Re: Return a Debian system to a pristine state
On Thu 28 May 2020 at 20:50:44 (+0700), Victor Sudakov wrote:
> Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > On Thu, May 28, 2020 at 12:15:41PM +0700, Victor Sudakov wrote:
> > > Dan Ritter wrote:
> > > > There is no pristine state for Debian.
> > >
> > > There should be, even if this "pristine state" is but a list of packages
> > > at the moment of the first boot.
> >
> > But that set is NOT the same for everyone. The installer selects
> > some based on the hardware that it discovers during the installation,
>
> I never said this pristine state should be the same for everyone. It is
> not required. Even FreeBSD's "base system" is not the same for everyone
> because installing some parts thereof is optional (sources, lib32 etc).
> And if you compile the base system from source, there are literally
> dozens of options not to compile this or that.
>
> What is searched for in Debian is the ability to remove the bloatware
> which was not present at the time of installation.
>
> > and you select some in the task selection menu. Also, there are several
> > different installer images, including some that are meant to be used as
> > live, and some that have non-free firmware packages.
> >
> > If *you*, the one person on the planet who wants this, would like to
> > achieve your goal, what you can do is get a snapshot of *your* packages
> > immediately after the installation, by running
> >
> > dpkg --get-selections > /root/initial-packages
> >
> > Just hold on to that file, and it will allow you to return to this
> > state on the same machine, or conceivably even a different machine.
>
> Out of itself, this file will not allow me anything. But Charles Curley
> has named the debfoster utility which seems to do the closest thing to
> what I wanted to achieve.
>
> Thanks again to Charles and if there are no other propositions, I think
> we can close this thread.
>
> >
> > If on the other hand your real goal is not to achieve package reduction,
> > but instead to *complain* about Debian, well, you've already achieved
> > it.
> >
> > If your real goal is not just to complain about Debian, but rather,
> > to make Debian *change* something arbitrary, just so that you feel
> > powerful, well, good luck with that.
>
> Let these remarks remain on your conscience.
Twice in two days, someone has sent a post that grates. Yours was the
milder one. The one from Marco Möller¹ was harsher, but you had the
misfortune to follow it closely.
Dan answered your post quite reasonably with "There is no pristine
state for Debian", and your response was "There should be".
Well, perhaps you should have piped up 25 years ago, and altered
the philosophy of Debian radically.
You've now been told about debfoster; it comes with risks:
uninstalling packages always carries some risks because it's
done on far fewer occasions. See how you get on with it, and
there's a bug tracking system at https://www.debian.org/Bugs/
Finally, pkg delete -a sounds like something from the abattoir,
rather than anything you'd do to a pet (to use your analogy).
¹ "apt has a bug, cannot believe it!"
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/05/msg00567.html
Cheers,
David.
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