I think smxi is a fantastic script with sidux!
However, rather like arch+pacman/yaourt it would be great if we did not have to leave x to perform system updates/upgrade/downloads/maintenance.
Could this be possible...?
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anything is possible, but unless the user is able to always read and identify all packages being upgraded to make sure no desktop/kde/gnome/xorg stuff was added, it's not safe, never has been, never will be.

In stable desktops like debian stable/lenny, it's fine to do that, but even there I suspect some cases might mess up now and then.

I was recently reading some ubuntu threads, where they pointed out that even there, it's sometimes preferable to update out of X.

We used to see loads of real failures in sidux/kanotix because of that issue, that's something people have forgotten about now because desktop running upgrades are now generally only done by people who know how to read the package lists and know when it's not safe to do it in X.

Sometimes I'm tempted to just remove the X check, but things like nvidia updates don't work if x is running if you use the binary run packages, fglrx updates will hard lock the system if you try to remove it and update it with x running, so no, in general, it's simply not safe to upgrade in x.

You can do this however, apt-get/aptitude (depending on your preference) update && apt-get/aptitude -d dist-upgrade/full-upgrade
in your desktop, that will just download the packages, then you can drop down to console, exit x while the stuff installs via smxi, and that's that. Not hard overall, there are costs to running heavily unstable desktops like Debian Sid/sidux, this is one of them.

In theory I could have smxi query the packages to see if there are kde/gnome libs in the upgrade, or xorg stuff, but overall, why bother? Almost every upgrade has those packages in it if you do it monthly, even every 2 weeks...

I recommend upgrading less often, say every month, personally I tend to do it even less often now, every two months I find is nice.

If xorg updates, and you use non free drivers, you need to handle that, for example, now, with fglrx, an xorg update will kill fglrx, and amd/ati has no plans to release fglrx support for xorg 1.7 for at least a few months now.... so where would that leave your desktop? this is why I don't support that, I have no interest in helping people whose desktops broke from stuff like this, it's a horrible way to spend your time.
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Thank you for the explicit reply.
I have no problem with smxi 'modus operandi'.
Keep up the amazing work!
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