DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

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Jerry3904
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#11 Post by Jerry3904 »

And you have lots of company...

I always upgrade to the most recent LibreOffice on the LO website b/c I use it all the time for business purposes, but am more conservative about some of the other larger packages.
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uncle mark
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#12 Post by uncle mark »

MX has struck a good, dare I say perfect, balance between stability and new-and-shiny.

It's also worth noting that nothing requires anyone to update anything. Some will feel compelled to do so for "security" reasons, but I don't think I'm alone in thinking that's not all that necessary (I'm not that important).

If nothing else, it's easy to simply not chose an update that you don't want, or even pin programs at a current version. You can only dumb things down so far. At some point people have to take ownership of their systems.
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Richard
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#13 Post by Richard »

+1, Uncle Mark.
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KBD
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#14 Post by KBD »

uncle mark wrote: Mon Jan 07, 2019 1:23 pm MX has struck a good, dare I say perfect, balance between stability and new-and-shiny.

It's also worth noting that nothing requires anyone to update anything. Some will feel compelled to do so for "security" reasons, but I don't think I'm alone in thinking that's not all that necessary (I'm not that important).

If nothing else, it's easy to simply not chose an update that you don't want, or even pin programs at a current version. You can only dumb things down so far. At some point people have to take ownership of their systems.
Agreed. No complaints so far. I usually only update my server after several months, making sure I don't see any issues on the forum. As things go forward I hope it stays this way, if there ever is a change to more cutting edge on updates, I'd like to see 2 versions of MX at that point.

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Adrian
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#15 Post by Adrian »

If nothing else, it's easy to simply not chose an update that you don't want, or even pin programs at a current version. You can only dumb things down so far. At some point people have to take ownership of their systems.
I slightly disagree with this, most of the programs need to be updated, either for security fixes, general fixes (bugs happen) and general improvements or new features. It's hard to go through a list of updates and read all the changelogs and see what exactly gets updated and why and make an one by one decision for each package, that's why we have Debian Stable that's the purpose of living in a more or less stable environment, being able to upgrade without worries (mind you, I meant upgrade, not running "autoremove" or other potentially troublesome operation automatically). We just need to make sure the packages are well tested (the extra ones we add, we have no control over Debian packages), that people don't choose by default dangerous operation (autoremove) and in case a program diverges too much and is not backwards compatible provide maybe both versions or see if most of the people want to upgrade or not.

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entropyfoe
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#16 Post by entropyfoe »

I have to agree with KBD.

Stability is the most important.
And MX excels here, following onto the Mepis legacy.

Uptimes are virtually unlimited (well I don't have a UPS) with MX 17/18, best was 147 days. No problems with accepting all updates (from the stable repos).

And should something go badly:
1. Backups (esp with the snapshot tool or Clonezilla)
2. The live DVD/USB - most any corruption or accident can be fixed
3. This forum, the experts can figure most problems out and help with a fix.
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seaken64
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#17 Post by seaken64 »

Thoughts about "upgrades"

One of the reasons I switched over to Debian from Slackware was that I did not understand the Slackware way of handling software updates. And if I wanted a newer version of a program I would have to "upgrade" my version of Slackware/Vector, and that meant a whole new install. If I had four or five systems set up and working the same with Vector Linux 5.1, for example, and I wanted to update to a new version of Firefox I would have to re-install on all five systems and set everything up again on all five systems if I wanted them all to be the same. (I'm sure there was a good way to upgrade software, I just couldn't get it).

I started using Ubuntu/Xubuntu and found it easier to update software. But I still wasn't very good at stuff like re-mastering and creating live versions for deployment onto other machines. Then I found antiX and all this became easier. I could update one system and easily copy it to another system and I could find .deb files for software that I wanted to use and I didn't have to compile anything.

With MX Linux I have the same antiX live and re-mastering tools but in the more familiar environment of XFCE. This is good for me. But to this day I still don't feel comfortable with "upgrades" and I still don't quite understand why it is better to do a "dist-upgrade" than an "upgrade". And I don't get it when I do dist-upgrade and I now have a "new" version, say from MX-17 to MX-18. One day I just have MX-18.

What I do know is that some versions of MX and antiX don't work the same on some of my older equipment. My fear is that these "upgrades" will destroy a working system. So when I read on the forum that it is "not required to upgrade" I have hope. But if I don't upgrade will I continue to be able to use the software I have or will the software package at some point force me to upgrade if I want the new version?

One of the driving forces for my switch was my experiments with an old Pentium-III system. I use that system to test the latest distros and software and try to learn if this old system will still be "usable" as a desktop computer even though it is old and slow (like me). When YouTube made changes to it's system the SMTube and other programs, like youtube-dl, had to be upgraded. When I went to upgrade the SMTube program I could not get the current version to install. In order to get the newer version I had to upgrade my version of Linux. But the upgraded version of Linux does not work on the old computer. So that's it? Finally the end of the road for this P-III, too old and forgotten?

I am learning that I can change repositories and use backports, but this is all still very sketchy for me. So, this idea about "upgrading" is not so simple for me. If I tell the system to "dist-upgrade" I may get the latest software or may not, depending on how I have the repositories set up, my hardware, etc.

So, for those new to MX, they need to learn when it is appropriate to "upgrade" and not just follow along blindly. If they just click on the update tool they may not get the results that they were expecting. Or they may end up with a new look and feel, and some stuff may be missing. This can be disconcerting. But how does one learn when it is okay to use the default update settings and when it isn't?

Maybe MX can come up with a way to teach the new users how to properly setup the update tool to get the results they desire. And how does the user even know what these results should be? If you like the way your system works now then don't upgrade. Turn it off. Check the forumns for advice before you upgrade. Setup up a test bed on another partition. I don't think MX should automatically update. But updates might be useful, or required, depending on what the user is trying to accomplish. And there is no one-size-fits all. So what should MX do?

Ultimately, I agree with the sentiment that it is up to the user to make some progress in learning how their software works and make their own decisions. I think MX will be well served if they stay with their current policy's. I'm not going to blame MX if I bork my system doing an upgrade. That was my fault and I should have tested and read up on the procedures before I did anything. But I know that many users will not think that way and will flame and blame the distro if they end up with less than stellar results. I have to hand it to the MX and antiX developers, they must have an amazing amount of patience.

Seaken64
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Adrian
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#18 Post by Adrian »

But to this day I still don't feel comfortable with "upgrades" and I still don't quite understand why it is better to do a "dist-upgrade" than an "upgrade".
The difference is simple to understand, let me try to explain "upgrade" will never install another package while "dist-upgrade" will pull new packages if required. So for example we develop an app let's call it MX Cleanup, we add it as a dependency to mx-apps metapackage, what that means is that when mx-apps updates is going to pull MX Cleanup with it, hurray! But wait, that works only if you use "dist-upgrade" since "upgrade" never installs new package so actually if you use "upgrade" you'll never be able to update "mx-apps" and you'll never get new goodies like MX Cleanup. Sometimes we split packages for example mx-repo-manager uses now the list of repos from mx-repo-list but to get mx-repo-list since is a new package you need again to use "dist-upgrade" if you don't use dist-upgrade you'll never get the newer version of mx-repo-manager and you'll never get mx-repo-list (unless you install that manually, but you'd need to know about it to install it).
And I don't get it when I do dist-upgrade and I now have a "new" version, say from MX-17 to MX-18. One day I just have MX-18.
That's easy to misunderstand, it's just a change in the label that applies to a collection of software, basically it just says that you have MX-17 fully updated, since we release MX-18 based on those packages. MX-17 fully updated = MX-18. I a way it has little to do with "dist-upgrade"...dist-upgrade is just an option to tell apt-get how to upgrade see my previous explanation, that label might have change if you did a "upgrade" in stead of "dist-upgrade", again it's just a label, you could have upgrade everything and still think that you run "MX-17" but that would be pretty much the same as "MX-18" so then we'd have the questions "how can you upgrade from MX-17 to MX-18?" The answer is, if you have MX-17 fully updated you basically have MX-18 so that's why we changed the label to reflect the state of facts.
I am learning that I can change repositories and use backports,
Don't. I mean don't do it if you don't understand what you are doing, use the tools we offer like MX PackgeInstaller to install stuff from backports (but that comes with a warning, pay attention to what it says).
I don't think MX should automatically update.
It doesn't, you have to set it up to update automatically, that being said I highly recommend keeping MX up to date, otherwise you don't get new features or bug fixes.
Last edited by Adrian on Wed Jan 16, 2019 4:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Stevo
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#19 Post by Stevo »

SMTube was a poor package to pick as an example, since we've been able to keep building and pushing the latest versions into our main repos to fix the breakages caused by Youtube. No need to install a whole new distro release on MX or antiX at all. What distro wouldn't provide the latest version for you?

There are some newer packages that are impracticable to backport to MX, but you may be able to use a flatpak, snap, or AppImage instead.

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seaken64
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Re: DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

#20 Post by seaken64 »

Stevo wrote: Wed Jan 16, 2019 4:44 pm SMTube was a poor package to pick as an example, since we've been able to keep building and pushing the latest versions into our main repos to fix the breakages caused by Youtube. No need to install a whole new distro release on MX or antiX at all. What distro wouldn't provide the latest version for you?

There are some newer packages that are impracticable to backport to MX, but you may be able to use a flatpak, snap, or AppImage instead.
Hi Stevo, yes for MX and antiX it has not been a problem. That is why I am here. You guys are amazing at providing packages. Lots of Kudos! But when I was with Vector Linux I could not get those packages unless I learned how to compile from source. I could have done that, but I chose not to because I found an easier way, using Debain and antiX/MX. So that comment was more about how distros differ and why we choose a distro like MX.

Seaken64
MX21-64 XFCE & W11 on Lenovo 330S LT. MX21-KDE & MX21-XFCE on Live USB.
MX18-64 & W7, Fedora on HP Core2 DT
MX21-32 XFCE w/ MX-Fluxbox on P4HT DT w/ antiX21, SUSE Tumbleweed, Q4OS, WXP
antiX21 on Compaq PIII 1 Ghz DT, w/ Debian, MX18FB, W2K

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