Re: Massive testing breakage; unstable: no text in GnuCash or E16
On Thu, May 18, 2006 at 09:22:10AM -0400, Adam C Powell IV wrote:
> So I tried starting E, then gnome-settings-daemon, then when I run
> gnome-panel, bam! X crash, framebuffer problems, and kernel panic on
> warm reboot.
I'm not sure I understand correctly. If the kernel paniced _after_ the
reboot, that may be caused by your BIOS not initializing some device
correctly.
If the kernel paniced _before_ the reboot, then it's likely a DRM driver
issue so you should report the panic to the kernel guys. Well, you
should report the panic _anyway_, but in this case there is a greater
chance for a fix.
> FWIW, a friend here at MIT has switched to KDE, and the family of a
> colleague at Northeastern is considering dropping GNU/Linux entirely
> (much to my colleague's chagrin) because of the breakage in this
> transition. Next time we upgrade, can we please stage it through
> experimental, like the very smooth 2.6 and 2.8 transitions? This
> piecemeal approach has caused a ton of problems, and yes testing and
> unstable have those names for a reason, but avoiding preventable
> breakage would be most welcome.
I'm tracking unstable almost daily on both an i386 and an amd64 machine
and I did not have any serious issues with the X transition (and I've
switched to Xorg 7 while it was still in experimental on i386). Btw., I
don't consider editing a couple of config. files after an upgrade an
"issue"; that's part of the normal sysadmin tasks.
I'm also using E and never had any issues with it for many years now.
If you're using testing or unstable you should never ever just blindly
do an upgrade (much less a dist-upgrade). You should _ALWAYS_ examine
what packages are going to be changed, read their changelog, examine
what packages are going to be held back and why. Look at any packages
that are important for you twice. If you're not sure about a package,
then do not upgrade that package. Checking the relevant Debian mailing
lists for potential problems _before_ the upgrade also helps a lot.
You should also be aware that due to the rules of testing, sometimes
testing can be more broken than unstable. Don't beleive the names.
With these simple rules you can minimize unpleasant surprises greatly.
Gabor
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MTA SZTAKI Computer and Automation Research Institute
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
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