In this last week, I updated my RStudio in Debian Wheezy and it turned out that it needed a more recent version of the package lib6. A reliable solution was to upgrade my system to Jessie, the current stable distribution of Debian. Its latest update, Debian 8.1, was released on 6th of June, 2015.

For this reason, I share, in this post, the steps I followed for upgrading my system keeping user configuration and the main programs I use such as R, RStudio, Matlab, Mendeley, TeXstudio and others.

0) Backup your data: This is a logical initial step before starting any change on the system.

1) Upgrading to Debian Jessie:

1.1) Prepare Debian Wheezy to be upgrading: Be sure that your current system does not have any problem of dependency or wrong installed packages. You can use the following commands for that purpose:

# Login like super user and write your password
su -
# Prepare your system
aptitude update
aptitude upgrade
aptitude dist-upgrade

1.2) Update the repositories list: Packages for Debian Jessie is downloaded from these repositories. One way to update this list is to modify the file /etc/apt/sources.list, I use gedit for that:

gedit /etc/apt/sources.list "hs"

In my case, I put the following repositories:

# Basic repositories
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ jessie main
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ jessie main
deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main
# Repositories for jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main
# For wifi drivers
deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
# For R backports: The mirror can be modified
deb http://cran.ma.imperial.ac.uk/bin/linux/debian jessie-cran3/
# For Flash Player
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian jessie contrib

Another option is to change the wheezy word by jessie word automatically with the sed function.

sed -i 's/wheezy/jessie/g' /etc/apt/sources.list

1.3) Update the packages of Debian 8.1 Jessie.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

During the upgrade it will ask if you want to restart manually or automatically some currently running services. It is suggested to make it manually.

Furthermore, after upgrading the distribution, I had to choose the device where grub should be installed. If it this your case, you should select the /dev/sda device if your pc has only one disk (use spacebar to choose the device). Otherwise, use the following link http://askubuntu.com/questions/23418/what-do-i-select-for-grub-install-devices-after-an-update.

1.5) Finally, reboot your computer to get the Debian Jessie system and enjoy.

reboot

2) Useful links to install programs:

2.1) Software R: http://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/

2.2) IDE Rstudio: http://www.rstudio.com/ide/download/desktop

2.3) Texstudio: http://packages.debian.org/jessie/texstudio

2.4) Mendeley Desktop (Gestor de bibliografías): http://www.mendeley.com/

2.5) Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/