Debian advice

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Slackware - very STABLE. Haven't had an update/upgrade since the Eisenhower administration.

[saturnian]

Ha-ha, I love using Arch but I don't agree with that comment that it's probably the easiest distro to install!

[V.T. Eric Layton]

It's easy to install Arch after the shock and awe inspired by the first attempt. I remember installing Arch (even before Josh did it) that first time. It was... interesting, to say the least.

 

My very first scary Linux install was Debian Sarge (3.14) back in '06. It was the first distro I attempted after Ubuntu "Dapper Drake" 6.06. Ol' Sarge almost made me mess my pants with that ncurses installer.

[securitybreach]

32 minutes ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

It's easy to install Arch after the shock and awe inspired by the first attempt. I remember installing Arch (even before Josh did it) that first time. It was... interesting, to say the least.

 

My very first scary Linux install was Debian Sarge (3.14) back in '06. It was the first distro I attempted after Ubuntu "Dapper Drake" 6.06. Ol' Sarge almost made me mess my pants with that ncurses installer.

 

You sure about that? I installed Arch in 2007. I only know this as I registered at archlinux.org on 2007-11-18 and I think that I was using it  before I registered on the forums.

 

Ok, I looked through the forums and it looks like you may beaten me by a few months..

[saturnian]

1 hour ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

It's easy to install Arch after the shock and awe inspired by the first attempt.

 

OK, but I wouldn't say that it's easier to install than, say, MX Linux, or Kubuntu.

[securitybreach]

1 minute ago, saturnian said:

 

OK, but I wouldn't say that it's easier to install than, say, MX Linux, or Kubuntu.

 

Well those only require you to be able to click Next.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

14 hours ago, securitybreach said:

Ok, I looked through the forums and it looks like you may beaten me by a few months..

 

Yup. I believe that my fiddling with Arch got you interested in it, if I remember correctly. I also remember that you and I got a lot of assistance from Louis (Steel) back then with Arch.

 

You can check the posting history, but I was also the first one to utilize SystemD in Arch here at this forum. I kinda' miss ol' Arch... the version w/o SystemD, though. Sadly, I never really liked the rolling-release format, though... probably due to a bad taste in my mouth left over from my Windows update daze; particularly those HUGE Service Packs (1, 2, and 3) for XP. 

[securitybreach]

1 hour ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

You can check the posting history, but I was also the first one to utilize SystemD in Arch here at this forum

 

That's not the case, I was using arch for 5 years before the systemd upgrade in 2012. That was one of the few times that an update broken my system. All arch systems were forced to move to SystemD in 2012.

[sunrat]

This is one of the things I like about this forum, topics can go rambling off into anywhere vaguely related (or not at all) to the OP without retribution. We get some interesting discussions because of this.

Some forums, most recently and particularly MX forums, the mods will slap your wrist and/or shut you down if you drift 2% off topic. I push the envelope there occasionally just to be wicked.

[securitybreach]

Well most of us have known each other for many years so its not really considered that rude.

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

1 hour ago, securitybreach said:

Well most of us have known each other for many years so its not really considered that rude.

 

 

True. And the fact that there are only about 5-6 of us that visit/post here anymore these days.

 

Many years ago, I joined what seemed like a really cool tech forum where members were supposed to help folks out with their issues. It was mostly Windows and hardware stuff. I was there all of two visits before I was openly reprimanded and harangued by not just one, but three different Gestapo moderators for violating their VERY SERIOUS AND STRICT RULE OF STAYING ON TOPIC.

 

I cannot post here what my reply to them was on that forum, but it was almost instantaneously deleted. It may have contained letters similar to these: some Fs, a K, and, an O or some such. You can use your imaginations. Needless to say, I left that heck hole pretty quickly and never returned.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

8 hours ago, securitybreach said:

 

That's not the case, I was using arch for 5 years before the systemd upgrade in 2012. That was one of the few times that an update broken my system. All arch systems were forced to move to SystemD in 2012.

 

Go ahead and search, but I was the first to upgrade to the version with SystemD. At the time, you and I had both been hesitating to upgrade because of SystemD and its unknowns. I remember telling you how to fix one bug that you had back then. SystemD was calling for a lib file and you did not have that lib in your /usr/lib64 directory. I told you to resolve the issue by just creating an empty text file and naming it as the one that SystemD was looking for. I knew it would work because I had already fixed my Arch by using that trick.

 

Not that any of this matters in any way. Who cares who was first, last, up, down, indifferent?

[securitybreach]

Well it must of not worked as that is the only time that an update made me reinstall Archlinux. Of course, I had/have multiple machines so it may of worked on one of them.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

1 hour ago, securitybreach said:

have known each other for many years

 

Yes, you and me since Urmas brought me over here.... 2006 - 13 years already. Time just zooms along, don't it?

[securitybreach]

I thought that you were here before 2006 but I guess not. I joined in 2004.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

 

2 minutes ago, securitybreach said:

Well it must of not worked as that is the only time that an update made me reinstall Archlinux. Of course, I had/have multiple machines so it may of worked on one of them.

 

It worked! IT WORKED!

 

I TELL YOU, IT WORKED!

 

 

HAHAHAHAHA!

[V.T. Eric Layton]

3 minutes ago, securitybreach said:

I thought that you were here before 2006 but I guess not. I joined in 2004.

 

Nope. I came over here at Urmas' behest to meet Bruno. It was right after I installed Linux for the first time... Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06. Ah... the memories.

 

I was here about a week when Bruno said to me, "You'd make a good Slacker." I didn't even know what a Slacker was. My only exposure to Linux prior to '06 was a nine-floppy disk version of Mandrake Linux that a friend had given me in 2002 or so. I never attempted to install it, though.

[securitybreach]

I started on mandrake for a small time before switching to slackware per Bruno's suggestion. He could tell even in the beginning that I was a computer geek lol

[saturnian]

Well, I know this is way off-topic, might start another thread later, but this evening I used the Anarchy installer to put in an Arch system. Very interesting. I went with the "Completely customized" Xfce setup but I'd like to see what the "Not customized" options come with.

 

Have any of you tried Anarchy? It seems to be just what they say it is at their website (https://www.anarchylinux.org/). Not really sure what to think of this one, but right now I'm thinking that I might never do a "real" Arch installation again.

[sunrat]

8 hours ago, securitybreach said:

Well most of us have known each other for many years so its not really considered that rude.

 

 

How I think BATL annual fair display would be:

[securitybreach]

[Hedon James]

On 10/24/2019 at 6:04 PM, sunrat said:

<snipped>

 

I think Testing is actually less reliable than Sid in Debian. It takes longer for upgrades to filter down from upstream including security ones so may be left in a broken start for many days occasionally. Like there was a huge Qt transition this week in Sid so that will hit soon. I wouldn't use or recommend Testing unless you are actually testing and submitting bug reports for developers.

siduction FTW!

 

After about a year, I've just now experienced my first problem with Siduction LXQT in a VM.

 

Looking back, it probably started about 2 months ago, during a dist-upgrade with a new kernel.  I always check the "warnings" in Siduction forum before update/upgrade and wait until "resolved" shows up.  But after a dist-upgrade and re-booting to the DM (SDDM), I have weird blinking "artefacts" where the username & password fields should be.  Switching to TTYs does nothing...she's locked up...the only way out is to shut down VirtualBox and startup again.  After some trial & error, I realize that my prior kernel boots fine, so it's probably a graphics driver in the new kernel that'll get patched or fixed in the next version, right?  Nope...

 

Each subsequent dist-upgrade with a new kernel displays the same issues during what SHOULD be a SDDM login.  But I keep booting with the old "good" kernel (I think it was 4.20.x?) and I'm back in business...until yesterday.  The most recent dist-upgrade provided new kernel 5.3.0 and a whole host of LXQT upgrades; although nothing appears to be xserver or xorg related, nor sddm related (although sddm is a QT software, so there's that).  Now, I can no longer boot with my previously good "old" kernel, nor any of my more recent kernels; but at least the "old" kernel will drop me into a TTY1 shell if I ctr-alt-f1.  From there, I run the dist-upgrade sequence again, thinking I've got a partial install or broken package, but everything's up to date.

 

So I'm back to scratching my head and stumble onto the revelation that the most recent kernel will boot to SDDM, where I can select a naked Openbox, Fluxbox, or PekWM session, as well as LXQT session.  So I choose familiar old Fluxbox and voila....I'm in the desktop with a Fluxbox session.  I can also switch on the fly to Openbox or PekWM, and back to Flux again.  So I'm thinking the problem is the LXQT session, right?  Here's where it gets REALLY interesting...if I open a terminal and enter

lxqt-session &

I now have a very familiar looking and perfectly functional LXQT desktop session.  So maybe it's NOT the LXQT session, maybe its SDDM.  But SDDM boots other sessions just fine.  So now I'm not sure who to point the finger at.  I did some forum cruising on Siduction and found a 2018 thread about SDDM starting very slow; so I'm thinking MAYBE that's my issue, disguised as blinking artefacts before final session launch.  The resolution in that thread was to delete the ./Xauthority file, log out, and log back in without re-booting in order to recreate a fresh ./Xauthority file.  Didn't work for me. 

 

Another suggestion was to replace SDDM (something about problems with "entropy") with LightDM.  I don't want to go there yet, as I have Siduction in a VM to monitor it's long-term viability, and Siduction LXQT's preferred DM is SDDM...which seemed to be working fine until about 2 months ago.  Potential culprits seem to include the kernel, SDDM, and LXQT itself; although it seems that I've ruled each one out, individually, which may suggest a 2-factor factor.  But now I'm at a loss... 

 

Any ideas where to look next?

[securitybreach]

Or it could be an issue with Virtualbox but other than that, I do not have any other suggestions right now.

 

[sunrat]

+1 it could be VBox. One thing I found with VBox when I used it was it worked best when the installed version of Guest Additions matched the exact version of VBox it was running in. Weird things happen with a mismatch.

I don't have a current LXQT install, but 2 systems with siduction/KDE don't have this problem. In fact I was thinking recently how these are currently the best-behaved versions of any OS I've ever had! Touch wood.

[securitybreach]

I moved away from vbox to kvm/virt because of how buggy it could be, plus kvm + virt-manager is super fast

[Hedon James]

hmmmm....hadn't considered the VBox angle.  another +1 in the potential culprit list.

 

I think I need to start looking into kvm & virt-manager.  I note that Debian 10 (Buster) does NOT support VB, has no plans to support, and the Debian Wiki recommends kvm & virt-manager as the alternative.  That would certainly isolate/eliminate VB as a culprit.  Thanks for the thoughts!

[securitybreach]

Not a problem, let us know.

[Hedon James]

I'm also starting to consider that MAYBE Debian stable is the right fit for me.  I've been focusing on rolling-releases to solve the re-installation problem, but I'm also reading in Debian forums that dist-upgrades go so smoothly.  With 5-year +/- support windows, a SMOOTH dist-upgrade could suit my purpose just fine.

 

Coming from the 'Buntu family, nearly every dist-upgrade results in a trouble-shooting session of some sort....if not right away, shortly thereafter.  I've learned that clean re-installs of Ubuntu are the best path forward.  But then I switched to Lubuntu, and the LXDE/LXQT support windows are 3 years instead of 5, so the only way to stay up-to-date with LTS releases is to upgrade every 2 years, or "assume the risk" between years 3-4 (the underlying Ubuntu supports 5 years, it's the LXDE/LXQT GUI layer thats limited to 3).  I've gone down both paths, but both paths lead to a re-install because Ubuntu's upgrade-in-place is never smooth for me....even when it SEEMS smooth, I discover problems later.

 

So Debian users comments regarding smoothness and reliability for upgrade-in-place catch my ear.  And knowing Debian's "release when ready, and not before" philosophy, I have to believe that includes the upgrade path.  I had a guy tell me he's upgraded his Debian stable "in place" for 20 years now, and still going strong...rock solid.  Whoa, REALLY?!  Seems grandiose, but you have my attention!  Any other Debian users on here care to comment on your Debian upgrade experiences?  I'm only interested in upgrade-in-place experiences....any issues from upgrade?  How many times have you upgraded "in place" without re-installation?

 

 

[saturnian]

Hedon James - A friend who used to do in-place upgrades with Stable told me that too often there was something that needed fixing so he later switched to doing fresh installations.

I always do fresh installations, so I have no personal experience with in-place upgrades to relate. Check this out (also see the comments that follow): https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-upgrade-debian-9-stretch-to-debian-10-buster

 

And have you seen this? -- https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html

 

Yikes! Still, if you go with Stable and do fresh installations for new releases, you can develop a routine to make it fairly painless. I just back up my data and key config files and it's no big deal here. But perhaps more importantly, would you be able to get the packages/apps you want/need that might not be available in the Stable repos??

Edited December 18, 2019 by saturnian

[Hedon James]

Okay my Debian-user bruthas,

 

Working on remastering a Debian 10 Stable LXQT distro for my testing purposes, and need a few packages that aren't in Stable, but looks like they're in Testing and/or SID.  For instance, Kvantum is in Testing but not Stable; obmenu-generator is in Unstable, but not Testing or Stable.  I have both packages installed on Testing and SID distros, respectively, and I've had no problems whatsoever with them.  I'd prefer to get them there, if possible, before I install a DEB package.

 

I know I can add the Testing and/or Unstable Repos, but I'm wondering if there's a way to establish PRIORITY of package sources.  Reading the Debian Wiki seems to suggest I can, but I'm confused on the technicalities of it.  Ideally, I'd like APT to look in Buster/Stable FIRST; if it isn't there, look in Testing; and if it isn't there, look in Unstable.  I don't want Testing or Unstable packages to overwrite my Stable packages, but simply to "fill in" the "gaps" of missing packages not available in Buster/Stable.  Is there a way to do that?  If so, how?

 

Conversely, if I cannot do that, I'm thinking I'll add the Testing or Unstable repo to my sources.list, update the repo, then install the package I want.  With the package installed and verified to be working as expected, I would then comment out the Testing or Unstable repo.  But I can see myself forgetting something and messing that up.  I'd much prefer the 1st option.  Any advice?