X-Windows Issues on PPC G4 MDD
Hello,
I have a PowerMac G4 MDD (two 1.25 GHz CPUs, 2 GiB memory) that has been
running Debian SID for years. Before today, I last updated it on 15 Oct
2023, with no problems. Today, the update failed. Specifically, "apt-get
update" worked, "apt-get upgrade" worked, and "apt-get dist-upgrade"
worked but deleted ~500 MB of X Windows packages, including Xorg, wdm,
etc. So the system currently is text-only in Debian SID.
This system is using sysvinit instead of systemd, and perhaps that's the
problem? I noticed when I tried to reinstall wdm, apt wanted to remove
sysvinit and presumably use systemd as the init program.
I realize that systemd is Debian's default init system, and perhaps
X-Windows was always destined to eventually require systemd in Debian.
If that's what has happened, please let me know.
On a side note, I see that apt installed "vmlinux-6.6.11-powerpc"
instead of "vmlinux-6.6.11-powerpc-smp", so the Debian kernel only saw
one CPU. That's more of a curiosity than an issue, since I don't use
Debian's kernels on PPC, anyway (I'm currently running a customized
6.7.0 kernel from www.kernel.org).
If the behavior I'm seeing is expected, it appears I have these options:
1) Keep running Debian SID in text-only mode.
2) Keep Debian SID but avoid "apt-get dist-upgrade" (that would
eventually make Debian SID a dead-end distribution for me on PPC).
3) Migrate to a different distribution (or perhaps NetBSD) to restore
X-Windows functionality and eliminate the need for systemd.
Fortunately, I also have Gentoo (text-only) on this system, and backups
for all successful Debian and Gentoo upgrades, so I can restore the
Debian SID rootfs from just after "apt-get upgrade" today or from the
full upgrade on 15 Oct 2023 to restore X-Windows functionality.
thanks for any suggestions or recommendations
-Stan Johnson
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