4 ms·

This was what turned me off from Linux Mint for my own use. The catch-22 of you need to upgrade to a supported version, but the servers / packages you would ne

This was what turned me off from Linux Mint for my own use. The catch-22 of you need to upgrade to a supported version, but the servers / packages you would need in order to do the upgrade were turned off in the meantime. To be fair, Linux Mint states that a complete reinstall is the recommended way, but since I do development, it's a pain to have to locate and reinstall from scratch all the packages I need. Also I think Ubuntu suffers the same problem, if you wait long enough. I'm pretty sure I have an Ubuntu install that I waited too long to upgrade. It is enough to make me serious consider switching to FreeBSD, except I don't think the 3D (game engine) library I want to use is supported.

rhizome 8y ago
it's a pain to have to locate and reinstall from scratch all the packages I need. dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 > ~/installed_pkgs.log cat installed_pkgs.log | xargs sudo apt install
- rabidrat 8y ago
  Tell that to your grandmother over the phone and see how much of a pain it is :)
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    Story-time: If she's like mine she's going to tell you everything is fine and when you visit her in a few months you'll see it isn't working. I once helped my grandma, on the phone, navigate through a VCR to record a star trek episode. Everything was going well but I came home to an empty VHS. "I told you it was fine so you wouldn't worry." I miss my grandma more than that episode of star trek.
    - rhizome 8y ago
      I'm just jealous you had a grandma who watched Star Trek!
  - flukus 8y ago
    This isn't a great example (or maybe it is considering how non-trivial the operation is), but running stuff from the command line can often be great for tech support. There is a reason support normally asks people to open things from the run dialog instead of asking them to go through the start menu. This might be a bit too much to expect grandma to perfectly type, but "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" to update her system is certainly easier then trying to describe what to click on a graphical UI.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    If they're running Linux, I can ssh in and do it myself. :)
  - mrmyers 8y ago
    Talk your grandmother through anything GUI related over the phone and compare. Spend half an hour trying to help her figure out which button she should press only to find out at step 3 she opened facebook instead of the start menu, and that she actually has been pressing buttons randomly for 15 minutes while producing assorted nonspecific vocalizations of agreement while doing literally none of the things you've asked. Or even get the legendary confusion of them never having turned the machine on in the first place. Generally, after years of experience doing exactly this, I've found it is a lot easier to dictate a literal sequence of characters over the phone than coordinate a complex visual action with only confused verbal feedback. Of course, with terminal stuff, you have even further options in, say, sending an email with an attached bash file for them to download and click, or if this continues, set up a script for them (and ad an icon for it in their start menu) that ssh's them into a handy aws or digital ocean instance so you can then ssh into their machine from the comfort of your own home and do it yourself.
- bigbugbag 8y ago
  Except it doesn't work that way as some package name have changed and the command fails due to some package not existing anymore. It give something to start with but still requires human intervention from someone who knows how to navigate in this mess.
  - izacus 8y ago
    It gets worse when dependencies have changed and now you've installed a library that's incompatible with the dependencies of an app you need and everything grinds to a halt.
    - tempestn 8y ago
      Yeah, I've found that enough things change between installs that it's really tough to automate the process. Instead I keep a document that lists all the steps I need to set up my dev machine from scratch (with a data backup), and each time I go through the process I update the document. That makes it much less taxing than trying to figure out and remember everything without a guide, but is flexible enough to handle the inevitable differences from one time to the next. If you're provisioning machines on a regular basis it's a different story, but if it's your own personal machine that you're reinstalling maybe every couple years this seems like the most straightforward approach. Also: Use LVM and snapshot before updating to save yourself a lot of headaches.
      - lostapathy 8y ago
        I went one step farther and built an Ansible role for my workstation and try to install everything via that role. I don’t always, but it sure makes reloads and new machines easier to deal with. I have since split it into a couple roles for full desktop vs somewhere I just ssh into but have enough access to install things to suit me.
  - fro0116 8y ago
    I actually remember running into this issue a lot when building Docker images. Generally you want your docker image to be reproducible so you'd want to lock versions of your dependencies. But when doing this with apt-get install, a lot of the time I find that when a new version of a package is released, the old one gets removed and becomes no longer accessible, so locking versions actually ends up resulting in _more_ build flakiness than just using the latest of whatever package available at build-time, which is obviously not ideal. Deleting older versions of packages that people may still be relying on seems like a very obvious no-go in a dependency management system. Any idea why this happens regardless? Is it just a matter of costs? Or is there more nuance to it that I'm missing?
- akx 8y ago
  `dpkg --get-selections` also lists explicitly deinstalled packages, so you'll want to grep the list first.
- mmarx 8y ago
  There's also dpkg --set-selections.
earenndil 8y ago
> I don't think the 3D (game engine) library I want to use is supported Which one? It's entirely possible that it is (or that it's not 'supported', but you could easily compile it there anyway).
tlavoie 8y ago
Arch Linux is based on a rolling update, so my understanding is that you shouldn't have to jump to FreeBSD (nice as it is in some ways) to avoid a release-based upgrade. I've only been using it for a little while on a couple systems, but seems nice enough. (Mint or regular Debian for years otherwise.)
theyinwhy 8y ago
Update Ubuntu eol by switching the sources to the archive servers: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades

rhizome 8y ago

it's a pain to have to locate and reinstall from scratch all the packages I need. dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 > ~/installed_pkgs.log cat installed_pkgs.log | xargs sudo apt install

rabidrat 8y ago
Tell that to your grandmother over the phone and see how much of a pain it is :)
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Story-time: If she's like mine she's going to tell you everything is fine and when you visit her in a few months you'll see it isn't working. I once helped my grandma, on the phone, navigate through a VCR to record a star trek episode. Everything was going well but I came home to an empty VHS. "I told you it was fine so you wouldn't worry." I miss my grandma more than that episode of star trek.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    I'm just jealous you had a grandma who watched Star Trek!
- flukus 8y ago
  This isn't a great example (or maybe it is considering how non-trivial the operation is), but running stuff from the command line can often be great for tech support. There is a reason support normally asks people to open things from the run dialog instead of asking them to go through the start menu. This might be a bit too much to expect grandma to perfectly type, but "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" to update her system is certainly easier then trying to describe what to click on a graphical UI.
- rhizome 8y ago
  If they're running Linux, I can ssh in and do it myself. :)
- mrmyers 8y ago
  Talk your grandmother through anything GUI related over the phone and compare. Spend half an hour trying to help her figure out which button she should press only to find out at step 3 she opened facebook instead of the start menu, and that she actually has been pressing buttons randomly for 15 minutes while producing assorted nonspecific vocalizations of agreement while doing literally none of the things you've asked. Or even get the legendary confusion of them never having turned the machine on in the first place. Generally, after years of experience doing exactly this, I've found it is a lot easier to dictate a literal sequence of characters over the phone than coordinate a complex visual action with only confused verbal feedback. Of course, with terminal stuff, you have even further options in, say, sending an email with an attached bash file for them to download and click, or if this continues, set up a script for them (and ad an icon for it in their start menu) that ssh's them into a handy aws or digital ocean instance so you can then ssh into their machine from the comfort of your own home and do it yourself.
bigbugbag 8y ago
Except it doesn't work that way as some package name have changed and the command fails due to some package not existing anymore. It give something to start with but still requires human intervention from someone who knows how to navigate in this mess.
- izacus 8y ago
  It gets worse when dependencies have changed and now you've installed a library that's incompatible with the dependencies of an app you need and everything grinds to a halt.
  - tempestn 8y ago
    Yeah, I've found that enough things change between installs that it's really tough to automate the process. Instead I keep a document that lists all the steps I need to set up my dev machine from scratch (with a data backup), and each time I go through the process I update the document. That makes it much less taxing than trying to figure out and remember everything without a guide, but is flexible enough to handle the inevitable differences from one time to the next. If you're provisioning machines on a regular basis it's a different story, but if it's your own personal machine that you're reinstalling maybe every couple years this seems like the most straightforward approach. Also: Use LVM and snapshot before updating to save yourself a lot of headaches.
    - lostapathy 8y ago
      I went one step farther and built an Ansible role for my workstation and try to install everything via that role. I don’t always, but it sure makes reloads and new machines easier to deal with. I have since split it into a couple roles for full desktop vs somewhere I just ssh into but have enough access to install things to suit me.
- fro0116 8y ago
  I actually remember running into this issue a lot when building Docker images. Generally you want your docker image to be reproducible so you'd want to lock versions of your dependencies. But when doing this with apt-get install, a lot of the time I find that when a new version of a package is released, the old one gets removed and becomes no longer accessible, so locking versions actually ends up resulting in _more_ build flakiness than just using the latest of whatever package available at build-time, which is obviously not ideal. Deleting older versions of packages that people may still be relying on seems like a very obvious no-go in a dependency management system. Any idea why this happens regardless? Is it just a matter of costs? Or is there more nuance to it that I'm missing?
akx 8y ago
`dpkg --get-selections` also lists explicitly deinstalled packages, so you'll want to grep the list first.
mmarx 8y ago
There's also dpkg --set-selections.

earenndil 8y ago

> I don't think the 3D (game engine) library I want to use is supported Which one? It's entirely possible that it is (or that it's not 'supported', but you could easily compile it there anyway).

tlavoie 8y ago

Arch Linux is based on a rolling update, so my understanding is that you shouldn't have to jump to FreeBSD (nice as it is in some ways) to avoid a release-based upgrade. I've only been using it for a little while on a couple systems, but seems nice enough. (Mint or regular Debian for years otherwise.)

theyinwhy 8y ago

Update Ubuntu eol by switching the sources to the archive servers: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades