How long does it take to do a dist-upgrade on your distro?

masinick · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 3:46 am Post subject:

Debian Sid has a 2.6.24 kernel and they also have Firefox 2.0.0.12 and Seamonkey 1.1.8, rebadged as Iceweasel and Iceape. They have been available at least all week, if not longer.

Arch seemed to update them at almost exactly the same time - I upgraded both on the same day, and it took about the same amount of time. Not sure what your concern is, but I find that sidux, which uses Debian Sid - and corrects any packaging errors in Sid, resulting in a system that works with good stability. Have not had even one issue since I started using sidux. I have had occasional issues with Debian Sid, but not all that often. Rarely do I have issues with any other Debian - and NEVER with Debian stable. Arch is maybe 2-5% faster than sidux in package update speed, and perhaps a fraction of a second in day to day operation, not enough to notice, at least with the things I use. I do not see any issues with either one of them.

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Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

jada · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 3:55 am Post subject:

well, the thing is, I never get a stable sidux on my testbox's. I tried a lot, and always something was not working. But I don't like to start a distro war now Very Happy

even if it sound like.

The negative point for me about SIDUX are there to limited applications. We have hade this subject before. I will give sidux from time to time a try and see if they getting better.

If you are a fan from 'Synaptic" well have you ever tried the Archlinux "Jacman"?
http://www.andy-roberts.net/software/jacman/

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masinick · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 4:14 am Post subject:

No, I have not tried Jacman. Analogous to synaptic, huh? May be worth a look. More often than not, I just run both apt-get and pacman from the command line. It's faster, and if I don't want to type it out, I can easily put it in a script and assign a very short bash alias to it. Still, synaptic sometimes comes in handy, so it's nice to know that there is a similar tool in Arch.

Don't know what's tripping you up with sidux. I'd say there are close to 20,000 packages available. I haven't used anywhere near that many packages, but what I want is there, they are as current or more current than any other system out there. I find sidux and Arch to be two of the most current distros available, and much more similar than different in performance and available applications. Main difference is in the setup philosophies. Their actual day to day operation is very similar, as they should be. After all, they are running very similar kernels and many of the very same applications, so their behavior ought to be very similar, and for me it is. Not sure what issues you have encountered. All I can say is that I have experienced none of them on either sidux or Arch. Both are top notch distros. My Dell desktop runs sidux a lot, with PCLinuxOS and SimplyMEPIS (I am running SimplyMEPIS now on the old Dimension 4100). My newer Dell Latitude D600 laptop runs only Arch Linux and dual boots with XP so that I can occasionally run Front Page XP. I've upgraded Arch wirelessly as I carried the laptop from my upstairs bedroom to my downstairs living room and the upgrade (a fairly small one) completed just in that short time - an impressive experiment indeed!

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Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

masinick

Eleven seconds to grab all the repository updates, and one minute, two seconds to upgrade five packages.

You can see that SimplyMEPIS is easily faster than PCLinuxOS. It even had WAY more repositories to sift through yet it finished in eleven seconds to update repositories and though it had fewer packages to update, it was quicker with what it had to do.

masinick

jada · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 5:01 am Post subject:

masinick · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 5:35 am Post subject:

That Indiana thing is NOT sidux, that is PCLinuxOS using RPM packages with the apt-get CLI or synaptic package GUI. Sidux uses Debian Sid as the set of main repositories, then it adds sidux repositories to add its own tools and occasionally fix breakages in Sid, such as when they are in the middle of changing Glibc, gcc, X, or a similar major subsystem. Doesn't happen all that often, but the reason sidux was started was to improve the stability of Sid while still providing bleeding edge packages.

I realize that you have not had a very positive experience with sidux, but you have not really given me any specific examples of where you have had problems. I would be delighted to help you out, should you ever be interested.

At the same time, I also realize that Arch Linux is a great distribution. It takes just a bit more effort to initially set it up, but from then on, it is trivial to update and its very fast. Since you are having such good success with Arch, just as I've had so long with the Debian varieties, it only makes sense to stick with it. Still, if you are at all like me, when something misfires or does not work as it should, it tends to eat at me and I often try to find out why. Last night, for instance, I conquered the Arch wireless setup once and for all. I had wireless working, it was just that it did not work with an ordinary user, I had to set it up with root instead. Now I can run it as an ordinary user, thanks to a visudo setup.

I don't blame you for sticking with Arch. If you do want to revisit sidux at some point in the future, let's see if we can arrange a chat to work through any issues that arise.

_________________
Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

JP · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 5:50 am Post subject:

jada · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 7:33 am Post subject:

tlmiller · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 10:24 am Post subject:

BrionS · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 11:29 am Post subject:

tlmiller · Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2024 11:37 am Post subject:

crouse · Site Admin Joined: 17 Apr 2024 Posts: 11833 Location: Iowa

I'd be REALLY interested in knowing what that program was. Personally, Arch has been the most stable Linux platform I've ever ran on. Updates in Arch can be done from a gui......... it was my understanding as well that Sidux updates had to be done from runlevel 3....... a drawback which I REALLY thought would annoy YOU Laughing

hating the command line and all Wink

But, seriously, I think that Sidux and Arch are two of the most cutting edge distro's that have it "right". Just my humble opinion though.

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anticapitalista · Member Joined: 13 Jan 2024 Posts: 185 Location: Greece

masinick

I think that the recommendation to do an upgrade or a dist-upgrade in init 3 is based on the idea that X might get rebuilt, and if it does, running in init 3 will keep you out of problems.

The sidux team recommends strongly to run distribution upgrades in a console in run level 3 simply to avoid all possibility of problems, given the volatility of Debian Sid repositories.

I do not intend to undermine the sidux recommendations nor sway someone who isn't pretty adept (not the package manager) Smile

at managing Debian packages, but the truth is that you can usually get away with upgrades, even dist-upgrades from run level 5 in a GUI. If something breaks, worst case, drop back to run level 3, yank some stuff out, and do it the way the sidux team recommends.

I break the sidux rules all the time, mainly because I use the sidux system - itself an experiment, not a "true" sidux system installed from the ISO image. Being a long time apt-get user from the Debian Sid and Libranet days, I have learned how to fix broken packages. Sometimes it takes a while. You have to yank out all packages that have interdependencies, then either install a more stable branch, or reinstall once the issues get resolved. It can be done, even if it isn't supported or recommended.

Using synaptic is also not recommended. I don't do that often, but sometimes I use that too, just to see how badly I can screw things up. So far no issues. That is NOT to say there won't be any - and I won't go crying to sidux if there are. For me, it just gives me practice using the finer points of the Debian packaging system.

On the argument about which packaging system is best, I'll just make these points. I believe that pacman is the fastest packaging system around. It does even better than Debian! As far as which one can resolve issues, I do not have enough experience with pacman to see if it can fix and unbork messed up packaging. I know Debian's apt-get can. Neither packaging system, in itself, ever CAUSES packaging problems, those are caused by the package maintainers. Debian does a terrific job, having experimental, unstable, testing, and stable repositories, plus the recently added volatile repository for frequently changing apps like Web browsers and Email clients. By the time something is marked "stable" it is near perfect. As far as getting the latest and greatest, I'd say that both Arch and Debian get you that. As far as broken packages, neither one has them often, even in the bleeding edge versions, but they do occasionally happen, otherwise the sidux recommendation wouldn't be there, and we wouldn't see an entire section in the Arch forums on packaging issues. What's true is that they are both GREAT at fixing issues promptly and effectively, something that cannot be said for many systems of any kind.

I'd be remiss if I did not mention my other favorite in this discussion. Warren Woodford has to be one of the best packagers and distributers around with his SimplyMEPIS. Even test base levels he puts out tend to work pretty well. Problems encountered with his test versions are usually device support issues. Rarely does he build bad applications into his kits. For me, having SimplyMEPIS around to cover for my wild experiments in sidux is a great blessing.

I would not hesitate to recommend Arch, sidux, or SimplyMEPIS for every day use. There are many other good ones, but these are my absolute favorites. PCLinuxOS is pretty nice, too, and for beginners I would even recommend it.

_________________
Brian Masinick
Distros: SimplyMEPIS
sidux - no CAPS!, antiX, Debian

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