Increasing Debian's Adoptability [Was: Skipping releases on dist-upgrades]
On 7/21/14, songbird <songbird@anthive.com> wrote:
>
> based upon my recent attempt to jump versions
> it's really much easier to back up your user data
> and then reinstall.
>
> i ran into all sorts of chicken and egg problems
> and didn't have the right bits locally to make
> the transition (specifically there was a version
> of tar that is used to unpack the debs and in
> one case it could not understand the .xz format
> and thus would not work in any fashion and to
> get a version installed that would work meant
> having to upgrade libc and that then dragged in
> all sorts of things like multiarch)... it was
> much more involved than an initial install.
> i really suspect that is the most direct answer
> that applies from those who would be concerned
> with making it work.
>
> if i'd had a more recent media download i
> would have stopped after about a half hour of
> attempts and just done that. but it _was_ an
> interesting exercise...
Am hearing you. Have been all over the place last maybe four months
plus, and that has only been about installing then upgrading singular
packages. For sanity's sake, have already made a concrete (100% done
deal) decision that I will back up and then install new.
ALWAYS. I will never again waste time doing just what songbird's
describing. Been there, done that repeatedly and that wasn't even a
distro upgrade. It's not only about valuable personal time wasted,
it's about the guilt over woefully unnecessary server drain on our
volunteer Debian mirrors and such..
The bonus to a fresh install is that we regularly "reboot" back into a
very close, if not dead on representation of what developers are
looking at rather than something plugged in on top of preexisting that
has been individually tweaked ad infinitum over however long a period
of time..
The foreseeable problem is the potential for losing hard fought for
personal tweaks done for functionality. Setting up wireless networking
comes to mind as an immediate example (that may or may not actually be
representative of the point I'm trying to make, grin). Wait, I do have
an example. Resolv.conf. Took the bandaid aka symlinking before my
browsers would stop griping that they could only work offline. WHY it
ever occurred to me to go that route, I have NO CLUE. Probably
something overheard hear on Debian-User or I'd still be offline.
Back to new installs for upgrades, there is also of course the
potential for any third party software to get lost in transition on a
new reinstall. BUT... I've been doing that for years with browsers
being my example.. Through a chain of events due to financial
constraints (AND in hindsight, not understanding partitioning), have
been working for years off LiveDVDs. I just had browser upgrades
installed separately on a hard drive.. One split second of a /usr/bin
symlink later on each LiveDVD reboot created the continuity there.....
The true newbies and lifetime non-techies... like our grandparents,
for example... What so many of us have struggled through and figured
out how to do will never work for them.
I've been playing with computers since 1994 but am doing so with
cognition issues (comprehension and memory loss).. It's taken TWENTY
YEARS to get to this email. I can say firsthand without a doubt anyone
who is not obsessed with tech and therefore not driven to get
something to work at all costs will just plain never *adopt* if we
can't find a way to make things like the process of upgrades NOT go
the way songbird is describing.... not go the way I myself have
experienced over and over..
But I don't know how to suggest that change.....
Well, yes, I do know how to help them in one way.. Go beyond just
advocating "back up your data".. Proactively reach out and find every
creative way possible to engage and teach people how to Absolute #1
separate personal data from Debian so that any kind of upgrade is as
painfree as humanly possible..
Teach everyone you can grab how to partition, how to use micromedia,
whatever other similar CHOICE is there.. The concept of separating
everything individual to the user is actually not that difficult but
it is intimidating as all get out depending on factors like
*cognition*.
Once I stepped... ack, tripped face first.... off the ledge into
partitioning a few months ago, my grasp of Debian has smoked off the
charts.. Why it did, I don't know but it did. May have been just as
simple as that Debian is sitting here as an entity by itself now and
my personal stuff is (mentally) safely tucked away on another hard
drive. Well, there's that and in order to partition, you learn other
skills that give a deeper look into how things operate.
I don't know.. I gotta go feed the birds outside.. Can hear babies
begging at their moms and dads right outside the window.. See you all
on the flipside.. :))
Cindy
Oh, and PS... Absolute #2?! Same approach for wget and deboostrap with
respect to people at *ABJECT POVERTY* level and thus likely on dialup
across the World. Am about to do it to it here over the next few
however long it takes and those two are the very singular reasons why
I'm *POTENTIALLY* about to be able to actually help with
development........ It took TWENTY YEARS to get to this point because
of my circumstances. I don't want anyone else ever to have to wait
that long to play.. Ever.
Life Lesson Learned the Absolute Hardest Way Possible, users don't
have to wait that long to compete, they just need to be proactively
pointed to that something that's going to break down the walls
faster.. To that end, how about something like newbie pages with tips
from former newbies who have made the leap.. My tips:
* wget
* debootstrap
* learn how to partition
* then learn how to separate your personal user shtuff completely onto
another partition, hard drive, et al(l)
* now that you know how to partition, learn how to dual boot. It's a
BLAST that escalates your grasp of Debian exponentially. If *I* can do
it, yadda-yadda! :)
PPS If something like any of the above already exists, my humblest
apologies. My unhumble opinion is it then needs more prominent
airtime, needs an *outside the box* makeover so it leaps off the page
*cognitively*.. :)
--
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA
* runs with duct tape *
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