i want to test debian trixie (13) so i can report bugs and troubleshoot before the release later this year. i thought about simply installing trixie alongside my current bookworm installation, but that won’t be my scenario when the time comes, since i’ve been updating my system instead of reinstalling it since debian jessie (8) and this time it won’t be different. how can i clone my current system so i can simulate an update to trixie? do i simply create a new partition and copy my files over, then chroot to it and install grub?
If you have a second clean drive to work with, you can clone it there and just change your boot target in your BIOS. This is the simplest way.
If you’re simply concerned about config incompatibilities and finding what will break (not hardware), you could clone down to a VM image and boot that then run the upgrade, and boot it again.
If you’re concerned about hardware issues, you could clone down to a liveUSB compatible image (skipping heavy media files) and boot that from an external device and see how it runs.
It’s a bit of an early release to test with your daily driver, so it’s going to be a nightmare. Just a heads up.