viking777 wrote:And a little advice for those that did the whole update, to find out at the end that a lot of things didn't work and have no clue from where to start investigating which package broke what, i find useful to do partial updates of 50 packages more or less (rebooting after important ones like gtk, grub, udev, etc), so i can pinpoint the problems and the responsible packages more easily. It's a little more time consuming, but i think it's worth the extra work so your system doesn't render unusable.
That is 100% true. But think about it a little bit, what is the point of using update packs if you have to break them down into smaller 'more manageable' pieces? You might as well just track 'testing' which will do that for you automatically (because it only updates a dozen or so packages each day). I am sorry to say it, but to me it appears that this update pack idea in its present form is a failure because users are forced to work around its shortcomings as described above.
Please excuse the longish comment:
It appears to me that it's not so much a failure of the Update Packs but more that it's right back to the old problem of too many different hardware configurations (thousands? millions?). It's the same when updating any OS of any type. In the case of Linux Mint (any version) it doesn't matter if it's based on Ubuntu which only receives mainly bug fixes and security updates for 18 months (3 years for LTS), or based on Debian testing or the new Update Packs. No matter how you update your OS, no matter what OS it happens to be, many users are guaranteed to have some sort of breakage due to everyone's hardware configurations being different.
For example, my wife and I have the exact same 2 year old Gateway desktops with the "exact same" hardware configuration and they both react differently to updates. Why? Because one of these Gateways has a motherboard made by one manufacturer and the other has the "exact same" motherboard made by a different manufacturer. Same MB, same types of components but there's no standard as to who makes those components. Same goes for the Nvidia GT 430 video cards installed. Same model video card, two different manufacturers. And this is just an example of two desktop PCs, same make, same model by the same manufacturer, both coming off the same assembly line (maybe) in the same year (2009).
Now add in all the different types of PCs. All the different manufacturers. All the different model years. All the myriads of different components in all sorts of different configurations, etc, etc. It's amazing that the major OSs work at all let alone survive updates.
If there was just
one type of each class of personal type computer all made from the exact same components by the exact same manufacturer, all held to strict standards then there wouldn't be any problems with updates would there?
So no and with all due respect, I have to disagree. Update Packs are in no way a failure simply because they face the same age old problem (in computer years) of having to update the same OS running on countless different hardware configurations. In that, Update Packs are simply another way to update an OS. A better one than most especially in the world of GNU/Linux.
Okay, I'm done now. Thank you for your patience.
"Humph. Choice, it is the quintessential Linux delusion, simultaneously the source of it's greatest strength, and it's greatest weakness." (All apologies to The Architect)
Where can I find the settings for testing?