raymac46 Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 I updated Spiral Linux stable on my ancient Dell Inspiron 530 desktop. Because it has a creaky old USB 2 wifi connection through a tiny dongle the download took HOURS. The system is still running Debian 11 Bullseye as its basis but with backports etc I had around 150 MB to download. After the download things went pretty fast because I have a cheap SSD and a pretty good Core Duo processor in the old beast. This machine is strictly used as a jukebox in my workroom so I feel no need to upgrade to a newer version of Debian. If I did I would certainly do it via a wired connection. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hedon James Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 1 hour ago, raymac46 said: I updated Spiral Linux stable on my ancient Dell Inspiron 530 desktop. Because it has a creaky old USB 2 wifi connection through a tiny dongle the download took HOURS. The system is still running Debian 11 Bullseye as its basis but with backports etc I had around 150 MB to download. After the download things went pretty fast because I have a cheap SSD and a pretty good Core Duo processor in the old beast. This machine is strictly used as a jukebox in my workroom so I feel no need to upgrade to a newer version of Debian. If I did I would certainly do it via a wired connection. I updated my Spiral11 to Spiral12 and have been very happy with it so far. This is the first time EVER that I have "updated in place" without experiencing quirks and quarks over extended periods. I usually end up replacing an "update in place" with a fresh install.....but have had no real reason to do that. Feeling more and more confident that Debian is the right distro for me, long term. The only issue I've had with Spiral is that I realized there were no further updates/upgrades to Spiral12 after I updated from 11 to 12. Spiral forums revealed there was a bug in the distro-update/upgrade process, because Debian changed the name or syntax (can't remember) of their repo, so the updated Spiral entry wasn't seeing any updates. Modified the repo source and everything has been fine since. I mention this because IF you decide to upgrade in place from 11 to 12, you may have to manually alter repo source (it was just one, if I recall correctly.....and had to do with Debian allowing non-free now). Maybe they fixed that bug by now, maybe not? If anyone upgrades Spiral11 in-place to Spiral12, check your repo sources and make sure they're correct. Other than that....GOLDEN! 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 7 hours ago, Hedon James said: I mention this because IF you decide to upgrade in place from 11 to 12, you may have to manually alter repo source (it was just one, if I recall correctly.....and had to do with Debian allowing non-free now). Maybe they fixed that bug by now, maybe not? Debian 12 introduced a new non-free-firmware section to their repos in consideration that a lot of hardware requires it to function these days. This is separate from the original non-free section. So now you can get most of your hardware working without enabling other non-free software. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted March 2 Author Share Posted March 2 Honestly this old Dell desktop is one machine where I don't really care about running the latest software. All I do is play music using Rhythmbox. I have a bunch of old MP3s, don't even stream anything. I could probably disconnect from the Web and it would not make any difference. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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