Upgrading a production Debian Lenny desktop to Squeeze? I don’t recommend it

“I put a lot of stock on the ability to do an in-place upgrade
of my Linux/Unix desktops. And regarding upgrades from one
distribution to another, Debian is supposedly one of the best.

“You always hear about those hard-core geeks who have been
running the same box since Potato, dist-upgrading all the way to
whatever the current stable or testing distribution is at any given
moment.

“I’ve upgraded a stable Debian system to testing maybe once or
twice, usually in short order (i.e. installing stable and
immediately upgrading to testing).

“Yesterday I decided to upgrade my “production” Debian laptop,
which I’ve been using heavily since late last year, from Lenny
(stable) to Squeeze (testing). I thought it would be smooth and
easy.

“Not so much.”

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