On 09.06.20 23:55, Default User wrote:
(...) Now, a final note. When I did my main install, it was a day or two before the release of Buster 10.0. I immediately upgraded to Unstable. But it is still originally based upon Stretch. It was set up with both root and user passwords. And I use good quality, long passwords. : ) Here's the point: I can do everything requiring elevated privileges just by using the user password, and sudo in a terminal as needed. Never need to use the root password. Well, when I did an alternate Buster Stable install on a spare drive, I was surprised (not happily) that when running from that setup, various programs demand the root password, and will not accept the user password. So, now I have to remember not one, but two "good" passwords. And try to determine which one is being asked for. And re-remember both every time they are changed. I am guessing this has to do with a change made for Buster. Perhaps it is a "security thing".
Others might correct me, I am still learning and might be confused about things, but this is how I understand the situation be now: In the past I thought that upgrading from release to release would be all what someone good desire, especially when the upgrade process is well designed and not breaking things. The Debian team is really doing an excellent job to care for the release upgrade not being likely to break things. I then noticed that a release upgrade brings in more than simply upgrading many packages and renewing version numbers, the latter being what the in-release upgrades already do. Worth noting is that in a new release additionally old concepts are deprecated or substituted, and new concepts become introduced! Besides you having mentioned systemd already here giving you another example: remember the (in 2015 ?) announced changes in the use of the root directory structure concerning the philosophy on which data is supposed to land in which directory ("filesystem hierarchy standard"). For now there are introduced symbolic links from the old directory locations to the new locations, so that software will not break right away if still not updated to respect the new concept. If you would for long time roll from release to release, then I imagine that conceptual changes like this will not become visible in your system, and some time in the future the backward compatibility to old concepts might need to be cut. You coming from a Debian/stretch installation and having rolled upgrades via Debian/buster to Debian/bullseye might still not find these changes cleanly applied. Therefore, in order to keep up also with the conceptional changes, it is worth to consider a fresh installation as the alternative to a release upgrade. This is why many of us maintain detailed notes on package installations and system configurations, in order to be able to re-install quickly and thus also being well prepared for a new release installation instead of a rolling upgrade.
(You are more then welcome to correct me if I misunderstood things ;-) !) Best wishes, Marco.