I am currently trying other distrobutions, but want to come back to debian for apt-get. Although, the problem I had with apt-get was that I had to apt-get upgrade everyday for my system not to break. (Using testing btw)

What happens if I am gone for a few weeks? How will I be able to fix all of the packages that break after apt-getting 100 packages? Is there a way around this? Will the new Sarge stable help this problem at all?


Thanks

A package is either working or not. It does not break over a certain amount of time.

What is the need for upgrade software continually?If softwares are so easy to break,developers of it must be very bad.I think such case won't happen in Linux.I believe programers of Linux is the best programers in the world.

For inexperienced users, who cannot manage upgrading programs in Debian Testing or Unstable without breaking their system, Debian Stable may be the best choice. In Debian Stable you don't get the chance to do those hazardous upgrades very often.

On the other hand, you could learn to upgrade Debian packages the proper way, by installing apt-listbugs and refusing to upgrade specific packages to newer versions as long as they are reported to be buggy. It might also be useful to learn to use aptitude, which is a great tool for choosing packages to be upgraded (in smaller amounts than 100 packages at a time) as well as for holding packages that you don't want to upgrade. This option is a bit more toilsome but it enables you to run a relatively up-to-date Debian system without breaking it.

Or maybe you'd like to try a new Debian based distro, Ubuntu, that is supposed to be upgraded once every six months and in between these upgrades you'll only receive security fixes. That sounds like a good option for many users who find maintaining an up-to-date Debian system difficult, but Ubuntu is still a fresh distro and only time will tell if it lives up to expectations.

In many ways Debian is a safe choice. It doesn't have one lead developer who could fall ill and it doesn't rely on a financier who could run out of money or otherwise lose interest in backing up the distro. But before you can truly enjoy this safety and the Super Cow Powers of APT, you're going to have to learn to do things The Debian Way.

there's "hold" (dselect-"=").

sl mritch.

I'm puzzled in the sense that it sounds like you are saying that "if I don't apt-get upgrade every day my linux machine times out, or craps out" after a certain amount of time.

This should definitely NOT be the case. However, depending on which Debian distro you are running (Woody = Stable, Sarge = testing, Sid = Unstable) updates will happen at different frequencies. I can assure you that you do NOT have to update every day, especially if you are runnint testing, or stable. To ease this process you could use the graphical tool, synaptic, as it has an option for smart updates.

Thanks for the replies, very helpful.

I am going to install Debian again when the new sarge installer comes out and upgrade to testing. I think I will either use synaptic or do it the way Dead Parrot suggested.

It was odd, because I would have a smooth debian system, then I would to apt-get upgrade and it broke. So, I think I need to use synaptic or pick out the buggy packages and not install those.

Again, thanks for your help

I believe the thread starter has been plagued by a problem I have had.

I have installed debian sid (from Woody bf24, to acpi, to 2.6.X) and have had a steady diet of apt-get update, apt-get upgrade (s) each day to kill a horse. However, after my ststem was somewhat hindered (could not add the bootsplash sys-V control after removing it), i restarted from a backup.

The time between those backups equated to nearly 100mb of upgrades with several pre-depends and such. With enough iterations of upgrades, everything would be safe...NOT! system was broken : (

I had to go back the backup series that did not include any X, just pretty basic but the foundation for the rest. After an apt-get update / upgrade, everything OK and I layered apt-get on top of that.

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Probably what would have done the trick would be to look at those individual packages and apt-get install a few at a time according to their type or functionallity after an update. They are all the same packages that installed from the same standard base I keep. That way I would keep dependencies and such out of the way.

I know use partimage and another one of my partitions and a dvd-ram formatted ext2 to make backups instead of ghost with a combination of lilo and grub.