what would it take to update an old distro to be current?

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Fuzzy Penquin

what would it take to update an old distro to be current?

Post by Fuzzy Penquin »

:!: Just brainstorming, here! :!:

Just out of curiousity, what do the Linux distro devs need to know, in order to produce their distros? I'm just curious because I have the last edition of Pear OS ever made (safe for experimentation, because it's dead anyway), sitting in my hard drive, and I thought it might be an interesting personal learning project to see what it would take to bring it up to date with Ubuntu's 14.04 Trusty Tahr software repositories, current kernal, and security patches. I have no intentions of releasing a revised Pear into the wild since I do not have the free time needed to maintain it for public use, but I thought it might be interesting for personal exerience and general growth of knowledge to try updating Pear to current Ubuntu LTS. It would simply be a personal pet project for me and nothing more. I'm sure I'll have to take some programming classes from my local community college since I know nothing beyond basic HTML, and I doubt this is as simple as changing the repos directory in some config file.

I don't know if I'll ever truly have the time to do this, since I have far too many projects going as it is and not enough time to do them all, but the thought was bouncing around in my brain yesterday (work was very slow, LOL) so I had to ask. Figured I'd test the waters, to see how hard this idea might actually be for a n00b.

Please don't laugh at me.... :mrgreen:
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DrHu

Re: what would it take to update an old distro to be current

Post by DrHu »

I think mixing Linux distributions (distros) is problematic not only in updating to the latest versions of those distros, but in your case changing the whole distro to use other repositories/libs and other components that may not be viable within the base Linux OS you initially used

And yes, I know the Linux OS is sometimes thought of as only the kernel
--but that is way too much of a simplification for any Linux distribution
  • Kernel version
  • Desktop environment used (Kde, Gnome, xfce, lxde or others ?)
  • Default (for that distro) of some specific directories for updates and access rights (permissions)
    --and so on
And since Ubuntu has moved significantly away from Debian (using their own library and release schedules), we can't expect it to be easy
  • For learning about distro builds, I would suggest
    . Linux from scratch
    . Checking with Mint on howto build their distro
    . Online custom build programs (they are available..) and simplify the build process considerably
    .Debian Linux, and find out how Debian builds their system+: lots of documentation available
    .RedHat/Fedora, same as above..
http://www.instalinux.com/
Fuzzy Penquin

Re: what would it take to update an old distro to be current

Post by Fuzzy Penquin »

Thanks for the pointers. It is not quite what I was innitially going for (building a whole new distro, i.e. Linux from Scratch & InstaLinux), but that is still a very interesting direction to try out. I'm going to investigate and play with both of those suggestions, because that could be fun too and I'm sure to learn a lot. I did poke at InstaLinux a bit before I had to go to bed last night, and it warrants some more thurough playing around with. Thanks for sharing! :D
mike acker
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Re: what would it take to update an old distro to be current

Post by mike acker »

Fuzzy Penquin wrote:Thanks for the pointers. It is not quite what I was innitially going for (building a whole new distro, i.e. Linux from Scratch & InstaLinux), but that is still a very interesting direction to try out. I'm going to investigate and play with both of those suggestions, because that could be fun too and I'm sure to learn a lot. I did poke at InstaLinux a bit before I had to go to bed last night, and it warrants some more thurough playing around with. Thanks for sharing! :D

from your signature line it looks like you did your own build. so,-- get a new blank hard drive and load it in your box. disconnect the SATA cable from your existing drive and load a news distro onto the new drive from a thumb-stick. fire it up; see if you like it.

re-connect your original drive. boot up: interrupt the boot process and select the new drive.

with you new os running pull in all your files. there is special treatment for Thunderbird and Firefox, and Chrome.

there should be a means of keeping home system files on a data drive so that moving all the files would not be needed but I havn't learned to do that . yet.
¡Viva la Resistencia!
Fuzzy Penquin

Re: what would it take to update an old distro to be current

Post by Fuzzy Penquin »

mike acker wrote:
Fuzzy Penquin wrote:Thanks for the pointers. It is not quite what I was innitially going for (building a whole new distro, i.e. Linux from Scratch & InstaLinux), but that is still a very interesting direction to try out. I'm going to investigate and play with both of those suggestions, because that could be fun too and I'm sure to learn a lot. I did poke at InstaLinux a bit before I had to go to bed last night, and it warrants some more thurough playing around with. Thanks for sharing! :D

from your signature line it looks like you did your own build. so,-- get a new blank hard drive and load it in your box. disconnect the SATA cable from your existing drive and load a news distro onto the new drive from a thumb-stick. fire it up; see if you like it.

re-connect your original drive. boot up: interrupt the boot process and select the new drive.

with you new os running pull in all your files. there is special treatment for Thunderbird and Firefox, and Chrome.

there should be a means of keeping home system files on a data drive so that moving all the files would not be needed but I havn't learned to do that . yet.

Second attempt to reply.... had a power outage from 7pm Tuesday til 3pm Wednesday. Still have super high winds, so not sure how long power will last.... Wind storm is going on 3 days now! :shock:

Yup, I built my own computer from scratch. Only way to go! Get exactly what you want, and way more fun to do so. :D

So if I am understanding you correctly, I am pulling in all the files from my root directory and replacing Pear's with Mint's? Both are based on Ubuntu, so while there may be a few issues to possibly fix after that, I don't expect Pear to freak out too badly. *fingers crossed* I shall try this and see what happens after this wind storm passes (few days from now?), as I don't want to keep my computer on for too long. Linux seems to take sudden power failures WAY better than Windows ever did, and I've had no problems with corruption or data loss, but why risk it.
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Pierre
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Re: what would it take to update an old distro to be current

Post by Pierre »

if you are interested in building your own O/S:
http://forumubuntusoftware.info/viewtop ... =23&t=9933

you finish with Three O/Ss that you have built yourself ..
- based upon Ubuntu.
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