Any difference with upgrading compared to newer iso installs [Solved]

[advice1010]

MX 23.5 XFCE

I have read about this in the manual but just was wondering if someone could confirm the following.

MX has numbered releases every 2 years.
For example in 2023 version 23.0 was released
It is said that MX ISO point based releases are versions that just contain all updates so users do not have to apply all the updates from the past.

So if I installed a fresh copy of MX 23.0 XFCE ISO and did an upgrade right when 23.5 XFCE ISO was released, it would be identical to the new 23.5 XFCE ISO.
Am I correct in saying that there are no other benefits other than not having to apply all the updates from the past? Just want to make sure.

Thank You

[j2mcgreg]

MX 23.5 XFCE

I have read about this in the manual but just was wondering if someone could confirm the following.

MX has numbered releases every 2 years.
For example in 2023 version 23.0 was released
It is said that MX ISO point based releases are versions that just contain all updates so users do not have to apply all the updates from the past.

So if I installed a fresh copy of MX 23.0 XFCE ISO and did an upgrade right when 23.5 XFCE ISO was released, it would be identical to the new 23.5 XFCE ISO.
Am I correct in saying that there are no other benefits other than not having to apply all the updates from the past? Just want to make sure.

Thank You

I'll change this slightly. MX's major releases are tied to Debian's major releases and they are dated (numbered) to the year of issue. An MX version, by default, will upgrade a user through its point releases IE if a user runs all updates as they occur, his / her install will always be current.

So if I installed a fresh copy of MX 23.0 XFCE ISO and did an upgrade right when 23.5 XFCE ISO was released, it would be identical to the new 23.5 XFCE ISO.

I would change "right when" to "close after" because there very well could be updates issued in the period it takes to assemble and post the official point release.

[chrispop99]

Very infrequently there have been trivial changes that require manual intervention when going between point releases. These are usually not needed for most users, affecting only things like appearance, but are documented in the release notes for each version.

Chris

[asqwerth]

Some examples of what Chris is describing:

1. let's say hypothetically that MX-devs decided that from MX23.5 on, the default scanner program should be gscan2pdf. Then on the 23,5 iso, you will find that there instead of document-scanner [ie, simple-scan]. But if you were installing from the iso of an earlier point release of mx23, your install will include simple scan instead of gscan2pdf. If you then upgrade your system that was installed with an older iso, any updates to simple scan will get installed on your system, but gscan2pdf is not going to added to your system, since it was never there to begin with. Thus, if there are changes to what is to be a default app on the iso, installing from the older iso won't add that new default app to your install. You will have to manually install it to your system.

2. there have been some fixes to a few of the conkies that come with MX23. If you install from an older iso, when you open MX-conky or conky manager on your installed system FOR THE FIRST TIME, the $HOME/.conky folder will be populated with the conkies as they were on the old iso [without the fixes].

Subsequent updates will bring in the fixes but they will remain in /usr/share/mx-conky-data folder. Since the policy of most distros is that updates should never touch your /home directory, the conkies in /home won't have the fixes. You will need to manually go into the mx-conky-data directory to copy over any conky config files that are newer than the version in your /home.

[advice1010]

I was not sure how this question was going to be received on this forum, but turns out, great answers.
Just wanted to make sure I understood the process.
Thank you guys for the responses and for those examples, this was all very helpful.
Thanks again

[rambo919]

A lot of this probably depends on major DE changes as well.... KDE 6 is a MAJOR update from KDE 5 for example and because of this alone I doubt an in place upgrade will be wise, it might work but you might get weird bugs.

I think XFCE does not quite suffer from the same kind of problem but am not sure.