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On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 12:44 +0100, Peter Alfredsen wrote: |
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> I would say that if you do a complete world update at least every six |
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> months, followed by revdep-rebuild, keeping Gentoo up-to-date should |
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> be |
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> relatively painless, excluding all the blockers you have to resolve. |
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> ie.: |
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> emerge -uDNav world |
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> revdep-rebuild -i -- -a |
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|
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I've done this on a machine I hadn't touched in over 6 months. And, |
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surprisingly, I was relieved that it came out fine. Though I did have |
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the advantage of: |
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|
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* Having another machine that I upgrade regularly and so know what |
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to look out for |
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* I read and react to, if necessary, the elog messages from the |
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ebuild chatter (I have them sent to my mailbox) |
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* Checking the bug database if I run into a snag |
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* General experience on how to maintain a (Gentoo) system |
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|
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That and, if a particular version does not work out for you, you often |
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can downgrade to an older version. Or if you don't like the way |
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something is built, even with the available USE flags, you can usually |
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keep a simple patch and keep your own version in a private overlay. I |
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love this stuff. This is why I use Gentoo. |
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|
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Contrast with another distro I use. I recently upgraded to version n+1 |
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and am encountering all kinds of problems. I have versions of software |
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installed that don't work or don't work the way they used to, but I |
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can't go back. I can't install the older versions of packages because |
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they depend on older versions of libs that no longer exist on version n |
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+1 (and there are no such thing as SLOTs and revdep-rebuild). And even |
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if I thought about downgrading the entire distro to version n that |
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pretty much means a re-install of the entire OS (and then a re-update of |
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the downgraded OS). I've submitted two bugs for version n+1 but one |
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that I submitted in January hasn't even been responded to and the other |
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was quickly closed as a WONTFIX. |
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|
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Not to criticize other distros (which is one reason why I didn't even |
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name it), but my point is that they all have their pluses and minuses. |
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For me at least, Gentoo comes with fewer minuses and when they do come |
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they are usually easier to fix/get fixed. The caveat is that you |
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actually have to know/care what you're doing. |