KEEPING LMDE UPDATED

[Fornhamfred]

Having googled and searched the forum I am no wiser as to what is the best proceedure to follow to keep LMDE up to date.

I have been running LMDE since its launch and found it to be very stable. I have backport and romeo repositories added and apart from the desktop bug (mentioned in the forum and easily fixed ) it has been very reliable.

To date I have used the mint updater with preference levels 1, 2 and 3 selected.
Does this result in the most stable version or should I be using one of the other methods mentioned in the forum?
Is it better to stop using testing?

I have followed Mint since 4, having previously used PcLinuxOS, but found that sticking with a LTS version results in any mint updates in newer version not being backported to the LTS version. This has been resolved by using LMDE and its great to have the new mint menu etc from 10.

As a long time linux user I am happy to fix any problems resulting from updates but have several friends who use Mint and whom rely on me as support. I do not wish to be re-installing their systems every six months to the latest issue but do need a system with updating that in general does not cause any system problems.

Clem and the team have a great distro and I want to be able to get as many friends as possible to use it.

Any help and advise would be appreciated.

[Aging Technogeek]

Any update method other than mintUpdate will almost certainly include what would be level4 and 5 updates in mintUpdate, so if you do not want to get these updates, continue as you are.

There is supposedly a new ISO for LMDE coming out this month (http://blog.linuxmint.com/) with an improved installer and several other major and minor improvements, but you will most likely be able to get most, if not all of the upgrades from mintUpdate.

[proxima_centauri]

In regards to mintUpdate in LMDE, I believe this information still up-to-date -> viewtopic.php?f=141&t=58089&hilit=mintupdate&start=20

Probably time I set the record straight here.
As previously told in blog posts, release announcements, FAQ's, etc. mintUpdate
is identical to that provided on the existing Mint editions. We did not manage
to port it specifically to LMDE yet. This is why the warning levels are invariably always the
same, and if you look in the preferences you'll even see the word Ubuntu mentioned.

mintUpdate is little more than a GUI to the apt cache, listing available updates, and using
Synaptic as its backend for installing those updates.

When I read that, I get the impression that mintUpdate does not selectively choose upgrades, as the functionality has not been built in, or modified yet to work with the Debian base.

[Fornhamfred]

Yes I read that post but it certainly does seem to differentiate between updates as selecting levels 4 & 5 pulls in kernal updates etc.

[proxima_centauri]

Interesting, perhaps the information is outdated then, or I have misinterpreted it's meaning.

[Fornhamfred]

Resetting the preferences to include levels 4 & 5 brings in the list as attached.

There may be more that are not picked up by apt.

I still feel that we could benefit from a how to on updating in LMDE.

[mfdemicco]

Resetting the preferences to include levels 4 & 5 brings in the list as attached.
There may be more that are not picked up by apt.

Yes, I think you're right. I turned on the Level 4 and 5 updates and was wondering why the 486 kernel installed. I'm going to use the sudo apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade commands from now on.

[wh7qq]

The Debian standard method is to use apt-get or aptitude to update and upgrade. That gets the latest in the testing repos. Another option that is very interesting is to use smxi (http://www.smxi.org). This cli script utility was originally developed for sidux (now aptosid) to ease the pain of the frequent updates required by Debian Sid. It is very well worked out and has been heavily tested by sidux and antix users and is under constant maintenance by the developer. It also provides safe and easy means of upgrading and/or updating proprietary video drivers, kernels and much more. I have used it without problems with LMDE. I understand (but have not tried) that there are ways to run it remotely via the web. Check out the above site and the site of its developer at http://www.techpatterns.com. No gui but it works great.

Paul

[Fred]

I whole heartedly agree with wh7qq's above post. I have used h2's "smxi" upgrade routines since shortly after they became available. They have matured quite nicely and work very well on Debian based systems.

All LMDE users would be well advised to take a closer look at this method of upgrading. "smxi" is a CLI routine but this is actually a plus, not a minus.

Fred

[Fornhamfred]

OK. So I understand that there are alternate methods for updating Debian, but why then port over Mint update?

Is it going to be re-written to enable LMDE to be kept up-to-date as easily as 10? Or is it perfectly safe to use it as it is to maintain a stable distro if not cutting edge?

[tdockery97]

I just did a ton of upgrades I had held back on becuase when I tried before it borked my system. So I finally gave in and installed WICD so I would have a connection outside of X. I just did the complete dist-upgrade and lo and behold when I rebooted everything worked just fine. I guess there is something to the opinions of not upgrading with X running. Now that I am using WICD, I just need to figure out how to get rid of Gnome Network Manager. If I try to uninstall it, it wants to uninstall the whole mint-meta-debian package