Or should I go 11 > 12 > 13?
Edit: Thanks for all the replies. I asked this out of laziness and apparently trying this is not a lazy thing to do. I’m not Bilbo Baggins seeking an adventure. Will go with 11 > 12 > 13 way, though might stay at 12 for a while at this point. You know, lazy. :)
Edit 2: Updated to 12. Haven’t checked all the configs yet but so far so good, at least every function I expect works. If I finish this checking sequence, I might go for 13 soon too.
Edit 3: Updated to 13 as well. It actually took shorter than updating from 11 to 12. Though for some reason Jellyfin is marked as obsolete, however it works and I couldn’t care less. My things are working and hopefully I won’t see problems. If I do, I’ll check them one by one at this point since it’s a small home server.
Gotta add this: I had 325 packages on Debian 11, and now I have 450 packages on Debian 13. Some of them are marked as obsolete but must review them one by one. I feel like this upgrade process brake my minimalism and introduced some bloat but gotta care about that later.
11-12 should be well tested. 12-13 should be well tested. 11-13 may work, but you may be the tester.
I’d step through one at a time.
Likely not. I’ve tried skipping a release once by accident (I didn’t pay enough attention) and it ended with a bricked system and a full reinstall. Don’t do it.
For fixed-release distros (Debian/Ubuntu), the upgrade path is usually sequential.
The main implication: if you skip, you’re outside the tested upgrade path. That can mean broken packages, orphaned configs, security regressions, or a system that simply won’t boot. Sometimes you can force it and it’ll work, but it’s a gamble…
It seems nobody really tested 11 to 13, or maybe any kind of major-version-skipping and you won’t find direct experiences here.
Your best bet is to follow the official procedure, so 11 -> 12 -> 13. I’ll leave you with the official upgrade guide for 11 to 12 and 12 to 13.
It seems longer than it is, as not every step is actually required for every system. When upgrading VMs, a snapshot pre-upgrade can also help you skip backup-steps in the guides.
Well, certainly not gonna be a tester. If it isn’t tested, there is no need to take things further. Thanks for the guides by the way.
Major version changes for any software from the OS right down to a simple notepad app should update as sequentially as possible (11>12>13>etc). Skipping over versions is just asking for trouble, as it’s rarely tested throughly.
It might work, but why risk it.
An example: if 12 makes a big database change but you skip over that version, 13 may not recognize the databases left by 11 because 12 had the code to recognize and reformat the old database while that code was seen as unnecessary and removed from 13.
Stuff like this is also why you can’t always revert to an older version while keeping the data/databases from the newer software.
Yeah, that makes sense. Major changes in software are no joke. If it wasn’t my actual server I could’ve tried it though, could be a fun thing to pass time.
This is one of those times I’m glad I use a dotfiles repo
It would be great if more effort was put into ensuring a seamless upgrade experience.
I agree. It’s mostly fine but these upgrade processes could be much better.
