I was, then.

Really gobsmacked at Mandriva 2009 to be honest. I couldn't honestly recommend it to any non-Linux user as I could 2008. It'll frighten them half to death if they have the issues I've had with KDE4. Maybe Spring next year it'll be worth a look, but for me KDE4 is the root of a lot of problems for a few distros right now, and I don't think I'll bother with it until maybe well into next year. It's just not ready is it?

Hopefully PCLOS will have a new version out pretty soon, and I'll give that a go. I'll tune back into Mandy in the Spring. I'm quite sad about that. :(

Well, why not just do a KDE 3 install instead?

You can do a net install, or install One GNOME then install task-kde3, or just wait for a bit, the community KDE 3 One CD should come out quite soon.

AdamWill said: Well, why not just do a KDE 3 install instead?

You can do a net install, or install One GNOME then install task-kde3, or just wait for a bit, the community KDE 3 One CD should come out quite soon.

Ah right. I'll keep an eye out for that then. I was going to download the Gnome CD today, but I'm a bit ill so I'll just hang on for the community CD. Thanks.

OK, with my sheer bloody mindedness in place, I've decided to re-install KDE4 Mandriva 2009. This time, I'm just going to stick with it and see where it goes. Got it all back up and running, I know not to use the auto-orphans feature, and I'm quite happy at the moment.

I'll strap myself in and hope for the best this time! :biggrin: