Re: Increasing Debian's Adoptability [Was: Skipping releases on dist-upgrades]
Cindy-Sue Causey wrote:
>songbird wrote:
>>
>> based upon my recent attempt to jump versions
>> it's really much easier to back up your user data
>> and then reinstall.
...
>> 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..
...
> 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..
i do not consider it a failure in any manner
because it is clearly explained as unsupported.
i usually try to keep at least one bootable
DVD of the stable distribution on hand, but
the past few years i'd failed to order one.
knowing i was running on borrowed time a
few months ago i ordered the first dvd of
both Squeeze and Wheezy so that i did have a
more recent installer available. good thing i
did, because about a week later i was stuck and
needed it to recover.
> But I don't know how to suggest that change.....
for me i don't recommend a new user to run
testing or unstable. that's just common
sense.
> 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.
:) yes, i'm glad things have become more
understandable to you.
> 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*.. :)
not necessarily for newbies but useful for someone
running testing, unstable, experimental or other
repositories is etckeeper, so you can figure out
what has changed when in configuration files.
that means git is a tool you'll start figuring out.
songbird
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