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I'm very new when it comes to the raspberry pi as i got it as a present. It had a pre-built sd card with it, with Raspian Wheezy already installed. However i want to change it to Raspian Jessie. The OS Wheezy was downloaded via NOOBS so can you change it so it has Jessie installed or should a get a new sd card with NOOBS installed on it?

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    The easiest thing to do would be to just download a recent copy of Raspbian and burn that onto the/a card, and forget NOOBS. Ironically, NOOBS seems to make things harder for people.
    – goldilocks
    Oct 8, 2017 at 19:08

1 Answer 1

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If the current OS was installed through NOOBS then you have two ways to upgrade:

1) This method upgrades the OS from within itself:

Firstly, run the system upgrade and update commands to give the packages the best chance of being upgraded correctly:

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

Then update the sources list for apt for the new OS:

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

and make the following changes (it should be a comment in front of the second line)

deb http://mirrordirector.raspbian.org/raspbian jessie main firmware contrib non-free
#deb http://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian jessie main 

Then start the system upgrade by updating from the new respiratory:

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

And finally reboot:

reboot

You can check if this has worked by using:

hostnamectl

And it should output:

Operating System: Raspbian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie)

Note: Although this way does have the chance to break the pi it should be quicker than method 2.

2) This method updates the OS using a NOOBS reinstall:

Firsty, when you are booting, hold down the shift key when the prompt appears on the screen.

Secondly, if you are connected to the internet already then skip this step, either connect an ethernet cable to the pi, or plug in a wifi dongle and connect using the utility in NOOBS.

Thirdly, make sure the Raspbian OS is selected (it will have a check mark on the left) and any other OSs if you want.

Finally, press install (at the top) and answer yes to the prompt that usually comes up about whether you want to continue.

It will then reboot and it should load into Jessie!

Sources:

Method 1: https://linuxconfig.org/raspbian-gnu-linux-upgrade-from-wheezy-to-raspbian-jessie-8

Method 2: My own experience :)

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  • Unfortunately upgrading from Wheezy to Jessie was NOT supported by the Foundation, and the "process" was complex, unsuited for beginners. Any new installation should use Stretch in any event.
    – Milliways
    Oct 9, 2017 at 0:20
  • Could you expand on this further? I've never heard of Stretch in any case to do with Linux. Also, the reference I used for Method 1 was explicitly from Wheezy to Jessie so it should work (although I haven't tested it personally). Oct 9, 2017 at 6:27

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