DW: Musing on distros after prolonged use

[Paul..]

@seaken64, I think skidoo's comment was a message for all ...and a sincere compliment to the quality of the dialogue between you and Adrian..."Please consider preserving the above gem...within a wiki page."

[seaken64]

Thanks Paul, I noticed that too after I went back a re-read it. And I do think we need to write this up in the wiki. I'd be willing to help even though I'm a newbie here.

Seaken64

[skidoo]

yepper, what Paul said. The reason I included that disclaimer is that I've previously groused "it's bad form to needlessly quoteback an entire post when replying"

[seaken64]

The MX 'killer packagers & devs' do an unbelievably excellent job of keeping MX stable, trustworthy and as current as possible. In my 40+ years of software, I have not seen a better crew. Were it not for their efforts and MX's achievements, I could not, personally, live with another debian-based distro ( I have tried almost every debian, devuan, *buntu 'out there'). The delicate balance that MXLinux has achieved is outstanding. I would be greatly saddened were MXLinux to trade away its best characteristics, for any reason.

But, that's just one old guy's opinion.

I like this. Well said.

From someone with less Debian experience and a semi-old guy,
Seaken64

[KBD]

I have broke things using Backports in Debian Stable and they are very conservative. I don't recommend Backports unless your computer won't run, or you can't get your work done without something from Backports.
MX is unlikely to break on you using default settings and using the recommended dist-upgrade path.
The big thing you would have to worry about is if MX was doing full upgrades to the entire new release including kernel and driver updates. These come with a new MX release, but I don't think they are touched with an existing MX system. Guys correct me if I'm wrong.

You're wrong and you're welcome.

MX 17 will upgrade to the new free video driver stack (Mesa, libva, xorg drivers, etc), as well as Nvidia drivers, if you apply the normal updates. The newer GIMP 2.10.8 also pulls in some newer libraries that might affect font rendering, mostly for the better, IMO.

Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't think drivers got updated. I thought one had to install 18 to get those. Interesting about Gimp as well.

[seaken64]

...I experimented with an install of antiX14 and ran the dist-upgrade. I essentially ended up with a hybrid of antiX-17 and a lot of stuff would not work....
Thanks again,
Seaken64

There was no antiX-14 release. We had antiX-13 and antiX-15 (both jessie based) and antiX-17 is stretch based.
A dist-upgrade would not have taken antiX-13 or antiX-15 to antiX-17 (unless you changed the repos).

Hi anti, I double-checked to see if I was mis-remembering that event with antiX14/15. I did run a dist-upgrade on that system and ended up with some "stretch" repos. I don't know how but the stretch repos did end up on the list after the dist-upgrade from what is named as antiX-14-a4-RV. Much of the launchers on the menus stopped working and I could not get any user terminal to start up. I could use the root terminal. And thew Control Center apps would not open the settings files. Basically the system was put in a state that I cannot use it.

No worries, it's just experimental. I plan on re-installing with antiX-15. But I do remember having to compile the Yamaha sound driver on that system. I hope I can figure out how to do that again.

But I thought I had learned something from that experience and it has clouded my trust in the dist-upgrade routine on these older systems. Maybe this is unfounded and I probably did something wrong, I just don't know what I did so I am a little scared it could happen again if I don't prepare. It's all part of the learning experience.

Here's the link to the antiX forum topic when I did that dist-upgrade. One thing that may have contributed to this situation is I installed SMTube from gdebi. Probably a rookie mistake.
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic ... t-upgrade/

Seakenb64

[asqwerth]

I suspect you added a repo you shouldn't have. So it wasn't dist-upgrade command that caused problems, but the incompatible package versions coming in during the update due to your opening of the wrong doors.

That's why Adrian said not to change or add repos yourself, particularly when you haven't yet grasped the concept of dist-upgrade vs upgrade, and why updated mx 17.1=18 but mx16 will never move up to mx17 after an update.

Use the MXPI to access packages from various sources safely.

[seaken64]

I suspect you added a repo you shouldn't have. So it wasn't dist-upgrade command that caused problems, but the incompatible package versions coming in during the update due to your opening of the wrong doors.

Yeah, that's most likely. I am learning that I have to remember to disable a repo I temporarily enabled before running a dist-upgrade. And maybe gdebi contributed? I'm not sure but I think using gdebi to install the latest SMTube opened the doors to some upgrade problems.

Thanks for the help,
Seaken64

[asqwerth]

...I am learning that I have to remember to disable a repo I temporarily enabled before running a dist-upgrade. And maybe gdebi contributed? I'm not sure but I think using gdebi to install the latest SMTube opened the doors to some upgrade problems.

What repos are you enabling? It might be better to not even enable any repo unless you understand what you are doing. Once you have pulled in the wrong stuff, even if you subsequently close the door to that repo, the wrong packages are already in your system. They might not cause trouble immediately but in the future a normal upgrade of your system might trigger the problems because those wrong package versions are around.

gdebi might have contributed if certain wrong repos were already enabled. Remember that a deb file that you source from elsewhere might not be compatible with Debian Stretch/MX17/18. It might need to pull in some dependencies and if you have the wrong repos enabled, it might pull in the wrong versions of said dependent packages from these other repos.

If no questionable repos were enabled and the deb file was not compatible, I believe that gdebi won't proceed with the installation of the .deb file because it won't be able to pull in the wrong dependencies.


Please paste the output of:

Code: Select all

inxi -r

[seaken64]

Thank you Asqwerth, that was very helpful. I am starting to sort it out and am learning how repos work.

In the case of the above machine where I ended up with a broken system - it is not a problem. That is an experimental system and I am using it to learn. I wiped out the previous "antiX-14" and re-installed from a new download of antiX-15. I think when I set up that system we didn't have antiX-15 yet and I was using a download of an early beta copy. I will start over with antiX-15 and apply what I am learning here to keep from screwing it up again.

If I remember correctly I was trying to install SMTube and SMPlayer to a current version since they no longer worked with YouTube. I have since learned how to use other tools for YouTube on these old machines. I think I just downloaded the SMTube and SMPlayer .deb file for the proper Debian version (Jessie) and ran them with gdebi.

But it's all good. I don't mind that I borked that system. I'm starting over.

Seaken64