I decided to do some independent testing on Direct Upgrade (a risky move on my part, I will probably have scars to show later…)
In using Direct Upgrade on the equivalent of Zorin Lite to the equivalent of the next release up, I made a few discoveries about the pros and cons of doing so.
The pros are really likely to be summed up in one point:
- Keeping previously installed software. This carries a possible con if the upgrade results in some of that software being considered obsolete.
The Cons are a bit more daunting…
- The process took me well over three and a half hours. YMMV. It is much slower than a wipe and reinstall is. If a user is performing this action on a notebook on Wifi and battery, this could be a pretty big problem.
- Outages of net during that lengthy process could render the hopes moot, resulting in a necessary wipe and reinstall anyway.
- The user must be present during this process to answer ‘yes’ or “no” questions during the direct upgrade. May need to kick back with a book and keep a corner of your eye on the screen.
- The process cannot be done if you are using an apt-hold on any packages. You must remove the hold, first. Then upgrade those packages first. Only then will it allow the Direct Upgrade. After that lengthy process is complete, you may then go back in and force a downgrade of the packages you had a hold on and replace the apt mark hold.
- Any previous clutter remains.
This was done with the Ubuntu Direct Upgrade and the fully supported Canonical version. My experience suggests that I would not recommend this procedure unless a user has particularly numerous installs they cannot remember how they installed or particularly troublesome installs that they do not wish to go through installing again. Even so, the Direct Upgrade may even consider some of those installs obsolete, so any installations you wish to preserve should be researched carefully, first.