Auto tracking of wheezy devel

[monkeytennis]

Hi quick question, I assume that LMBE will automatically start updating from the new testing system? Just with kubuntu I had to change all the source lists to natty and I can't remember how. Must just say finding LMDE runs much smoother than other distros and so far is staying on my netbook! Considering putting it duel boot on my desktop (bit of a gamer so need win 7). Cheers, and I hope someone can answer my silly question!

[gosa]

As long as you don't change any of your settings LMDE will always stay with Debian Testing, no matter what it's called at the moment...
Squeeze, Wheezy = Testing, but at different points in time.

BTW - If you like LMDE on your netbook now, wait until the XFCE version that's being tested right now is out. That's gonna be fast & smooth one for netbooks.

[monkeytennis]

Fantastic!!is there a way to check?just on boot it says squeezy.sid. Guess im one of these people who want latest stuff when it comes to linux.

[gosa]

I'm not in front of my LMDE right now so I'm not exactly sure what the menu options are, but if you open Mint Update and choose "edit" -> "Software Sources" in the menu you will find what you want under one of the tabs.

You can also open a terminal and type: sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list and verify that you're taking your updates from testing...

[Dr.m0x]

Rolling distros are awesome. They do require a little bit more knowledge to keep them going but it's kinda nice never having to reinstall.

I ran pclinuxos for a time, good distro but doesn't have ever software selection debian can offer. That distro only required a single reinstall. About a year ago they migrated to ext4 as the default file system. Of course to change the file system type requires a format, hence the need to reinstall. It might have been possible to stay on ext3 and keep rolling but who doesn't like updates?

Anyway the point is testing becomes more and more wheezy as packages roll down from sid. Soon we will have almost nothing left from squeeze. Squeeze is frozen now and testing and unstable (sid) keep moving forth.

There are a few things you may find helpful when running a rolling distro. One is to always backup your apt cache for the event something breaks and you have to roll back to the previous version. Once a package rolls down from sid the old version is gone from the repos. The other is to learn what chroot is and how to use it. By doing chroot into a broken system you can almost always roll back and repair a system which has been broken by an update. These kind of breakages are rare but they can happen. If you are prepared you need not panic.

--- I am geek. Hear me squeek. ---

[gosa]

There are a few things you may find helpful when running a rolling distro. One is to always backup your apt cache for the event something breaks and you have to roll back to the previous version. Once a package rolls down from sid the old version is gone from the repos. The other is to learn what chroot is and how to use it. By doing chroot into a broken system you can almost always roll back and repair a system which has been broken by an update. These kind of breakages are rare but they can happen. If you are prepared you need not panic.

--- I am geek. Hear me squeek. ---

Another good thing to do might be to clone your drive/partitions once in a while.

I've started making weekly clones of my root & home-partitions using Trueimage Home - always keeping a couple of weeks saved, and I've already read posts about Clonezilla being the LMDE-users best friend, so I guess that is another way to do it.

[monkeytennis]

Sounds like a very good idea. Do these let me back up to an external bootable drive and in case of everything breaking reinstall from that? Also have many wheezy updates started appearing?

[CiaW]

Sounds like a very good idea. Do these let me back up to an external bootable drive and in case of everything breaking reinstall from that? Also have many wheezy updates started appearing?

Yes, many wheezy updates have started appearing. Look for threads that talk about 'fix broken packages' and there's one about 'the best way to update'.