successful upgrade to jessie - thanks!
Hello list,
I hope it's appropriate here, I just wanted to say *thanks to
everybody*, in particular the low level package and infrastructure
maintainers for the excellent work they've done.
Yesterday I've upgraded my laptop with quite massive foreign package
sources and installations (qgis packages, backports, stuff from ubuntu
PPAs, nodejs, a dozen packages from jessie etc.) from wheezy to jessie.
Allthough apt-get dist-upgrade broke half way through due to
unresolvable package dependencies, I was able to finish the upgrade via
aptitude's ncurses interface.
One problem when upgrading via apt-get is that if it breaks then I think
there's no way a user that is not *very much* knowledgeable will be ever
able to get his system back together.
apt-get with or without -f will (in my case) flood the user with a
broken dependencies listing which is far, far beyond trivial to act upon.
So I think if Debian wants to embrace the "normal" desktop end user,
then it *can not* point him to apt-get as the upgrade method of choice.
I am not sure how pervasive non-debian package sources (mind you Debian
backports are officially listed at Debian, but can break the upgrade
none the less!) are in our install base, but there are a lot of upstream
projects that do provide Debian packages and respective advice is easily
found on the intertubes.
I do not know how other Debian users handle tech, but my way of
approaching technology is "just try". In the case of a Debian
installation with foreign package sources that "apt-get dist-upgrade"
approach will quite likely end with a broken system.
So I think it'd be good to add a big fat warning to "apt-get
dist-upgrade" if it finds non canonical sources to tell the user "you
want to break your system now? Please go ahead and type 'YES' now" or
have a different way for upgrading for "end users".
Another point to note is that the migration to systemd went very
smoothly - very few things broke - so applause to all the burned out
parties out there and those that are sill holding out: you did a very
good job. Thanks a lot!
*t
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