On Mon, 27 Aug 2012, "D. Michael McIntyre" <michael.mcint...@rosegardenmusic.com> wrote:
> My computer had been up for almost 18 months before I > decided to try > upgrading it. You'd think I would have learned that > for every stable > thing in Linux there are 50,000 hopeless train wrecks in > between. > > I tire of this so-called progress. > I gave up on KDE and GNOME a couple of years ago, especially on a couple of older laptops with not too much memory. Now I use Fluxbox, with a few commands in the ~/.fluxbox/startup file to startup some apps, since it doesn't save session information. Again, I keep a few 20 GB partitions just so I can install separate versions of Linux on each, wiping out oldest partition for the latest distro release. It also help me recover configuration info from one of the other partitions during the first few weeks as I install the apps I want. Of course, I keep my data in yet other logical partitions, separate from those bootable partitions. The arrangement saved me lots of time, headache, and heartache along the way. I think most GUI applications are dumbing-down the users, keeping them ignorant of how the system should work. Various *buntu distros are also dumbing down the user knowlege base, trying to cater to the dumb-users of Windows and Macs. Perhaps I'll share my upgrade experience. Since I'm using Debian Sid/Unstable, the repository is almost always in state of constant change, and some apps may have dependencies issue while the repository is changing. Yeah, early on I have had a couple of problematic upgrades that left Xorg broken so everything was in text console mode. A day or two later, continue to try upgrade did clear everything, and that computer was again working. I have learned to do: apt-get update apt-get -d upgrade the "-d" option tell it to only download, but won't actually apply the upgrade. If there are packages missing, or have broken prerequisites, I would not continue, but keep try those to commands until all the packages get completely downloaded. Once that's done without problems, I would go ahead with apt-get upgrade With all the needed packages and all prerequisite packages are already downloaded, I only need to make sure the system partition has enough disk space for the upgrade before answering "yes" to apply the upgrade. I don't think I have much of a problem with Linux system upgrade since. Of course, different distros not using apt package manager may have similar options, you may want to look up such options. More often, I upgrade certain apps with apt-get -d install someapp if there's no problems, then continue with apt-get install someapp GUI apps and their convenience is one thing. But they are not that smart, in fact they dumb-down the user knowledge exposure of how and why things work within the system. The less they know, the more problems they will encounter. Generally speaking, the GUI app developers make too much assumption, without error checking, or disk space checking. Good luck. Jimmy ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Rosegarden-user mailing list Rosegarden-user@lists.sourceforge.net - use the link below to unsubscribe https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/rosegarden-user
