Re: Howto asses possible damage from downgrade Xorg

[Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com>]

On Sat, 15 Oct 2011 09:33:21 -0500, Harry Putnam wrote:

> Running recently installed wheezy system
> 
> I see this version information concerning Xorg server:
> 
>  aptitude versions xserver-xorg-core
> i A 2:1.11.1-1           testing      500
>  
> I'd like to experiment with the previous version 1.10.  Compare certain
> behavior against the current version. But don't know what I'm doing well
> enough to make a good assessment of what damage may be done to my system
> by downgrading like that on such an important piece of software, that
> has many many ramifications.
> 
> Can anyone guide me on this, or is this the kind of thing I should
> install a vm guest for?

Synaptic makes a good job when it comes to manage the versions of the 
packages you want to install. You select the desired package you want to 
downgrade and jump to the "Versions" tab for instructions.

If you get any warning, dependency errors or extra package that are going 
to be downgraded, stop. Needless to say using a older version of Xorg can 
be problematic so don't do it unless you know how to recover your system 
from any unexpected situation.

> Can anyone say what version of Xorg is current in `stable'? 

7.5 ("xserver-xorg-core" is 1.7.7)

> Further, how can access that kind of information?  

Using the web package search service:

http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages

> Is there a list somewhere of the packages current on stable, testing,
> unstable?

http://packages.qa.debian.org/x/xorg.html

(left column, "versions" sub-section)
 
> I see this site http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/ where one could find
> that information but it has the software separated into the various sub
> divisions.
> 
> Is there a page that just has 1 massive list?

See above. Not a "just-one-massive" list though, but a "per package" 
version comparison.

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón