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linux distro maintainence - dkryder - 03-11-2017

hello,
does anyone know if a fully updated linux distro of an earlier iteration [ubuntu 14.04], but basically any one you care to select, is the same as having the newest distro .iso package of the same iteration.. for instance if i have ubuntu 14.04 that was installed in march 2016 but has been updated at least monthly for the past year, is that the same as if i download latest ubuntu 14.04 .iso from online and install it with option for newest packages checked? i was recently told that getting latest .iso and installing with checkmark to install latest updates will provide a different, i.e. more complete, 14.04 install than what i have which is updated install from 3/2016. i thought my updated install would be same as.


RE: linux distro maintainence - pfeerick - 03-11-2017

From what I've experienced of linux installs, would have that should be the case - that a fresh install of 14.04 with update check should be no different to a regularly updated 14.04 install. However, there is a possibility that is not the case. A normal sudo apt-get upgrade will "install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the system". There becomes a problem though, if an upgrade dependencies have changed, as an apt-get update will not remove packages that are currently installed or change the install status of other packages. However, this can be overcome by running sudo apt-get dist-upgrade, as that will will attempt to work around dependency changes, and may remove packages if things have changed. Since a fresh install is starting from a clean state, there is the possibility that the package dependencies are different, so a completely different install base might be applied. However, I would have thought this sort of major change would have only happened across a major/minor release, not within the same version. I would expect there to be differences between a 14.04 distro that was kept upto date (and was now reportedly a 16.04 install), and a clean 16.04 install, for example. 

I hope that more or less answer, or doesn't answer your question!


RE: linux distro maintainence - dkryder - 03-11-2017

ok, thanks. i understand the 14.04 to 16.04 issues. i spent about 30 minutes this morning talking to another member of a local linux interest club and he was real sure that the newer .iso was going to be different. so, i spent some time online and learned something i was not aware of. the latest 14.04 i could find is called 14.04.5 i was looking on ubuntu site and under older desktop versions they do not even offer 14.04 from what i saw only 14.04.5 and now i'm thinking because of the versioning differences it is probably correct that differences exist. if i had the time and another partition i'd install it and run
dpkg to get a listing


RE: linux distro maintainence - pfeerick - 03-12-2017

Thanks for that... I didn't realise there was point releases! I did a search for 14.04.5, and looks like it was released around August '16. It looks like even though 14.04 was a LTS (long term support) that an image is still released every six months for it, and it becomes a point release of the main. You can see all the old releases if you look in the old-release archive on the ubuntu site. And interestingly, I was reading an article talking about what is new in 14.04.5... and at the end it says:

Quote:If you already run Ubuntu 14.04 you do not need to ‘do‘ anything to get 14.04.5. If you’ve been installing all available app and security updates you’re already running it!

Interesting stuff!


RE: linux distro maintainence - dkryder - 03-12-2017

ok, i'm convinced. thanks for that article link