The house of cards is starting to fall.

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Robin

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by Robin »

I was one of those very trusting little newbies who just took what he was given and accepted all the updates. It worked out fine up until 10.04 (I was lucky). But there are just so very many "borked after update" threads on UF, I should have known it wouldn't last. :D And I guess I'm even more disappointed that when an update finally did bork my system, it was on a LTS version, which I imagined was supposed to be more stable. Live 'n' learn, that's all.

-Robin
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MALsPa
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Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by MALsPa »

dawgdoc wrote:It would seem that MALsPa initially felt the same and has now become less risk averse :) (if you don't consider the backups and multi-boot :D )
True. I would be a lot more cautious if I was running only one distro -- no matter which distro. But Linux kinda freed me from dependence on any one system. I'll always keep a dual-boot set-up, all-Linux, at the very least. Good insurance.
dawgdoc

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by dawgdoc »

@ vincent

I just checked, they both list the same items. However, the site you listed would be easier to use. You can look at all of the updates from one page instead of getting 2 to 6 at a time. That is roughly how many I have seen each week for Lucid. At the Newsletter site, you have to check each week, scroll down, then click the link to each update. And if you miss a week you have to go to the archives for the week(s) in question.

I stated earlier that I do not apply all updates. In truth, I do not apply all security updates either. This is because a number of them are for packages I do not have installed in the first place.
bobcollard

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by bobcollard »

libssd wrote:
bobcollard wrote:Actually automounting any external drive including Fat 32 or other partition is not one of Linux's better traits. I have to Mount my 250GB USB every time I startup or reboot. It's for backup and extended data saving formated Fat 32.
It's not just Linux. I have a firewire 1tb WD external drive attached to my iMac, and sometimes it shows up automatically, sometimes it doesn't. I generally don't notice the problem until Time Machine complains it hasn't been able to do a backup for some time. Apple's disk utility can't find it; I have to force the issue by unplugging/replugging the drive.
Your Mac is running on BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) a version of Unix, Linux is a version of Unix. It's a stretch but some things come together.
randomizer

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by randomizer »

Linux is a clone of Minix which is a clone of UNIX, while BSD is a descendent of UNIX. They're not really that close to each other if you put them on a timeline. :lol:
libssd
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Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by libssd »

randomizer wrote:Linux is a clone of Minix which is a clone of UNIX, while BSD is a descendent of UNIX. They're not really that close to each other if you put them on a timeline. :lol:
I think of them all as *nix. Family relationships are close enough that I can use pretty much the same commands from CLI, and use "man xxxxx" to find out how something works. Long live vi!
bobcollard

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by bobcollard »

libssd wrote:
randomizer wrote:Linux is a clone of Minix which is a clone of UNIX, while BSD is a descendent of UNIX. They're not really that close to each other if you put them on a timeline. :lol:
I think of them all as *nix. Family relationships are close enough that I can use pretty much the same commands from CLI, and use "man xxxxx" to find out how something works. Long live vi!
Linux came before minix, 1971 versus 1987, so, who cloned who? I was speculating on their ties to UNIX, Check out Wikipedia for dates or ask Linus Torvalds.
alpha1

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by alpha1 »

randomizer wrote:
alpha1 wrote:Yes, but what about something as basic and simple as auto mounting NTFS partitions?

Thats sure is a n00b killer.
You never mentioned anything about n00bs before. You were talking about "working out of the box." If auto-mounting is intentionally left out, then it's still working out of the box as far as the developers intended it. But as I don't use Mepis I have no idea whether it's supposed to automount or not. I've not run into any GNOME- or KDE-based distro that didn't. Xfce doesn't automount by default.
LAWL.
I would not be that pedantic.

Working out of the box is meant mainly for n00bs.
Not for experts who love tinkering on their Gentoos and Arch linux.
randomizer

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by randomizer »

alpha1 wrote:Working out of the box is meant mainly for n00bs.
But how do you differentiate "working" and "not working"? If a lack of automounting is a deliberate design decision, then it is working out of the box. It's just not working how you want it to.
alpha1

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by alpha1 »

randomizer wrote:
alpha1 wrote:Working out of the box is meant mainly for n00bs.
But how do you differentiate "working" and "not working"? If a lack of automounting is a deliberate design decision, then it is working out of the box. It's just not working how you want it to.
Hmmm, correct.
Now I am not sure whether you have used Mepis Live CD, but when you do see Hard disk and USB drives listed in the File manager, You are bound to click it to open it.
Especially upon plugging the USB disc which shows a pop-up on what actions to be taken.
And then you get messages like "not allowed, only once instance possible, use ntfs-3g" etc ... that is not n00b friendly, and neither working out of box.
Needless to add I much prefer Ubuntus, they don't come with this problem in any of the systems I have used as live CD environment.
libssd
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Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by libssd »

Here's a personal example of the value of making a backup image before running updates. In the past week, I have seen three anomalies:
  • Netbook unable to wake up from suspend (hasn't happened again since a reboot).
  • Wireless connections randomly changing from default (my router) to others in the neighborhod.
  • Open Office 3.2 apps started taking 10 seconds for initial load rather than 2 seconds
I had run some updates this week, and had removed some unneeded fonts, but not much else in the way of system changes. Nevertheless, I decided to restore from my latest backup, then re-apply updates. All three problems went away.

Sometimes "stuff" happens, and it's good to be preparation is better than starting over from scratch.
bobcollard

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by bobcollard »

My first lesson in Micro Computer Repairs included this line "Backup! It is not a question of if something will fail, it is when something will fail." That was 26 years ago and I have never forgotten it. Systems fail, Hard drives fail, Power supplies fail. Whether it is built in obsolescence, bugs or User mistakes, things go wrong. BACKUP!
z06gal

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by z06gal »

Well exploder, now you have my curiosity peaked. When might we see a debian mint edition? I know one is being worked on but didn't know the immediate plans if there are any? I think I would sit right down and cry if Mint went the way of ubuntu. :( Mint 7 is what I learned on and, after testing many distros, I have no plans to leave. Everything has always worked so well right out of the gate. Love it. :D :D
alpha1

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by alpha1 »

And since it would not be based on Sid, we may also expect a lot of hardware not working out of box.
Aint it?
mick55

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by mick55 »

z06gal wrote:now you have my curiosity peaked.
Forgive me for being pedantic, but I believe the word you want is "piqued" not "peaked".

They are homonyms that have completely different meanings.

I am not trying to be the "Grammar Police" and I hope you will not
take offense at my observation.


mick
bobcollard

Re: The house of cards is starting to fall.

Post by bobcollard »

alpha1 wrote:And since it would not be based on Sid, we may also expect a lot of hardware not working out of box.
Aint it?
I would think that's an unfair statement, until you tried it. Ubuntu or Sid have not proven the out of the box for all equipment, Nouveau Drivers are a Prime example.
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