LinuxBBQ

Hi guys, I'm not new in rolling, but I am new in Sid.

Gentoo & Arch roll along in a (more or less) steady pace. Is it correct that there will be much more changes and breakages after the next freeze, when Wheezy will be Stable and all sorts of shit will trickle from Experimental into Sid?

In other words, what to expect? Any of you veterans have survived an earlier freeze/ release?

Thanks for informing me.


PS, moderator, feel free to put this post elsewhere if it doesnt belong here.

It's true that there will be more fluctuation of packages after the freeze this summer. It's also true that this bears certain dangers, though you - as end-user - don't need to worry if you check the forums and the upgrade warnings app before initiating an upgrade, and always check the output of the dist-upgrade.

In doubt, just simply copy-paste the output here and wait for an answer. It's okay, that's what this place is for :)

To add to the OP: I have survived several freezes, and also remember that we have a safety net (double) - that's for one our own upgrade warning mechanism, and the fixes repos from siduction. No panic :)

Info on Upgrading

- Always use
- If possible, do this outside of X (init 1)

- Read the fscking output. Read what is going to be removed. If there are more packages removed than downloaded or upgraded, be careful. Sid receives updates four times a day. Waiting is always a good choice, use the time to visit the forums and see if there are upgrade warnings.

- It's a good idea to use the smxi script. Nevertheless, you have to read the output. If you are unclear, don't be shy, and ask on our forums. If you use KDE packages in Sid, you should better add the aptosid sources and visit the aptosid-related forums regularly. If you use Gnome3 packages in Sid, you will most probably get no feedback here.

- Do not mix squeeze/wheezy/sid, stable/testing/unstable, or any other combination. Stay with one. Once you are in sid/unstable, the way back to stable is not impossible, but very hard.

- Don't use Ubuntu debs. If you do so, you will break your system. Not because I hate Ubuntu, but they are not designed for Debian.

- Be careful if there are transitions happening in sid (bigger version changes of big packages, like perl, gcc) - they need a few days to be fully available in the repositories, and a typical feature is a huge number of removed packages. In this case do not upgrade. Wait a few days, usually after 2-3 days the transition is completed (for the common architectures, at least)

Upgrade warnings can also be found here:

siduction forums: http://siduction.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2
aptosidusers forums: http://aptosidusers.de/index.php?name=PNphpBB2
aptosid official forums: http://aptosid.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2
antix sid upgraders forums: http://antix.freeforums.org/sid-upgraders-f5.html
debian weather: http://edos.debian.net/weather/
debian transitions: http://release.debian.org/transitions/

Danke M.B.

Added to the wiki: http://linuxbbq.org/wiki/index.php?titl ... the_Freeze

:D
Sorry couldn't help my self

- Read the fscking output. Read...

I read that bit wrong, and thought it was rude lol

Good idea to add to the wiki @dura! I read it last night.

What the Grillmeister says.

Also, another source here, it is not bad:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=198&t=70230

Hi Potatohead (love your name & avatar), keep in mind that every single package in Debian Unstable/Sid has been released as "stable" by its upstream developer. In many cases these packages will be older than what Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, etc. consider "stable." There is no untested alpha/beta software in Sid repos (even after the freeze) that will make your computer explode! :)

@ snowpensigobbler. Thanks for the compliments @ Potatohead

Thanks for informing me about the nature of Sid --> I'm off to the Debian pages to read all about it!

@Potatohead,

not sure if this was mentioned in above posts or links..

anyway, you can also use BBQsnapshot to get an iso of your running BBQ installation, save the iso elsewhere such as USB flash/drive.

it might come handy :)

Thanks Wayne