When to dist-upgrade vs when to reinstall?

[DrPlamsa]

Hello all:

When should I be satisfied with upgrading via the apt package manager, and when should I do a complete reinstall? Are there changes that occur in the updated Mobian images which are not implemented when an old installation upgrades via apt?

An example: When I installed Mobian in October 2020, full disk encryption (FDE) was not available so I had to hack together an encrypted /home/ partition using cryptsetup and LUKS. Then, some time in December, the Mobian images packaged a native FDE setup tool. If I were to reinstall now, I could set up FDE natively.

Is FDE an *exception* or the *rule*? Am I missing other important features and fixes by upgrading via apt?

Thanks again

[DrPlamsa]

Does anyone know?

[dcarvil]

Does anyone know?

Based on my experience with Fedora on my PC, the difference between a dist-upgrade and a reinstall would be changes other than a software upgrade.  For example, if the default file system for a partition changed from ext3 to ext4, a reinstall would format the partition to ext4.  A dist-upgrade would not change the format - the partition would remain ext3.

[mouffa]

On Ubuntu desktop every regular upgrade has its dedicated repositories so you have to either reinstall or upgrade at some point, as far as I know this is not the case for Manjaro Plasma Mobile for example, that is it is the same to either update or do a reinstall of a new image, I reckon that it is similar for Mobian but you should research it, is it always the same repository or it changes regularly?

[DrPlamsa]

@dcarvil and @mouffa Thank you for your answers. To answer mouffa's question, the Mobian repos are always the same so far; no versioning or splits have occurred.

With this in mind, I figure the answer to the question is: While more installation options (such as base filesystem settings, partitioning, and encryption) will be added to the installation image, most new functionality will be available via the repositories. Thanks again to both of you.

[bcnaz]

For Mobian in particular, I believe @a-wai usually posts here in the forum when it is a good idea to do a fresh install,
such as a 'stable' release.. or the switch from the ext to the f2fs system.
You can also follow the discussions at the Mobian website.

The other Distro's probably do mention this on their own websites, or a forum member may give us a "Heads Up"

BUT Normally just an update will do the trick....

I do not follow all of the OSes, but Arch, Post Market, and Manjaro
are not too much trouble to quickly check their progress at their websites or chat lines.

Sometimes it is just your own judgment call.....
UT does have discussions on their website, but they can be a pain to follow their discussion on the Pine phone .