same here - dist-upgrading "blindly" without seeing what will be removed is foolish - if apt wants to remove gnome-desktop, for example, just need to wait a few days until the danger passes



why? the great advantage of using a sid-based system is that you never need to reinstall your system
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why do not use a rolling release system?

so after time....if I have always used a certain package and no longer use it....a clean install keeps my data size the smallest.

rolling release tends to mean you collect more orphans even tho I know you can use deborphans to try and help.

I guess thats why I said it was old school...grins sheepishly
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aus9, this is yet another reason to convert the system to aptitude first thing, aptitude does a very good job tracking the connected packages to any primary installed package, lib, common, and so on type packages.

I am quickly moving away from recommending apt-get at all to anyone, my advice now, after actually USING aptitude on all my systems for about a year now, more or less, is to immediately convert the system to aptitude after install, which just takes a few corrections and possible reinstalls of packages removed. Remember, with aptitude, do NOT install dependencies manually, only reinstall the actual core package, that way when you want to clean out old packages, aptitude will dutifully remove anything unused that came along with it.

Basically sidux is failing to test their claims, and has left any real engineering behind. The bottom line is very simple: Debian defaults to aptitude on their installs, they build business card / net install using aptitude by default. Ubuntu is using aptitude by default as well, I believe. Aptitude is the future, and it works, once you get into how it thinks about things.

Is it perfect? No, it suffers from horrible programming, slow, massively inefficient, poor logic, poor decisions, but it's what there is that does the job.

I recently had to waste about 1 hour on #smxi trying to help a guy with a sidux system using apt-get with a fairly complicated package conflict, that aptitude would have handled very easily, and working with his apt-get (since you cannot just switch to aptitude, you need to actually convert the system by reinstalling all core packages with aptitude so it knows about them) was like being crippled with one hand tied behind my back. I'm now used to aptitude offering me solutions to complex dependency scenarios in my various systems, and I'm also used to in most cases those scenarios being correct, letting me fix the problem without having to ask on irc, or post in the forums.
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hi

ok when I said old school I meant sidux kindergarden...lol

ok when I get a chance I will do a "last" clean install and immediately convert to aptitiutde and smxi.....and give it a spin.

thanks
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I'm curious as to where they've gone. Pure Debian? Something else? I was enthusiastic about Sidux early on but have become ambivalent since last summer.
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My guess is: power users, geeks, cutting/bleeding edge fans, a lot have gone to ArchLinux, which is technically speaking really the only true rolling release distro out there that uses binary package pool, ie, it's not Gentoo with its endless compiling. For people who truly want the latest, Sid is not it, every 2 years it freezes for 6 months or so, and even now, it's missing some core things, like I think Python 3.0. And other things that took a long time to enter into Sid.

I talk to some Arch users in irc, and my feeling is, even though I don't really like Arch, and find it simplistic and incomplete, it is what it claims, a true cutting edge rolling release distro, period, not a holding/testing pool for Debian Testing => Stable releases, which is what Sid is.

Ubuntu I would guess takes the rest, and Fedora some too, that's the range I see on #smxi and here. Debian may get a few here and there, but I think Debian really isn't going to attract many normal users in general because of the basic idea behind usability that drives most Debian supporters and devs.

But remember, sidux never really had that many users in the real world, they had a lot of installers to see on an empty partition, livecd boot once type users, people who install it, then install the next month's flavor of the month. I never counted those types as real users, the real user base was not very big, in the x thousands (x between 3 and 8 or so, and 8 would be very very generous), not more I believe. Now they have a lot less, since they discouraged most regular people from using it.

Remember: no goal is easier to attain than thinking small and setting your sights low, then making excuses about that being what you wanted all along, sigh.....

Personally I generally install now either Debian or Ubuntu for friends, and Debian Testing, or Stable, or Testing+Sid for myself or clients, depending on the application and requirements, I don't believe Debian sid has any place on an average user's desktop, but I also don't believe the Debian stable release cycle is short enough to keep up with some key software needs of regular desktop users, which sort of forces people to Ubuntu after a while I think.

My preference would be a real rolling release Debian that was fairly stable and also contained bug fixed packages, and didn't get frozen for stable releases, but I think, unfortunately, the free software world being quite small with finite resources, and finite devs willing to spend the time for free, the people who really and truly share that preference are making Arch now, and aren't trying to fight the ideas and ideals of Debian to get their vision enacted. IE, as with Ubuntu, the mindshare that could have gone to Debian has gone to other places. This isn't that great from my view, there are only so many good devs willing to work for free out there, and I see some worrying signs in Debian, but Debian remains my choice anyway, apt is really a great system, none better.
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Hmm I like the concept of an "bleeding edge" distro and there is a new eeebuntu version coming up which is supposed to be based on sid.
It also promises a rolling release and, as far as I can say/tell yet the people behind it are not that type "fundamentalists" as seen at some sidux team-members
.
There ist already an beta available which I will shortly download and test.

regards

Reiner
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let me know if they are running using their own repos, simply frozen, or if they are using debian proper, I read about them, but I couldn't tell. You can't offer regular users a distro based on debian sid live and expect that to work without a lot of extra work, like smxi, and even then the pain of keeping it up to date is going to make most people simply tired of the process. But I had the impression they were going to freeze the pool and use that, sort of like Ubuntu, but probably updating the pool more often from Sid, I hope that's what they are planning anyway.
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While downloading the beta-iso I looked trough their twitter-infos on the homepage.
You are right, currently they use their own repo and have put warnings out not to use the the debian sid-repos as packages from there currently seem to be problematic.


regards

Reiner
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That's what I thought, you really can't plug directly into sid then support any substantial user base, that was the entire point of smxi in the first place, forum/irc help doesn't scale to beyond what are essentially only power users and more advanced. Some people get so out of touch with reality that they actually believe sitting on IRC all day, or reading obscure technical issues in forum threads, actually has something to do with freedom or using one's time well, I've wasted enough of my own to say this, heh.
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