Hello all
It is good to see a few comments and help following my original post. I had set aside a few days to try out the Debian system and repositories but sorting out the effect on my main system and finding the cause has used up those days. I now have to return my kit to normal set-up and ready for action.
Other than Pascal’s ‘feature’ - I assume he does not like it either - we still do not have a valid reason.
Linus said ‘ don’t break users’. I don’t like being broken but I also think of this as a failure in duty of care and a failure of trust that an application will do what I want, not what a developer thinks I want. But I am also aware that this is my first real look (in about 10 years) at raw Debian. I cannot be too critical of something I do not fully understand so I will stick with the versions filtered via Ubuntu/Mint for a while longer.
In leaving this topic and just in case someone else finds it later – please take a look at https://wiki.debian.org/Swap – the Note towards the end of the page. If this is correct, then any swap partition on any drive in the kit will be compromised.
If one of the maintainers of the excellent Installation Guides is watching, could you include a warning in the relevant section (6.3.4) please. A comment on the screens relating to setting up the swap may also help future users.
I hope to come back to Debian (probably via LMDE) later.
Regards
CT