To me, this is the major reason for doing a clean install.There were major changes between Buster and Bookworm.
If you do an in place upgrade you'll end up with a frankensteined system where you have the kernel etc from Trixie but are still using the tools and desktop environment from Buster.
That'll make it much harder for people to help you when you hit problems or for you to follow some guides written for Trixie.
Is fairly easy to sort out the stuff that breaks at the upgrade. It is a pita to sort out why something is not working at all or even worse working differently than "normal" when everyone (who has a clean install) is saying that it works 6 months later when you add or upgrade something. It means you have a very limited number of folks who (a) understand Linux at that level of detail and (b) are willing to invest the time to help you sort out what is special/weird/different/broken about your install. When you do hit a snag the standard question is "can you replicate on a clean install?" and if the answer is "no", most folks will just suggest a clean install.
If you have decent Linux skills you likely can solve these sorts of issues yourself. However, if you have the Linux skills required, you likely can just install a fresh image and restore your stuff in less time that doing the in-place upgrade. Having a clean backup of your data, makes the clean install process quite simple... install on fresh media, install/configure your extra apps, tweak and configure the look & feel, restore your data.
Fundamentally, if you don't know how to do an in-place upgrade you likely should not. Using a recipe you found on the web was likely not tested on your particular configuration, unless you have a very vanilla install, and if you have a vanilla install (without a ton of customization) you have nothing to loose with just doing a fresh vanilla install.
Statistics: Posted by bjtheone — Wed Jan 14, 2026 5:15 pm