Newer versions of tvheadend are considered 'unstable' as they're under active development - that said, the core functionality is very stable for day-to-day use, and you're only really likely to get issues if you're using transcoding, encrypted channels or similar less mainstream functions.
If you want to upgrade to the version you've got on the flash drive, you'd use
sudo dpkg -i <deb> - that will upgrade your installation and should bring most of your config with it. I'd take a backup first, though, just in case. The upgrade process will also take a backup, but IMO it's better if you know where the backup is, how it was taken and thus how to restore it (you'll need to look into
cp or
tar and how to preserve file owners and permissions).
If you want to upgrade to the latest version - and keep it updated - then you'd need to add the unstable PPA and use
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade, as you would for any other package. Details here:
https://tvheadend.org/projects/tvheadend...Repository
You can upgrade without uninstalling, yes - or you can purge and start from scratch and thus skip the backup steps. Note that the config is different in 3.9.x from 3.4.x, and not all of it can be migrated. That said, if you've used 3.9.x already, you should already know about the adapters:networks:muxes
ervices:channels relationship (i.e. add a network, associate the network with a tuner, add muxes, scan for services, map to channels).
