I have printed out chapter 9 of the Mepis User Guide but not been able to follow it properly.

From pg 46 of the guide I have done the 'Reload' and 'Mark all upgrades' and at the bottom of my screen it tells me, 'Successfully marked available upgrades'.

The instructions go on to say, "Next you are prompted for the type of upgrade you would like to do. We suggest doing the 'Smart Upgrade'. This will select the packages that are available to be upgraded. Click the 'Apply' icon and begin updating your system."

Well, I didn't get any prompts, I didn't see a 'Smart Upgrade' choice and I didn't see an 'Apply' icon.

I re-booted and went through the proceedure again but nothing changed.

Is it possible that the User Guide, as written, is not totally applicable to version 3.4.3?

Your help will be appreciated.

Lewis.

*****

Mepis uses the debian package system built on dpkg (deb) packages and the apt engine. The default frontend in front of me is KDE's KPackage.

Personally I find it easier to just use apt-get or aptitude. See the man pages on your system or online for more about this. Basically, you just:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

just like that... the "smart" option corresponds to doing:

apt-get dist-upgrade

the repositories are usually configured in the text-file /etc/apt/sources.list

KPacket is a frontend for apt-get. I've never used it - preferring synaptic. However, from the manuals, it goes like this:

1. update the package cache: special > APT:debian > update
2. upgrade everything thus: special > APT:debian > upgrade

some packages may have upgrades with dependancies you don't have installed.

3. select the "updates" tab
4. packages > mark all
5. packages > install marked

sometimes there will be errors about dependency problems - this means you need to wait a few days for the package dependencies to make it to the repository.

To install new software...
1. select the new tab
(there are about 13000 packages - you may want to use the search tool)
2. select package
3. packages > install

The main advantage of a gui for apt-get is that you get to hunt through the list of available packages to see what's available.

Note: rebooting is for new kernels or new hardware. You will not have to reboot to get software to work.

Thanks for such an explicit reply, Simon, I really appreciate it.

Kind regards.

Lewis.
*****

Note: this was for simply mepis 3.3 - and you should think about each command as you use it. After a while of playing around like this you'll get it

Updating isn't always the best idea. I'll tell you why at the end, however, since you didn't ask that

In Mepis 3.4-3, Synaptic won't ask you which type you'd like, it defaults to Default (i.e., not "Smart Upgrade" nor "dist-upgrade"). You can see (and change) this in the Settings menu, Preferences option, General tab in Synaptic. I am not really familiar with KPackage, although I find it useful to install downloaded debian.deb packages.

In Synaptic, [Reload] your repositories. Click [Mark All Upgrades]. Once you've clicked [Mark all upgrades] (and made a choice of which kind, if asked -- did you check on that (above)?), you would click the [Apply] button, which is the third button from the left (after Reload and Mark All Upgrades, since this is the order in which they're done). If you don't see [Apply] there, it is also located at the bottom of the Edit menu. If you don't see it there either, something is wrong So, apply, accept the changes, and let the download begin. It may ask you a few questions once the software is being installed; accepting the default (just hit [Enter] if asked something) is pretty common.

Marking all upgrades can be a bad move, however. Mepis was created at a specific point in time while the Debian Testing repositories (the software that Debian is based upon and uses) were in constant flux. Although the Testing branch is becoming less turbulent, it is still changing and Marking All Upgrades might either (1) break something important because a special supporting file (called a "dependency") has a bug or error, or (2) break something because the Debian people decided that Way Y is a better method than Way X, so by Debian switching to Y and your system is now somewhat incompatable with Way X, you're getting stuck asking, "why?" Or neither of these may happen, and life is good.

Properly reading the installation questions can help avoid some of these problems (i.e. not automatically selecting the default) and I am sure that I have a lot to learn about better upgrades and system administration.

I've always just found it to be a headache-in-waiting when I try to do a full upgrade of any sort, and try to stay content just installing/upgrading the programs that I need/want/use. Because the laziest way to fix a broken system is to reinstall it, and trust me i do it plenty.

(I would love for anyone to correct me if I am wrong on any of the points here, as I too would like to learn why my upgrades break my system, etc)

Synaptic is definately more comfortable than KPackage. I'll agree there.
In general - complete reinstall is preferable to "upgrade" for entire systems. This way you don't have to trust the upgrader to guess you personal likes correctly.

However: I use Ubuntu, and I have just upgraded from breezy to dapper by changing "breezy" to "dapper" in /etc/apt/sources.list then doing apt-get dist-upgrade.

This worked fine - though some of my login settings went AWOL, and I lost some screensavers and themes.

By comparison - the "upgrade" from FC2 to FC4 via anaconda and the install DVD went very weird. Nothing worked quite right after that. I backed up and reinstalled.

The advise to only upgrade the apps you use is sound in general terms. You should also remove the ones you don't. Aptitude/synaptic is great in this regard since it won't let you remove anything vital. The fewer things you have running, the better they will run.