Anyone else tracking LMDE – SID? [Update]

[GeneC]

I know this is out of the mainstream, but also realize that some people are tracking SID with their LMDE install. Just curious if they would share their experience with a guy new to LINUX..

I have only been at Linux for 7 months or so, but am recently retired, and have lots of time to experiment.

I have two installations of LMDE on this computer. One the standard installation tracking “testing” with the additions of the Liquorix kernel (std kernel does not support suspend/hibernate on this machine).

I wanted to learn more so I thought to add a 2nd installation, but this one tracking SID. I expected lots of breakage, but thought that “fixing” LMDE that would be a good way to learn.

Well it went for about three weeks, with plenty of daily updates (2-3 times more than “testing”), and NOTHING broke, everything ran very well, and I had the latest software, also have the latest kernel 2.6-38-1.

That is, everything WAS going well until the updates of last Monday. A huge bunch of updates came down, 180 plus. I did a “review” in synaptic, and saw that a ton of seemingly necessary stuff (gnome, x-org stuff) was to be removed. Not sure why an update wanted to remove important stuff, but wanted to see what happened, and updated all. (I made a clone of the partition before updating).

Well sure enough it removed important stuff and borked my system. I rebooted to the black screen with login promt. Logged in, got the “command line”. Not knowing exactly what to do entered “startx”. It started to load, but stopped at the gray screen with absolutley nothing else. I guess it really did remove gnome...

I put back my pre-Monday-update install and all is well. I guess I will just wait a week or so , and try it again.

Would really like to hear back from others and of their experience.

[wayne128]

No I am not setting LMDE to track sid

I had Aptosid with is based on Sid.
I broke it when I upgrade with 'experimental' stuff.
In addition Aptosid has in their forum a Upgrade Warning section, a must read for me before upgrade, that breakage was already warned in the forum, plus warning before I hit enter.
It read it will remove kde desktop, when I upgrade all kdes are gone and ended with Fluxbox.
A good lesson.
Other than this breakage, for last 20+ upgrade no issue at all, got all kind of new stuff like Libreoffice, kernel 2.6.38, now many versions already.

The good thing about Aptosid is I can reinstall in less than 8 minutes. so it is easy to rebuild.
I had a habit of saving work outside the computer to USB drive/flash, so I do not need to worry much on OS breaking.

[GeneC]

Aptosid has in their forum a Upgrade Warning section, a must read for me before upgrade

Wayne

Thanks for that tip. I just went to the Aptosid forum and will be tracking their upgrade warnings as well.
http://aptosid.com/index.php?name=PNphp ... c27c096455

[wayne128]

OK, well, see the impact:
So, guess what is my action on Sid upgrade?:
HOLD any Sid-upgrade until they clear...... check the same forum.

Since you have plenty of time, I suggest in addition to checking Aptosid forum, you could also check AntiX forum as well, because anticapitalista usually gave warning on Sid upgrade as below.




On Aptosid's warning, the very first forum is

multiple removes [gimp, etc. beause of libgtk2.0 upgrade]
[ Goto pageGoto page: 1, 2 ]

On Antix forum,
anticapitalista
Post subject: Hold off on dist-upgrade
PostPosted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 9:42 pm

At the moment a dist-upgrade in sid will remove a lot of gtk2 apps. This should be fixed soon once gtk2 libs get synced with sid.
Best to hold off for now. patience as they say

[GeneC]

Interesting stuff, Wayne!

http://antix.freeforums.org/sid-upgraders-f5.html


Thanks, again.

[GeneC]

I thought I would update this thread, particularly for the possible benefit of anyone thinking of tracking SID, but hesitant to do so.

To recap:

About 3 weeks ago, I decided to add a 2nd installation of LMDE to my computer, this one tracking SID. Just as an experiment and learning experience. I expected breakages. Things went much smoother than I expected, and I had no breakages or hickups of any sort, doing all the daily updates (there were lots of updates 15-30 daily?). Everthing worked as it should.

Last Monday, update through synaptic reported that there were a very large amount of updates coming through. I believe something like 180+, and it appreared to my linux novice brain, that lots of seemingly important stuff was to be removed (Gnome, x-org, et).

As this was supposed to be a learning experience, I just went ahead and did all the updates, and sure enough, I broke my OS.

Fist lesson learned.
I learned to TRUST what synaptic said it was going to do. Lesson learned.

I had made a clone with clonzilla (a very important tool to learn to use, quite easy once used a couple of times). I was back up and running in about 10-15 minutes.

Here is the 2nd lesson learned.
Every day since then I checked the updates, but held off till today, when I saw that updating was NOT going to remove anything important. I took a chance and updated everything (still lots of updates). Nothing broke, all is well.
The lesson learned is just to hold off on updates, if you see something suspicious. The problems get sorted out, if your just patient and wait a few days.

3rd Lesson learned.
SID is not all that much more maintenace than testing. You just have to be more patient. When SID breaks it breaks big time. KEEP A CLONE copy!

If your interested in trying it yourself. Just give it a go. It is a rewarding experience, and you have most of the latest sofware.