this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Debian operating system

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Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.

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Is it possible to upgrade a Debian 8 (Jessie) to 9, 10, 11 and eventually 12? It is reccomended to upgrade one release at a time. But! 9's repositories are archived. How can I upgrade form 8 to 9?

Thank you in advance!

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[–] xkforce 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Tbh... Itd probably be easier to back up files and settings and do a clean install of 12. If you try to upgrade in a chain like what you are wanting to do, not only is it going to be very tedious, something is virtually certain to break in a way that will make it much easier to just install from scratch.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

If OP has good backups, they should try to upgrade from 8 directly to 12.... For science

[–] urb5tar 5 points 1 year ago

It’s maybe possible but pain. I tried once and it lasts hours and hours. It’s easier to install new and migrate your configs.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Use the archive?

deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ stretch-proposed-updates main contrib non-free deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free

I gotta ask though, why?

[–] Magellan 1 points 1 year ago

This is the way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes that's the recommended path.

Information on how to upgrade can be found in the official documentation:

https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.html

https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.html

https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.html

https://www.debian.org/releases/bookworm/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.html

As others pointed out it might be a PITA. Depending on your installed software and configuration a new install might be easier.