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On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 3:51 PM, Michael P. Soulier |
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<msoulier@×××××××××××××.ca> wrote: |
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> Having just been bitten by some of my hardware being abandoned with the latest |
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> version of a software package I am left to question the entire philosophy in |
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> gentoo of always running bleeding edge. Not touching a system that's working |
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> is becoming far more tempting, and I'm curious as to what others here have to |
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> say about that. |
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> |
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> Part of the point of running Linux for me is to save money and run older |
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> hardware, but that doesn't work if the latest versions of the software that I |
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> like to use abandons that hardware. |
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> |
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> What do the rest of you do in preparation for regular upgrades? On BSD there |
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> was a /usr/ports/UPDATING file that I should check for notes on potential |
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> problems with upgrades before performing them. What's the best way to check if |
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> picking up a newer package could break my system? Ideally a way that isn't |
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> prohibitively time-consuming... |
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> |
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> Thanks, |
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> Mike |
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|
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Hey Mike, |
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Logically I'm not sure there is ANY way to know for certain that an |
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update will break your system. Better to plan on what you will do if |
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you have to fall back. |
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|
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I've lived through a bit of this myself. I have two older Asus |
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Pundit-R machines. They have built in video cards which have VGA and |
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S-video outputs. The machines serve as MythTV frontend boxes and I use |
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the S-video to drive a couple of TVs. Problem is that a couple of |
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years ago the ATI proprietary driver dropped support for the S-video |
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and none of the newer drivers work for me so in my case I had to set |
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up overlays to keep copies of the drivers and change my masking files |
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to prohibit updating of the driver. This has worked but I do wonder if |
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one day the older ATI driver will stop being compatible with newer |
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kernels and I may have to mask kernel upgrades also. Don't know. |
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|
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I would suggest that you make copies of your distfiles directory |
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once you have a machine set up and working. One BIG portage problem is |
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that when I do an eix-update portage will actually ERASE my copy of |
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the ATI driver source code from MY distfiles directory simply because |
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the portage maintainers have removed it from their end. If I didn't |
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have an overlay it would be difficult to rebuild my driver with no |
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source code. |
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|
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Anyway, after 8 or 9 years of running Gentoo I still run it even |
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with these issues. I'm not a sys-admin. I don't really know much about |
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Unix. I do appreciate the control I have over the system even if I |
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strongly disagree sometimes with what the portage maintainers do. It's |
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a good group of people and a very solid base to work from |
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|
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Good luck, |
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Mark |