Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Sun, Aug 10, 2008 at 12:46:51PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote: On Sat,09.Aug.08, 17:04:47, Ron Johnson wrote: I put this at the bottom of my family members' .bashrc files. Works like a charm. if [ $TERM == linux ]; then startx exit fi If I try to run startx with X already active I get: Fatal server error: Server is already active for display 0 If this server is no longer running remove /tmp/.X0-lock and try again And eventually it will return the prompt. I think most cases will be covered by something like: , | if [ $TERM = linux ]; then ..cough..^ | if [ ! -f /tmp/X0-lock ]; then | startx | exit | fi | fi ` -- Chris. == I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. -- Sir Stephen Henry Roberts -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue,12.Aug.08, 00:15:10, Chris Bannister wrote: , | if [ $TERM = linux ]; then ..cough..^ Typo (all my self-made scripts are #!/bin/sh, where 'sh' points to 'dash'). Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Sat,09.Aug.08, 17:04:47, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/09/08 08:57, Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 01:05 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: [snip] I put this at the bottom of my family members' .bashrc files. Works like a charm. if [ $TERM == linux ]; then startx exit fi -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Ron, I like that. Alleviates the need for a login manager at all and if all win users snooping around would not even know what to type at the login: prompt. But does this not kill any vt's for that user? ie, cntrl-alt-F2, login, wham, GUI and not a term. Possibly. But they never do that, so it hasn't come up yet. Neither have I found a need to, yet, for that matter. If I try to run startx with X already active I get: Fatal server error: Server is already active for display 0 If this server is no longer running remove /tmp/.X0-lock and try again And eventually it will return the prompt. I think most cases will be covered by something like: , | if [ $TERM = linux ]; then | if [ ! -f /tmp/X0-lock ]; then | startx | exit | fi | fi ` Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Sun,10.Aug.08, 12:46:51, Andrei Popescu wrote: And eventually it will return the prompt. I think most cases will be covered by something like: , | if [ $TERM = linux ]; then | if [ ! -f /tmp/X0-lock ]; then | startx | exit | fi | fi ` The filename should be .X0-lock Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Andrei Popescu wrote:
On Sat,09.Aug.08, 17:04:47, Ron Johnson wrote:
On 08/09/08 08:57, Damon L. Chesser wrote:
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 01:05 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
[snip]
I put this at the bottom of my family members' .bashrc files. Works like
a charm.
if [ $TERM == linux ]; then
startx
exit
fi
--
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA
Ron,
I like that. Alleviates the need for a login manager at all and if all
win users snooping around would not even know what to type at the login:
prompt. But does this not kill any vt's for that user? ie,
cntrl-alt-F2, login, wham, GUI and not a term.
Possibly. But they never do that, so it hasn't come up yet. Neither have I
found a need to, yet, for that matter.
If I try to run startx with X already active I get:
Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
If this server is no longer running remove /tmp/.X0-lock
and try again
And eventually it will return the prompt. I think most cases will be
covered by something like:
,
| if [ $TERM = linux ]; then
| if [ ! -f /tmp/X0-lock ]; then
| startx
| exit
| fi
| fi
`
Or maybe something like this in that users .bashrc?
x()
{
D=x
for i in `seq 0 4`;do if [ ! -f /tmp/.X${i}-lock ]; then D=$i;
break; fi; done
if [ ${D} = x ]; then
echo No free virtual terminal
else
if [ $# -lt 1 ];
then /usr/bin/startx -- :${D} -depth 24 -dpi 120 2 ~/.X.err
~/.X.out
else /usr/bin/startx -- :${D} -depth $1 -dpi 120 2 ~/.X.err
~/.X.out
fi;
fi
}
--
With -depth and -dpi adjusted accordingly.
WT
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Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 20:01:46 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: [ snip: a bit of goofing off ] I actually am curious to hear what people like about the program, because I'm (slowly) working out ideas for redesigning the interface and I don't want to accidentally break useful features. Any breakage should be fully intentional, that's my motto. Hence my oh-so-subtle prodding... Here is a list of my favorite aptitude-interactive-UI features (I run Sid; many of them are probably less relevant for stable users): - browsing the list of new packages, then clearing it - the quick way to evaluate aptitude's proposals for resolving dependency conflicts during an upgrade - the summary of the scheduled actions, especially the sorting in categories (upgraded, installed as a dependency, removed since no longer needed, etc.) - Fine-grained control of installation of recommended and suggested packages: Before any scheduled action is carried out, I can look at the relevant list of recommended and suggested packages and decide which ones I want to install and if I want to mark any given one as automatic. - quickly put a hold or a forbid-version on a package - looking at changelogs before I let aptitude do something - consulting apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges before things actually happen (I think that this one is the same in command-line use, though.) - the limit view function combined with the powerful search patterns when I don't yet know which packages I need for $FEATURE - quick traversal of dependency chains, forward and reverse, for the rare cases in which aptitude cannot figure out what to do by itself Some very subjective ideas for possible improvements (not necessarily simplifications of the UI, though): - Sometimes it would be handy if I could fine-tune the aggressiveness of aptitude's conflict resolution behavior, i.e. when I notice that the normal U behavior leads to undesirable actions then I would like to be able to gradually move from safe-upgrade to full-upgrade behavior while I can see what is going to happen in the interactive interface. I could stop at the optimal point and would only have to fix a few things manually. - I would like to be able to declare favorites among packages, to guide conflict resolution. - It would be nice to have apt-cache policy-equivalent information in the versions display of packages. Right now I find it difficult to figure out in which archive a given version can be found. (As a matter of fact, that is the only reason I still use apt-cache, aside from very simple searches for which apt-cache's dumber-but-faster search function is sufficient.) I am also looking forward to seeing how the summer-of-code GTK+ interface will turn out; maybe that will help to bring the remaining benighted souls towards the light... -- Regards,| http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer Florian | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
* Florian Kulzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 09 07:29 -0500]: On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 20:01:46 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: [ snip: a bit of goofing off ] I actually am curious to hear what people like about the program, because I'm (slowly) working out ideas for redesigning the interface and I don't want to accidentally break useful features. Any breakage should be fully intentional, that's my motto. Hence my oh-so-subtle prodding... Here is a list of my favorite aptitude-interactive-UI features (I run Sid; many of them are probably less relevant for stable users): - browsing the list of new packages, then clearing it - the quick way to evaluate aptitude's proposals for resolving dependency conflicts during an upgrade - the summary of the scheduled actions, especially the sorting in categories (upgraded, installed as a dependency, removed since no longer needed, etc.) - Fine-grained control of installation of recommended and suggested packages: Before any scheduled action is carried out, I can look at the relevant list of recommended and suggested packages and decide which ones I want to install and if I want to mark any given one as automatic. - quickly put a hold or a forbid-version on a package - looking at changelogs before I let aptitude do something - consulting apt-listbugs and apt-listchanges before things actually happen (I think that this one is the same in command-line use, though.) - the limit view function combined with the powerful search patterns when I don't yet know which packages I need for $FEATURE - quick traversal of dependency chains, forward and reverse, for the rare cases in which aptitude cannot figure out what to do by itself Excellent summary, Florian, and I found myself nodding that I've used each and every one of these features on multiple occasions. Some very subjective ideas for possible improvements (not necessarily simplifications of the UI, though): - Sometimes it would be handy if I could fine-tune the aggressiveness of aptitude's conflict resolution behavior, i.e. when I notice that the normal U behavior leads to undesirable actions then I would like to be able to gradually move from safe-upgrade to full-upgrade behavior while I can see what is going to happen in the interactive interface. I could stop at the optimal point and would only have to fix a few things manually. Nice. That would be sweet. - I would like to be able to declare favorites among packages, to guide conflict resolution. Yes! - It would be nice to have apt-cache policy-equivalent information in the versions display of packages. Right now I find it difficult to figure out in which archive a given version can be found. (As a matter of fact, that is the only reason I still use apt-cache, aside from very simple searches for which apt-cache's dumber-but-faster search function is sufficient.) Okay, here I'm out in left field as I don't know what apt-cache policy would do. I tend to avoid policy whenever I can. ;-) I am also looking forward to seeing how the summer-of-code GTK+ interface will turn out; maybe that will help to bring the remaining benighted souls towards the light... What convinced me to use Aptitude back in 2000/01 or whenever was the improved way packages were grouped and displayed. Being informed of new packages and then easily forgetting them has led me to discover some things over the years that I would have missed. To me the killer function of Aptitude is being able to start at some arbitrary package and work one's way through its dependency chain, either what it depends on or what depends on it. For the record, I've yet to use Aptitude in commandline mode as I always use the UI. I've nothing against a GUI package manager per se, but I guess I'd rather reach for Aptitude since I now know it rather than something else. Synaptic was going to involve its own learning curve that I didn't care to devote time to so I just open a term window and fire up Aptitude. Also, Aptitude does carry forward some of the good aspects of dselect in the way the packages are presented. This is very much like the IDE thread where some philosophies of EMACS and Vim are presented. I can relate as far as Aptitude is concerned even though I avoid both editors like the plague even though I spent a lot of time last winter wanting to like EMACS. Go figure. :-/ - Nate -- The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true. Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://n0nb.us/index.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 22:31 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 07:00:52PM -0400, Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 06:58 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: One of my active anti-goals is making aptitude the best package manager after you enter 500 configuration options to enable all the useful features. (hello, mutt) The new code will be the default behavior, with configuration options to selectively re-enable old behavior for people who prefer it. c.f. the change in the behavior of the installation commands several years ago. Daniel Daniel, I would suggest you use EMACS as a front end. Already been done, and by none less than Junichi Uekawa: http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/software/apt-mode.html Sadly, though, there do not appear to be Debian packages of it. Daniel Impressive. Currently I am running F9 on this box. (Don't hate me! I am just forcing myself to learn the RHEL way of thought, and I hate every min. of it.) But to be honest, This thread makes me want to re-install Sid on this box (the one I use the most) just so I can poke at aptitude ncurses again. I hope you know that mostly I was poking fun and not serious, except for the part about aptitude (ncurses) not working the way I think, that is serious, but it reflects badly on my short comings, not your code. Thanks for taking the time to write it in the first place and for upgrading it. With you you guys, Vista would feel warm and fuzzy. -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 01:05 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 23:42, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 09:56:19PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 20:20, s. keeling wrote: Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I agree with the point you are trying to make, but best to: s/nvidia/ati More especially: s/nvidia/display manager/ no kidding... have to debug why gdm (work machine, for the general user...) locks the machine hard when a user logs out... sheesh. I may have to teach people how to login properly. ;-O I put this at the bottom of my family members' .bashrc files. Works like a charm. if [ $TERM == linux ]; then startx exit fi -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Ron, I like that. Alleviates the need for a login manager at all and if all win users snooping around would not even know what to type at the login: prompt. But does this not kill any vt's for that user? ie, cntrl-alt-F2, login, wham, GUI and not a term. I am sitting here turning over diff. scenarios in my head, how to accomplish them using this login script. That is one of them. I need more time! I don't have enough to play with. -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Sat, Aug 09, 2008 at 02:11:43PM +0200, Florian Kulzer [EMAIL PROTECTED]
was heard to say:
- I would like to be able to declare favorites among packages, to
guide conflict resolution.
I was actually working on this a few weeks ago but I got sidetracked
by the fact that the GTK+ interface was starting to become interesting
to hack on...
I was looking at something like this:
Aptitude::Resolver::Hints {
// To reject a package completely, like pressing r on
// all its versions:
reject dselect;
// To reject a particular version, like pressing r on it:
reject foopackage=1.0.0.bad-version-number;
// To always take a package over alternatives:
accept aptitude-doc-cs;
// To always take a particular package version over alternatives:
accept linux-2.6/etch;
// We can use patterns too. Maybe we want to prefer German docs:
accept ?name(.*-doc-de);
// Weights can be adjusted, too. Give a bonus to emacs and
// a penalty to vi:
+100 ?name(^emacs);
-100 ?name(^vi);
};
Daniel
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Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 21:07 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 01:00:44PM -0700, Paul Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: aptitude makes it easy to plan the updates How so? You can easily mark packages for installation, upgrade, reinstallation or removal without doing it right then. You can easiliy set marks, then quit aptitude to save the changes. This is especially handy if your users also log into their shell accounts: Curious users can run aptitude and see what changes are planned for the system the next time packages get upgrades. -- Paul Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, 2008-08-05 at 14:09 +0100, andy wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? This happens fairly often. I strongly reccommend testing instead unless you're adventurous and willing to file good bug reports. Testing has at least been in unstable long enough to not pick up showstopping bug reports before moving on to testing. -- Paul Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Quoting Nate Bargmann n0nb AT n0nb DOT us: * Florian Kulzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 09 07:29 -0500]: [...] - It would be nice to have apt-cache policy-equivalent information in the versions display of packages. Right now I find it difficult to figure out in which archive a given version can be found. (As a matter of fact, that is the only reason I still use apt-cache, aside from very simple searches for which apt-cache's dumber-but-faster search function is sufficient.) Okay, here I'm out in left field as I don't know what apt-cache policy would do. I tend to avoid policy whenever I can. ;-) My statement was a bit unclear; I use the apt-cache policy command to see which versions are available for a given package and in which archives they are included. Aptitude tells me the former on its package information page, but not the latter (unless I missed something). Even if there is only one known version of a given package, I find it handy to be able to distinguish the following cases: - The package only exists in stable: time to check out the reasons for its removal and to look for alternatives - The package has the same version in stable, testing and unstable: probably well tested and mature, but maybe unlikely to get new features - The package only exists in unstable (and maybe testing): probably has interesting new features and bugs, it might be fun to play with it Right now I use the limit view function with appropriate search terms to get this kind of information; it would be nice if aptitude displayed the archive(s) next to the version number automatically. -- Regards, Florian -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Quoting Daniel Burrows dburrows AT debian DOT org:
On Sat, Aug 09, 2008 at 02:11:43PM +0200, Florian Kulzer was heard to say:
- I would like to be able to declare favorites among packages, to
guide conflict resolution.
I was actually working on this a few weeks ago but I got sidetracked
by the fact that the GTK+ interface was starting to become interesting
to hack on...
I was looking at something like this:
Aptitude::Resolver::Hints {
// To reject a package completely, like pressing r on
// all its versions:
reject dselect;
// To reject a particular version, like pressing r on it:
reject foopackage=1.0.0.bad-version-number;
// To always take a package over alternatives:
accept aptitude-doc-cs;
// To always take a particular package version over alternatives:
accept linux-2.6/etch;
// We can use patterns too. Maybe we want to prefer German docs:
accept ?name(.*-doc-de);
// Weights can be adjusted, too. Give a bonus to emacs and
// a penalty to vi:
+100 ?name(^emacs);
-100 ?name(^vi);
};
Ooh, that will be nice to have, thanks a lot!
(Also, I really like the Monty-Pythonesque absurd humor in the last example.)
--
Regards,
Florian
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Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On 08/09/08 08:57, Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 01:05 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: [snip] I put this at the bottom of my family members' .bashrc files. Works like a charm. if [ $TERM == linux ]; then startx exit fi -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Ron, I like that. Alleviates the need for a login manager at all and if all win users snooping around would not even know what to type at the login: prompt. But does this not kill any vt's for that user? ie, cntrl-alt-F2, login, wham, GUI and not a term. Possibly. But they never do that, so it hasn't come up yet. Neither have I found a need to, yet, for that matter. I am sitting here turning over diff. scenarios in my head, how to accomplish them using this login script. That is one of them. I need more time! I don't have enough to play with. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Scientists are people, too. IOW, they also crave power, money, respect, and influence, and they also fear for their jobs. Each can be a healthy motivator, but each has the ability to turn a good scientist into a bad one; and in some cases, they can turn a good scientist into a charlatan. http://thefutureofthings.com/book/3/the-bomb-that-never-was.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
* Florian Kulzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 09 15:49 -0500]: Right now I use the limit view function with appropriate search terms to get this kind of information; it would be nice if aptitude displayed the archive(s) next to the version number automatically. Ahh, since I just have unstable in my sources.list, I don't see much of a need, but I see where you're coming from. I guess that whenever I've sought that kind of information I just head for the the packages page and look there. - Nate -- The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true. Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://n0nb.us/index.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On 08/07/08 23:42, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 09:56:19PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 20:20, s. keeling wrote: Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I agree with the point you are trying to make, but best to: s/nvidia/ati More especially: s/nvidia/display manager/ no kidding... have to debug why gdm (work machine, for the general user...) locks the machine hard when a user logs out... sheesh. I may have to teach people how to login properly. ;-O I put this at the bottom of my family members' .bashrc files. Works like a charm. if [ $TERM == linux ]; then startx exit fi -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Scientists are people, too. IOW, they also crave power, money, respect, and influence, and they also fear for their jobs. Each can be a healthy motivator, but each has the ability to turn a good scientist into a bad one; and in some cases, they can turn a good scientist into a charlatan. http://thefutureofthings.com/book/3/the-bomb-that-never-was.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Damon L. Chesser wrote: snipped I think I will once more look it over, if for no other reason then Ron Johnson will not snicker at me. well i don't know Ron but given what i have read i wouldn't bet on that. :D I moved from apt-get to aptitude and now I don't even think about it anymore. This was a while back and it seemed like aptitude wanted to remove everything and start over. After a bit of research and some alcohol I dove in. Now I use aptitude in place of apt-get at the command line. Instead of: sudo apt-get install foo i do: sudo aptitude install foo there are a few differences in searching and the like, but i almost never use apt-get anymore. there's an (older) blog about it on my site that you could take a look at. it really needs updating, but might give you an idea of some of the differences. it's called I've got a new Aptitude -- Arrant Drivel - really, it's just trash... http://www.arrantdrivel.com/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 03:11:39AM +0200, s. keeling [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: I've no trouble with either at the command line. The *curses interface is highly non-intuitive (IMO). It, along with dselect, has always struck me as just a little Martian. That's fine in vi or emacs that you use all the time (so you learn it), but in a pkg mgr? Are there any terminal applications that you think are not Martian? I don't have a good handle on what you mean there. If you just mean that you have to learn the keystrokes ... that's probably not going to change; with the limited screen real estate on a terminal, I can't afford to put in buttons on everything. So, Daniel, _consider_ (thanks :-) a wholesale interface re-design (you've free rein), or offer choice of old or new via command line switch, or something, a la view vs. vi? IFF --new is found on CL, give 'em the new one? What'll the old one say when it sees that? Hmm. Gotta be a better way. Env. var? One of my active anti-goals is making aptitude the best package manager after you enter 500 configuration options to enable all the useful features. (hello, mutt) The new code will be the default behavior, with configuration options to selectively re-enable old behavior for people who prefer it. c.f. the change in the behavior of the installation commands several years ago. Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Daniel Burrows wrote: If you just mean that you have to learn the keystrokes ... that's probably not going to change; with the limited screen real estate on a terminal, I can't afford to put in buttons on everything. Although I haven't delved into aptitude as deeply as I probably should, I would like to have an easier (keystroke) way to cycle through the search. As it stands, I press / enter my search criteria and then press enter to access the packages. Then I press / again and enter to go to the next found item. I don't know of a way to cycle through otherwise so if I miss a package I have to cycle through the whole list to get back to it. Something like the previous and next feature in how aptitude resolves dependencies would be nice. If there is already a means in place please let me know. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Preston Boyington wrote: As it stands, I press / enter my search criteria and then press enter to access the packages. Then I press / again and enter to go to the next found item. I don't know of a way to cycle through otherwise so if I miss a package I have to cycle through the whole list to get back to it. Something like the previous and next feature in how aptitude resolves dependencies would be nice. If there is already a means in place please let me know. Use 'n' to go to the next result, and 'N' for the previous one. (This last one is not particularly intuitive.) -- modem, adj.: Up-to-date, new-fangled, as in Thoroughly Modem Millie. An unfortunate byproduct of kerning. [That's sic!] Eduardo M KALINOWSKI [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://move.to/hpkb -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 01:05:56AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 23:42, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 09:56:19PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 20:20, s. keeling wrote: Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I agree with the point you are trying to make, but best to: s/nvidia/ati More especially: s/nvidia/display manager/ no kidding... have to debug why gdm (work machine, for the general user...) locks the machine hard when a user logs out... sheesh. I may have to teach people how to login properly. ;-O I put this at the bottom of my family members' .bashrc files. Works like a charm. if [ $TERM == linux ]; then startx exit fi nice one. A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 12:11:06 -0300, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Preston Boyington wrote: As it stands, I press / enter my search criteria and then press enter to access the packages. Then I press / again and enter to go to the next found item. I don't know of a way to cycle through otherwise so if I miss a package I have to cycle through the whole list to get back to it. Something like the previous and next feature in how aptitude resolves dependencies would be nice. If there is already a means in place please let me know. Use 'n' to go to the next result, and 'N' for the previous one. (This last one is not particularly intuitive.) It's the same as in 'less' and 'vim' so is what many of us would expect. -- Bob Cox. Stoke Gifford, near Bristol, UK. Registered user #445000 with the Linux Counter - http://counter.li.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Bob Cox wrote: On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 12:11:06 -0300, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: Preston Boyington wrote: As it stands, I press / enter my search criteria and then press enter to access the packages. Then I press / again and enter to go to the next found item. I don't know of a way to cycle through otherwise so if I miss a package I have to cycle through the whole list to get back to it. Something like the previous and next feature in how aptitude resolves dependencies would be nice. If there is already a means in place please let me know. Use 'n' to go to the next result, and 'N' for the previous one. (This last one is not particularly intuitive.) It's the same as in 'less' and 'vim' so is what many of us would expect. Ah, that's why I didn't know. I haven't used 'vim' much at all and I use 'less' for piping stuff into. Thanks for letting me know. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
s. keeling wrote: No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? Can you elaborate on that statement? I ask because of my utter frustration with my NVIDIA card lately, as Ron already knows... -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 06:58 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 03:11:39AM +0200, s. keeling [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: I've no trouble with either at the command line. The *curses interface is highly non-intuitive (IMO). It, along with dselect, has always struck me as just a little Martian. That's fine in vi or emacs that you use all the time (so you learn it), but in a pkg mgr? Are there any terminal applications that you think are not Martian? I don't have a good handle on what you mean there. If you just mean that you have to learn the keystrokes ... that's probably not going to change; with the limited screen real estate on a terminal, I can't afford to put in buttons on everything. So, Daniel, _consider_ (thanks :-) a wholesale interface re-design (you've free rein), or offer choice of old or new via command line switch, or something, a la view vs. vi? IFF --new is found on CL, give 'em the new one? What'll the old one say when it sees that? Hmm. Gotta be a better way. Env. var? One of my active anti-goals is making aptitude the best package manager after you enter 500 configuration options to enable all the useful features. (hello, mutt) The new code will be the default behavior, with configuration options to selectively re-enable old behavior for people who prefer it. c.f. the change in the behavior of the installation commands several years ago. Daniel Daniel, I would suggest you use EMACS as a front end. Sorry, I could not resist. I know, that would be the opposite of what you suggest you want to do. I am looking forward to test driving this new interface. -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 07:00:52PM -0400, Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 06:58 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 03:11:39AM +0200, s. keeling [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: I've no trouble with either at the command line. The *curses interface is highly non-intuitive (IMO). It, along with dselect, has always struck me as just a little Martian. That's fine in vi or emacs that you use all the time (so you learn it), but in a pkg mgr? Are there any terminal applications that you think are not Martian? I don't have a good handle on what you mean there. If you just mean that you have to learn the keystrokes ... that's probably not going to change; with the limited screen real estate on a terminal, I can't afford to put in buttons on everything. So, Daniel, _consider_ (thanks :-) a wholesale interface re-design (you've free rein), or offer choice of old or new via command line switch, or something, a la view vs. vi? IFF --new is found on CL, give 'em the new one? What'll the old one say when it sees that? Hmm. Gotta be a better way. Env. var? One of my active anti-goals is making aptitude the best package manager after you enter 500 configuration options to enable all the useful features. (hello, mutt) The new code will be the default behavior, with configuration options to selectively re-enable old behavior for people who prefer it. c.f. the change in the behavior of the installation commands several years ago. Daniel Daniel, I would suggest you use EMACS as a front end. oh that's a fabulous idea, but think about it. Something as obscure and hard to understand as aptitude is screaming to have vi as a frontend. A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 16:23 -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 07:00:52PM -0400, Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 06:58 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 03:11:39AM +0200, s. keeling [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: I've no trouble with either at the command line. The *curses interface is highly non-intuitive (IMO). It, along with dselect, has always struck me as just a little Martian. That's fine in vi or emacs that you use all the time (so you learn it), but in a pkg mgr? Are there any terminal applications that you think are not Martian? I don't have a good handle on what you mean there. If you just mean that you have to learn the keystrokes ... that's probably not going to change; with the limited screen real estate on a terminal, I can't afford to put in buttons on everything. So, Daniel, _consider_ (thanks :-) a wholesale interface re-design (you've free rein), or offer choice of old or new via command line switch, or something, a la view vs. vi? IFF --new is found on CL, give 'em the new one? What'll the old one say when it sees that? Hmm. Gotta be a better way. Env. var? One of my active anti-goals is making aptitude the best package manager after you enter 500 configuration options to enable all the useful features. (hello, mutt) The new code will be the default behavior, with configuration options to selectively re-enable old behavior for people who prefer it. c.f. the change in the behavior of the installation commands several years ago. Daniel Daniel, I would suggest you use EMACS as a front end. oh that's a fabulous idea, but think about it. Something as obscure and hard to understand as aptitude is screaming to have vi as a frontend. A You had better put on your fire protective suit. -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Andrew Sackville-West writes: I would suggest you use EMACS as a front end. An apt-mode sounds great to me. I'm not suggesting that Daniel (or anyone else) write it, though. -- John Hasler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
* Andrew Sackville-West [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 08 18:25 -0500]: On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 07:00:52PM -0400, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Daniel, I would suggest you use EMACS as a front end. oh that's a fabulous idea, but think about it. Something as obscure and hard to understand as aptitude is screaming to have vi as a frontend. I think that would be enough to push me over the edge and I'd go running back to Slackware. - Nate -- The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true. Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://n0nb.us/index.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On 08/07/08 20:20, s. keeling wrote: Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I agree with the point you are trying to make, but best to: s/nvidia/ati More especially: s/nvidia/display manager/ Sick. On install, de-select Desktop Environment, then go get what you want after it's done. That solved it for me. -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 03:20 +0200, s. keeling wrote: No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I am equally at home using aptitude install, apt-get, apt-cache or synaptic. I just don't mind a gui now and again, a picture can be worth 1K words, or so I hear. I can actually use vi, irssi, lynx and the lot, I just would prefer not to (on a desktop). You're exceptional. I worry about worst cases, not guys like you. :-) GUIs aren't evil or silly, but they're very often unnecessary. Slackware still can't be bothered to build a gui installer. Why would they? That's Zenwalk's job. :-) I very much like the Debian gui installer (pat on back Joey friends, great job, thank you!). It's an elegant interface, the curses installer accurately translated to gui. -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Sat, 2008-08-09 at 03:13 +0200, s. keeling wrote: Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 03:20 퍭㒲䞞阩먭磚, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I am equally at home using aptitude install, apt-get, apt-cache or synaptic. I just don't mind a gui now and again, a picture can be worth 1K words, or so I hear. I can actually use vi, irssi, lynx and the lot, I just would prefer not to (on a desktop). You're exceptional. I worry about worst cases, not guys like you. :-) GUIs aren't evil or silly, but they're very often unnecessary. Slackware still can't be bothered to build a gui installer. Why would they? That's Zenwalk's job. :-) I very much like the Debian gui installer (pat on back Joey friends, great job, thank you!). It's an elegant interface, the curses installer accurately translated to gui. I totally agree with you, on all points. -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me. -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Nick Lidakis [EMAIL PROTECTED]: s. keeling wrote: No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? Can you elaborate on that statement? I ask because of my utter frustration with my NVIDIA card lately, as Ron already knows... I've only used nvidia, never owned one. This is all from what I've seen on the lists and experience with others'. If you're intent on getting all you can get out of your card, then you're probably fiddling with a binary blob from nvidia. Many's the post I've seen from people trying to get X working again after a kernel upgrade. It's pretty easy and well documented. If you're not so intent, the generic nv driver works great from what I've seen. It may not be enough for Compiz(?), but I've seen it serve a mostly gui and some text based user satisfactorily. -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:16:04 +0200, s. keeling wrote: Ron Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On 08/07/08 20:20, s. keeling wrote: Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I agree with the point you are trying to make, but best to: s/nvidia/ati More especially: s/nvidia/display manager/ Sick. On install, de-select Desktop Environment, then go get what you want after it's done. That solved it for me. You made me shiver in agony. I read dselect. I don't know if you've ever had the pleasure, but it was dselect that made me learn to like aptitude. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 07:50:39PM -0400, Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 16:23 -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 07:00:52PM -0400, Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 06:58 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 03:11:39AM +0200, s. keeling [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: I've no trouble with either at the command line. The *curses interface is highly non-intuitive (IMO). It, along with dselect, has always struck me as just a little Martian. That's fine in vi or emacs that you use all the time (so you learn it), but in a pkg mgr? Are there any terminal applications that you think are not Martian? I don't have a good handle on what you mean there. If you just mean that you have to learn the keystrokes ... that's probably not going to change; with the limited screen real estate on a terminal, I can't afford to put in buttons on everything. So, Daniel, _consider_ (thanks :-) a wholesale interface re-design (you've free rein), or offer choice of old or new via command line switch, or something, a la view vs. vi? IFF --new is found on CL, give 'em the new one? What'll the old one say when it sees that? Hmm. Gotta be a better way. Env. var? One of my active anti-goals is making aptitude the best package manager after you enter 500 configuration options to enable all the useful features. (hello, mutt) The new code will be the default behavior, with configuration options to selectively re-enable old behavior for people who prefer it. c.f. the change in the behavior of the installation commands several years ago. Daniel Daniel, I would suggest you use EMACS as a front end. oh that's a fabulous idea, but think about it. Something as obscure and hard to understand as aptitude is screaming to have vi as a frontend. A You had better put on your fire protective suit. I have three daughters. there is nothing you guys can do to me that will ever hurt worse than that! all in fun... Just for the record, since all my responses to this thread have been pretty snarky, I'm a fan of aptitude. I agree the interface is, umm... cryptic at first, but with a little practice, it's remarkably practical at what it does. But it's real power is under the covers. Why just yesterday as I was upgrading a machine that was woefully behind (700 sid packages, ugh) it several times hit the... error, trying to recover, and did. There was none of the repeated application of apt-get -f install foo, or whatever, that used to plague large upgrades with apt-get. A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, Aug 08, 2008 at 07:00:52PM -0400, Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 06:58 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: One of my active anti-goals is making aptitude the best package manager after you enter 500 configuration options to enable all the useful features. (hello, mutt) The new code will be the default behavior, with configuration options to selectively re-enable old behavior for people who prefer it. c.f. the change in the behavior of the installation commands several years ago. Daniel Daniel, I would suggest you use EMACS as a front end. Already been done, and by none less than Junichi Uekawa: http://www.netfort.gr.jp/~dancer/software/apt-mode.html Sadly, though, there do not appear to be Debian packages of it. Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Wed, 2008-08-06 at 20:01 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 11:47:21PM +0200, Florian Kulzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: Quoting Andrew Sackville-West: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 09:07:27PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 01:00:44PM -0700, Paul Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: aptitude makes it easy to plan the updates How so? I'll bite on this... the simple but powerful interface allows me to quickly browse through the proposed changes picking and choosing those I want. Clearly it's an inspired piece of software! ;-) /me wipes stuff off nose... You forgot to recommend that he should read the documentation... Heh. :-) I actually am curious to hear what people like about the program, because I'm (slowly) working out ideas for redesigning the interface and I don't want to accidentally break useful features. Any breakage should be fully intentional, that's my motto. Hence my oh-so-subtle prodding... Daniel Sadly, I have NEVER used aptitude ncurses. Ever since the early days of Potato, when I tried to use it, I would get completely lost. As smart as I am (however smart that is) that interface just does not work the way my brain works. I still don't know how to use it and get frustrated in 30 seconds trying to use it. Nothing against what I am sure is a nice program, it just does not work the way I think. I feel better by sharing, it has made us all better people (and dang it! People like me!) -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Wed, 2008-08-06 at 20:01 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: Heh. :-) I actually am curious to hear what people like about the program, because I'm (slowly) working out ideas for redesigning the interface and I don't want to accidentally break useful features. Any breakage should be fully intentional, that's my motto. Hence my oh-so-subtle prodding... Daniel Sadly, I have NEVER used aptitude ncurses. Ever since the early days of Potato, when I tried to use it, I would get completely lost. As smart as I am (however smart that is) that interface just does not work the way my brain works. I still don't know how to use it and get frustrated in 30 seconds trying to use it. Nothing against what I am sure is a nice program, it just does not work the way I think. I feel better by sharing, it has made us all better people (and dang it! People like me!) Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude. (I actually found dselect easier to get around in. What?!!) -- Kent West *))) http://kentwest.blogspot.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 11:47:21PM +0200, Florian Kulzer wrote: Quoting Andrew Sackville-West: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 09:07:27PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 01:00:44PM -0700, Paul Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: aptitude makes it easy to plan the updates How so? I'll bite on this... the simple but powerful interface allows me to quickly browse through the proposed changes picking and choosing those I want. Clearly it's an inspired piece of software! ;-) /me wipes stuff off nose... You forgot to recommend that he should read the documentation... oh, yes thanks. OP: Be sure to read the *excellent* and *well written* documentation. /me looks around to see if Daniel is watching. A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude Add a ditto onto to the ditto regarding my own inability to cope with the ncurses interface to aptitude To me it seems cumbersome and somewhat cryptic -- Stanley C. Kitching Human Being Phoenix, Arizona -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
* Cousin Stanley [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 07 16:38 -0500]: Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude Add a ditto onto to the ditto regarding my own inability to cope with the ncurses interface to aptitude To me it seems cumbersome and somewhat cryptic And I think Aptitude works very well and couldn't wait to ditch dselect for it. Different strokes and all that. I've had the displeasure of being dumped into Synaptic on Ubuntu and friends. I'll take Aptitude every time, thank you very much. - Nate -- The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true. Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://n0nb.us/index.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 04:55:23PM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote: * Cousin Stanley [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 07 16:38 -0500]: Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude Add a ditto onto to the ditto regarding my own inability to cope with the ncurses interface to aptitude To me it seems cumbersome and somewhat cryptic And I think Aptitude works very well and couldn't wait to ditch dselect for it. Different strokes and all that. I've had the displeasure of being dumped into Synaptic on Ubuntu and friends. I'll take Aptitude every time, thank you very much. took me a long time to grok the aptitude interface, but I hardly ever use it directly. Now I'm somewhat comfortable with it and it works for me, but I'm sure that's a case of me training myself to use it... A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 15:06 -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 04:55:23PM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote: * Cousin Stanley [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 07 16:38 -0500]: Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude Add a ditto onto to the ditto regarding my own inability to cope with the ncurses interface to aptitude To me it seems cumbersome and somewhat cryptic And I think Aptitude works very well and couldn't wait to ditch dselect for it. Different strokes and all that. I've had the displeasure of being dumped into Synaptic on Ubuntu and friends. I'll take Aptitude every time, thank you very much. took me a long time to grok the aptitude interface, but I hardly ever use it directly. Now I'm somewhat comfortable with it and it works for me, but I'm sure that's a case of me training myself to use it... A And to be sure, I did not mean to rag on aptitude, only that I don't work the way it is meant to work. -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 16:55 -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote: * Cousin Stanley [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 07 16:38 -0500]: Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude Add a ditto onto to the ditto regarding my own inability to cope with the ncurses interface to aptitude To me it seems cumbersome and somewhat cryptic And I think Aptitude works very well and couldn't wait to ditch dselect for it. Different strokes and all that. I've had the displeasure of being dumped into Synaptic on Ubuntu and friends. I'll take Aptitude every time, thank you very much. - Nate Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? -- The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true. Ham radio, Linux, bikes, and more: http://n0nb.us/index.html -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? Perhaps exactly that. Simplicity sometimes means that advanced features are not available, or that you have to dig deep to be able to reach them. I cannot say if this is the case with Synaptic, though. Regarding aptitude, its interface may have the easiest learning curve there is, but it certainly is very powerful. When I started using it, it was the only package manager that automatically erased unused packages, so I forced myself to use it. -- Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in! -- Brazil Eduardo M KALINOWSKI [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://move.to/hpkb -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 16:55 -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote: * Cousin Stanley [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 07 16:38 -0500]: Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude Add a ditto onto to the ditto regarding my own inability to cope with the ncurses interface to aptitude To me it seems cumbersome and somewhat cryptic And I think Aptitude works very well and couldn't wait to ditch dselect for it. Different strokes and all that. I've had the displeasure of being dumped into Synaptic on Ubuntu and friends. I'll take Aptitude every time, thank you very much. - Nate Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Scientists are people, too. IOW, they also crave power, money, respect, and influence, and they also fear for their jobs. Each can be a healthy motivator, but each has the ability to turn a good scientist into a bad one; and in some cases, they can turn a good scientist into a charlatan. http://thefutureofthings.com/book/3/the-bomb-that-never-was.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 16:55 -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote: * Cousin Stanley [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2008 Aug 07 16:38 -0500]: Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude Add a ditto onto to the ditto regarding my own inability to cope with the ncurses interface to aptitude To me it seems cumbersome and somewhat cryptic And I think Aptitude works very well and couldn't wait to ditch dselect for it. Different strokes and all that. I've had the displeasure of being dumped into Synaptic on Ubuntu and friends. I'll take Aptitude every time, thank you very much. - Nate Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Scientists are people, too. IOW, they also crave power, money, respect, and influence, and they also fear for their jobs. Each can be a healthy motivator, but each has the ability to turn a good scientist into a bad one; and in some cases, they can turn a good scientist into a charlatan. http://thefutureofthings.com/book/3/the-bomb-that-never-was.html -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 19:37 -0300, Eduardo M KALINOWSKI wrote: Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? Perhaps exactly that. Simplicity sometimes means that advanced features are not available, or that you have to dig deep to be able to reach them. I cannot say if this is the case with Synaptic, though. Regarding aptitude, its interface may have the easiest learning curve there is, but it certainly is very powerful. When I started using it, it was the only package manager that automatically erased unused packages, so I forced myself to use it. -- Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in! -- Brazil Eduardo M KALINOWSKI [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://move.to/hpkb I think I will once more look it over, if for no other reason then Ron Johnson will not snicker at me. -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Kent West [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Damon L. Chesser wrote: On Wed, 2008-08-06 at 20:01 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: Heh. :-) I actually am curious to hear what people like about the program, because I'm (slowly) working out ideas for redesigning the interface and I don't want to accidentally break useful features. Any breakage should be fully intentional, that's my motto. Hence my oh-so-subtle prodding... Daniel Sadly, I have NEVER used aptitude ncurses. Ever since the early days of Potato, when I tried to use it, I would get completely lost. As smart Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude. (I actually found dselect easier to get around in. What?!!) Sorry for the me too, but I was just about to say that. I've no trouble with either at the command line. The *curses interface is highly non-intuitive (IMO). It, along with dselect, has always struck me as just a little Martian. That's fine in vi or emacs that you use all the time (so you learn it), but in a pkg mgr? I liked dselect once I banged my head on it long enough. Nowadays, I manage to limit myself to CLI aptitude, with very infrequent indulgences in dpkg. So, Daniel, _consider_ (thanks :-) a wholesale interface re-design (you've free rein), or offer choice of old or new via command line switch, or something, a la view vs. vi? IFF --new is found on CL, give 'em the new one? What'll the old one say when it sees that? Hmm. Gotta be a better way. Env. var? Have fun. Disclosure; I haven't so much as looked at the *curses interface to any of it in years, sorry. I could well be p***ng into my hat. -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Fri, 2008-08-08 at 03:20 +0200, s. keeling wrote: Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I am equally at home using aptitude install, apt-get, apt-cache or synaptic. I just don't mind a gui now and again, a picture can be worth 1K words, or so I hear. I can actually use vi, irssi, lynx and the lot, I just would prefer not to (on a desktop). -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*)http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - -http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.htmlPlease, don't Cc: me. -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On 08/07/08 20:20, s. keeling wrote: Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I agree with the point you are trying to make, but best to: s/nvidia/ati More especially: s/nvidia/display manager/ -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Scientists are people, too. IOW, they also crave power, money, respect, and influence, and they also fear for their jobs. Each can be a healthy motivator, but each has the ability to turn a good scientist into a bad one; and in some cases, they can turn a good scientist into a charlatan. http://thefutureofthings.com/book/3/the-bomb-that-never-was.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 10:12:45AM -0500, Kent West [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: Damon L. Chesser wrote: Sadly, I have NEVER used aptitude ncurses. Ever since the early days of Potato, when I tried to use it, I would get completely lost. As smart as I am (however smart that is) that interface just does not work the way my brain works. I still don't know how to use it and get frustrated in 30 seconds trying to use it. Nothing against what I am sure is a nice program, it just does not work the way I think. I feel better by sharing, it has made us all better people (and dang it! People like me!) Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude. (I actually found dselect easier to get around in. What?!!) Believe me, I'm not contemplating a full-on interface redesign for the idle pleasure of it. :-) There are two main things I'm looking at: (a) a big fat menu like dselect's that gives you direct access to the 3-4 functions you normally want to use. (b) making the default way of viewing packages be to do a search and list the results (what's currently called a limit). The current interface for finding packages in aptitude was designed to let you peruse the full Debian package list. This was a reasonable idea at the time (I generally did walk through the whole list on a fresh install in 1999) but is kind of silly now. The main thing that people seem to use this list for is the smaller top-level groups (Upgradable / New / etc), and those can be offered directly from the front page. The GTK+ frontend will probably explore these ideas as well as some other things that I can't replicate in a terminal (having multiple font faces is just an amazing thing, let me tell you). Once we finish with it I'll take a look at how the terminal interface should be updated. Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 20:11 -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 10:12:45AM -0500, Kent West [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: Damon L. Chesser wrote: Sadly, I have NEVER used aptitude ncurses. Ever since the early days of Potato, when I tried to use it, I would get completely lost. As smart as I am (however smart that is) that interface just does not work the way my brain works. I still don't know how to use it and get frustrated in 30 seconds trying to use it. Nothing against what I am sure is a nice program, it just does not work the way I think. I feel better by sharing, it has made us all better people (and dang it! People like me!) Ditto. I'm sure it's a fine program, but I, too, get lost with the ncurses interface of aptitude. (I actually found dselect easier to get around in. What?!!) Believe me, I'm not contemplating a full-on interface redesign for the idle pleasure of it. :-) There are two main things I'm looking at: (a) a big fat menu like dselect's that gives you direct access to the 3-4 functions you normally want to use. (b) making the default way of viewing packages be to do a search and list the results (what's currently called a limit). The current interface for finding packages in aptitude was designed to let you peruse the full Debian package list. This was a reasonable idea at the time (I generally did walk through the whole list on a fresh install in 1999) but is kind of silly now. The main thing that people seem to use this list for is the smaller top-level groups (Upgradable / New / etc), and those can be offered directly from the front page. The GTK+ frontend will probably explore these ideas as well as some other things that I can't replicate in a terminal (having multiple font faces is just an amazing thing, let me tell you). Once we finish with it I'll take a look at how the terminal interface should be updated. Daniel I look forward to testing it out! -- Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.linkedin.com/in/dchesser signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Thu, Aug 07, 2008 at 09:56:19PM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 20:20, s. keeling wrote: Damon L. Chesser [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thu, 2008-08-07 at 17:45 -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: On 08/07/08 17:14, Damon L. Chesser wrote: Displeasure? Synaptic is brain dead simple, what's not to like? It's a GUI app? Very funny Ron. Really. No, I think he was serious, and I agree with him. Do you want your access to the pkging system to be borked when X is borked? Especially in this nvidia crazed age? I agree with the point you are trying to make, but best to: s/nvidia/ati More especially: s/nvidia/display manager/ no kidding... have to debug why gdm (work machine, for the general user...) locks the machine hard when a user logs out... sheesh. I may have to teach people how to login properly. ;-O A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On 08/07/2008 04:55 PM, Nate Bargmann wrote: And I think Aptitude works very well and couldn't wait to ditch dselect for it. Different strokes and all that. I've had the displeasure of being dumped into Synaptic on Ubuntu and friends. I'll take Aptitude every time, thank you very much. - Nate Synaptic on Ubuntu is nice, but aptitude is more powerful. (Thanks Daniel :-) ). Also, it's much easier to record installation and dpkg-configure messages with aptitude; although I have Ubuntu installed on an extra partition, and despite the cuteness of Synaptic, all my installations and upgrades are done with aptitude. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 01:00:44PM -0700, Paul Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: aptitude makes it easy to plan the updates How so? Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 03:46:28PM +0100, andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: That's a fair point. I currently run stable (Lenny) because it seemed to be a good balance between (relatively) up-to-date software that has (mostly) had its bugs worked through. Note that lenny is *not* (yet) stable; you want etch for that. Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 09:07:27PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 01:00:44PM -0700, Paul Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: aptitude makes it easy to plan the updates How so? I'll bite on this... the simple but powerful interface allows me to quickly browse through the proposed changes picking and choosing those I want. Clearly it's an inspired piece of software! ;-) /me wipes stuff off nose... A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Quoting Andrew Sackville-West: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 09:07:27PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 01:00:44PM -0700, Paul Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: aptitude makes it easy to plan the updates How so? I'll bite on this... the simple but powerful interface allows me to quickly browse through the proposed changes picking and choosing those I want. Clearly it's an inspired piece of software! ;-) /me wipes stuff off nose... You forgot to recommend that he should read the documentation... -- Regards, Florian -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 11:47:21PM +0200, Florian Kulzer [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: Quoting Andrew Sackville-West: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 09:07:27PM -0700, Daniel Burrows wrote: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 01:00:44PM -0700, Paul Scott [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: aptitude makes it easy to plan the updates How so? I'll bite on this... the simple but powerful interface allows me to quickly browse through the proposed changes picking and choosing those I want. Clearly it's an inspired piece of software! ;-) /me wipes stuff off nose... You forgot to recommend that he should read the documentation... Heh. :-) I actually am curious to hear what people like about the program, because I'm (slowly) working out ideas for redesigning the interface and I don't want to accidentally break useful features. Any breakage should be fully intentional, that's my motto. Hence my oh-so-subtle prodding... Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:09:34 +0100 andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? Any thoughts (no flames please - I recycled my asbestos suit!!) Recently, I was hit by this: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=491114 I do use apt-listbugs, but I missed this anyhow; I'm not sure why. Perhaps I upgraded before it was reported. In any event, my system broke badly; I can function without X, but it's difficult to troubleshoot without networking. Here is my panicky plea for help on the list: http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2008/07/msg01704.html Note that I was lucky to receive a very prompt pointer to the problem from Sven Joachim, which illustrates another point about using Sid; this list is an invaluable resource, as is the BTS. Andy Celejar -- mailmin.sourceforge.net - remote access via secure (OpenPGP) email ssuds.sourceforge.net - A Simple Sudoku Solver and Generator -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
andy wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? I run Sid on my workstations; it's as stable as any Windows box I've ever run The read advantage of Sid over Testing is when breakage does occur. With Testing, you may have to wait a week or two before the fix comes along; with Sid, the fix is often available within a day or two (not always, but often). The disadvantage is that breakage usually occurs more often than in Testing, but as a general rule, such breakage is confined to a small subset of the system (again, not always.) Every once in a while a bug will creep in that will totally hose things for a while, and may take some expertise and/or a learning curve to fix, but like I say, my Sid experience over the past almost-decade has been less-problematic than my Windows experiences over twice that time. For a server or other mission-critical role, I'd suggest you stay with Stable. -- Kent West ))) Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
andy wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? I run Sid on my workstations; it's as stable as any Windows box I've ever run The real advantage of Sid over Testing is when breakage does occur. With Testing, you may have to wait a week or two before the fix comes along; with Sid, the fix is often available within a day or two (not always, but often). The disadvantage is that breakage usually occurs more often than in Testing, but as a general rule, such breakage is confined to a small subset of the system (again, not always.) Every once in a while a bug will creep in that will totally hose things for a while, and may take some expertise and/or a learning curve to fix, but like I say, my Sid experience over the past almost-decade has been less-problematic than my Windows experiences over twice that time. For a server or other mission-critical role, I'd suggest you stay with Stable. -- Kent West ))) Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, 05 Aug 2008, andy wrote: This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am Yes, but none that you can't get also from using testing and fetching whatever extra packages you need ASAP directly from Sid. aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? Often enough. Really. -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique Holschuh -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Kent West wrote: andy wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? I run Sid on my workstations; it's as stable as any Windows box I've ever run With respect Kent, that is hardly a ringing endorsement!! :) The read advantage of Sid over Testing is when breakage does occur. With Testing, you may have to wait a week or two before the fix comes along; with Sid, the fix is often available within a day or two (not always, but often). The disadvantage is that breakage usually occurs more often than in Testing, but as a general rule, such breakage is confined to a small subset of the system (again, not always.) That's a fair point. I currently run stable (Lenny) because it seemed to be a good balance between (relatively) up-to-date software that has (mostly) had its bugs worked through. Every once in a while a bug will creep in that will totally hose things for a while, and may take some expertise and/or a learning curve to fix, but like I say, my Sid experience over the past almost-decade has been less-problematic than my Windows experiences over twice that time. It's this expertise that concerns me. I used to feel more confident in using Slackware than I do using Debian, although I was far more into fixing things and peering under the hood in those days than I am today and I guess after a few years of using a distro one gets to know it pretty well. The Debian-way does remain a bit of a mystery to me however. For a server or other mission-critical role, I'd suggest you stay with Stable. That's a reasonable suggestion, and I probably will do so. However, your reply does help address my query - thanks. A -- If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers. - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue,05.Aug.08, 14:09:34, andy wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of Yes, you get the chance to know your system *really* well ;) the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? You've been watching the list, haven't you? Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On 08/05/08 08:33, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: On Tue, 05 Aug 2008, andy wrote: This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am Yes, but none that you can't get also from using testing and fetching whatever extra packages you need ASAP directly from Sid. aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? Often enough. Really. Maybe I just don't stress enough packages, but I don't see *that many* show stopping or aggravating Debian-fixable bugs. My big problems now are: a) nvidia binary driver doesn't build on .26 (which I need for other reasons), b) the modern kernel ieee1394 driver doesn't have as many features as the old driver, so kino doesn't work anymore. But Debian Developers can't do anything about them. -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Scientists are people, too. IOW, they also crave power, money, respect, and influence, and they also fear for their jobs. Each can be a healthy motivator, but each has the ability to turn a good scientist into a bad one; and in some cases, they can turn a good scientist into a charlatan. http://thefutureofthings.com/book/3/the-bomb-that-never-was.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 02:09:34PM +0100, andy wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? Any thoughts (no flames please - I recycled my asbestos suit!!) I find sid doesn't break that often for me. I can think of maybe two instances in the past three years where I've had a serious enough breakage that I had to stop everything else to solve the problem. Lately though, I've gotten lazy and haven't kept up with the updates. I'm probably running closer to lenny at the moment... If you don't keep up with the updates, you quickly fall *way* behind and have to plan the updates. If you do it every day, it's no big deal... a handful of packages. If you wait a week, you have to stop and think and pay close attention. If you wait a month, set aside a couple of hours in case something get's hosed because you'll be updating hundreds of packages. .02 A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:09:34 +0100 andy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? Any thoughts (no flames please - I recycled my asbestos suit!!) Cheers Andy I used sid at home and at work for seven years before I got a kid and switched to stable :). In my experience, there are great benefits in using sid if you are alone or one of a few GNU/Linux users in a huge windows network like I am at work. Every month or so, there's something new that you're supposed to be able to deal with. It can be some new windows communications software, a new printer, a new file format or some other stuff. Using sid helps you deal with that much better than stable does. Also, sid is fun. Stable is boring :). Sid does break stuff though, but this need not be a huge problem. I did two things that saved my ass when things got really borked. First, I made sure I had console tools for basic stuff ready and configured: links, mutt, latex etc. That way you can still surf the web and produce nice documents should graphics break down. Second, I kept a backup partition where I duplicated my sid system manually every time I felt that wow, right now, sid is working almost flawlessly. If things broke at a real inconvenient time, I just booted the backup system. Other than that, I just updated every day except when I knew beforehand that it would be a rough day. Keeping an eye on what gets updated is a good idea too. If you see a move from xfree86 to xorg, maybe you should check the lists before updating. /HC -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 02:09:34PM +0100, andy wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? Any thoughts (no flames please - I recycled my asbestos suit!!) I find sid doesn't break that often for me. I can think of maybe two instances in the past three years where I've had a serious enough breakage that I had to stop everything else to solve the problem. Lately though, I've gotten lazy and haven't kept up with the updates. I'm probably running closer to lenny at the moment... If you don't keep up with the updates, you quickly fall *way* behind and have to plan the updates. If you do it every day, it's no big deal... a handful of packages. If you wait a week, you have to stop and think and pay close attention. If you wait a month, set aside a couple of hours in case something get's hosed because you'll be updating hundreds of packages. My essential point is to install apt-listbugs as soon as possible and use the information it gives to either wait for the problem to be fixed or research the problem. I have no idea whether apt-listbugs is part of the basic installation. I might be concerned right now because the current version of apt has some bugs. aptitude makes it easy to plan the updates Paul Scott -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid
On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 01:00:44PM -0700, Paul Scott wrote: Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 02:09:34PM +0100, andy wrote: Hi all This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be honest, how often does this happen? Any thoughts (no flames please - I recycled my asbestos suit!!) I find sid doesn't break that often for me. I can think of maybe two instances in the past three years where I've had a serious enough breakage that I had to stop everything else to solve the problem. Lately though, I've gotten lazy and haven't kept up with the updates. I'm probably running closer to lenny at the moment... If you don't keep up with the updates, you quickly fall *way* behind and have to plan the updates. If you do it every day, it's no big deal... a handful of packages. If you wait a week, you have to stop and think and pay close attention. If you wait a month, set aside a couple of hours in case something get's hosed because you'll be updating hundreds of packages. My essential point is to install apt-listbugs as soon as possible and use the information it gives to either wait for the problem to be fixed or research the problem. I have no idea whether apt-listbugs is part of the basic installation. big second to the use of apt-listbugs! A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
