MX Linux Forum

entropyfoe wrote:
And the big mistake is to enable other repositories,

Leaving the multimedia and/or test repositories enabled can cause real grief to unsuspecting users. It is acceptable to enable them briefly to download a particular
package(s) but be sure to cancel the enablement immediately afterwards.

TJ Hoye wrote:@ those-of-you-with-high-post-counts

My experience starting with MX-17 beta3 as a LiveUSB doing virtually every dist-upgrade as it
shows up in the green box has been 100 percent successful. I had expected this might not
always be trouble-free but am quite pleased that it has been.

Given your much longer experience with this, can you say that I should relax my uncertainty
and continue more confidently with each and every opportunity to dist-upgrade and no longer
expect some calamity or other might occur with the next dist-update offered?

TIA

Yes.

Since I also run a few rolling distros where there are frequent large and potentially more tumultuous updates, I really can't see the need to worry so much about Debian Stable updates. Even the so-called large updates whenever a new Debian point release comes out is not really that big in the scale of things since certain base or key packages don't get upgraded to a higher version throughout the life of a particular Debian Stable version (e.g Debian Stretch).

The only thing is to check the text output in the dialogue window to ascertain that there are no large numbers of packages being removed, before clicking on "Y" to proceed with the update. Large numbers usually indicate some serious problems.

One or two packages being removed is usually not a big deal, but you can do a common sense check in the text output by seeing if a few new packages with similar names to the removable packages are being installed concurrently with the removal. If so, it usually indicates that a new program/package has been created (ie, it's not just an update of the older package) to do the job previously done by the package being removed.

Thanks all, that gives me the confidence to install MX17 on the family machine and replace windows. So far I've only used linux for myself on the laptop.

Gordon Cooper wrote:

entropyfoe wrote:
And the big mistake is to enable other repositories,

Leaving the multimedia and/or test repositories enabled can cause real grief to unsuspecting users. It is acceptable to enable them briefly to download a particular
package(s) but be sure to cancel the enablement immediately afterwards.

We tend to err on the side of caution for our test repo. It's been OK to update fully from it for years now, but we just like users to upgrade piecemeal so it's easier to track down a problem package should one get in there.

Deb-multimedia, on the other hand, is a repeat offender.