Ubuntu users, Xorg upgrade, don't take it

[bedouin]

What's really great is when you forget to comment out unstable and testing in your repository list and do something fantastic like 'apt-get upgrade.'  The next two days you spend fixing everything is just invaluable; I can't think of a better way to spend one's time -- except maybe switching that damn box over to OS X server.  

apt-get is just as bad as RPM hell was it seems.  Since there are a few packages I need from unstable, I have a few unstable binaries in my Debian installation, which cause other strange things to happen like not allowing me to install Gnome Control Panel except that I update to a new version of hotplug and udev -- versions that seem to hate my iMac.  At one point installing OpenOffice meant removing KDE because of dependency issues?  Okay, that makes sense (cough).  Thankfully that machine's primary purpose is a server, not a desktop -- or I'd be a bit annoyed (I have KDE and Gnome there just to see how Linux is trudging along and to have a little kiosk in my kitchen).

And this is a variant of the same shit I was going through since 1998: get your Linux box running nice and comfortably, but don't update a damn thing or you'll regret it you poor bastard!  X is a legacy POS that needs replaced with something else that has the same functionality.  Sorry, I don't want to spend 3 hours hacking at my xorg.conf anymore than I want to go back to toying with autoexec.bat files to play some new game I bought.  Move on.

Meanwhile I never have these problems in OS X.  Sorry for the rant but I was fighting earlier this week with my generally well-behaved Debian box and still haven't got things quite back to how I want them.  The last time I had something so frustrating happen was back in 2002 when my Mandrake or Redhat box quit working after a video driver update, at which point I loaded up Partition Magic and just deleted my Linux partitions, vowing to run Windows until I could afford a Mac -- which happened a couple months later.  I was real tempted to use the copy of OS X server I have on that iMac and say goodbye to Linux -- but alas, I still believe!

[piratePenguin]

I can't think of a better way to spend one's time -- except maybe switching that damn box over to OS X server.

Except that would only work for Macs

apt-get is just as bad as RPM hell was it seems.

Yey, I'm not the only person who loathes apt \o
Except I only loathe it after a week of using conary for package management.

conary thought of everything it seems.. Including what you're talking about. You can specify the repository location when installing a package, and updates to only that package will come from that repository.

And this is a variant of the same shit I was going through since 1998: get your Linux box running nice and comfortably, but don't update a damn thing or you'll regret it you poor bastard!

No, don't update to UNSTABLE releases. With OS X you don't have access to the unstable releases, so count yourself lucky.

Updating with apt is typically a breeze. It's one thing it nearly got right. With OS X, you gotta go to the package's website (ok, for 3rd-party packages), and manually download and install the package. That's what you'll have to do when OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 comes out (it's coming), right (let's pretend you use it)? Poor bastard - that's over 130 megabytes!

(apt doesn't support incremental updates (conary does) - you gotta download the entire package again. For that reason, OOo is split into multiple packages, only some of them will need to be updated. Anyhow, at least there's no going to openoffice.org, you can have it update automatically)

X is a legacy POS that needs replaced with something else that has the same functionality.  Sorry, I don't want to spend 3 hours hacking at my xorg.conf anymore than I want to go back to toying with autoexec.bat files to play some new game I bought.  Move on.

Xorg sucks, because of xorg.conf? Ubuntu works great with it, without any xorg.conf hacking..

Oh, you chose DEBIAN. Of course you're gonna need to hack it! (besides, doesn't it use xfree86?)

What's the problem with Xorg?

[cymon]

Sarge uses XF86 by default, XOrg is available in Testing and will probably be the standard in Etch.

[H_TeXMeX_H]

There's actually two types of dependency hell a lack and surplus:

1) The packages have no dependency checking, leaving you to backtrack and figure all of them out. This is the one most people commonly reffer to.

2) The packages have full dependency checking, but the dependencies don't quite make sense as bedouin mentioned. I've had similar things happen too. Or say one of the packages is broken ... you can't remove just the broken package (and say install one yourself from source), you gotta remove all dependencies of the package too, or make your own package, which is often not too easy (especially getting the dependencies right). So using a certain type of package, like RPM, forces you to install nearly everything through RPM or nothing through RPM ... all or none.