So a new major version of Debian has been released, and now I see a lot of complaints about various issues stemming from an upgrade. I do not remember this many after an LTS Ubuntu version. I don’t want to rush to conclusions like “Ubuntu has money for better quality assurance”. I can easily come up with explanations for why these statistics can be skewed, like “Ubuntu-loving plebeians do not come to complain to elite Lemmy users about their puny problems”. I’m curious what you think?
If I had to guess on why people get issues during updates I’d say it’s because they add a million third-party repos that point to the specific version of Debian they were running and now that they’ve upgraded they’ve got tons of outdated packages from those repos fudging up their system.
That’s why you’re supposed to remove 3rd party repos before you update, but nobody reads the release notes anymore, I guess.
Why doesn’t apk have a routine that disables 3rd party repos when doing a full system update?
it’s really not their responsibility to babysit user-initiated configuration changes and third-party software during updates and upgrades. the user makes the changes that go ‘off book’ and uses ‘non debian’ software–so that is where the responsibility lies.
I don’t know, I’m not on the Debian team. This is probably a question for them. I think the mailing list is public if you wanted to ask someone.
Fair enough lol
I read the release notes and followed all the relevant instructions and had zero issues, was a very smooth and easy process.
Doesn’t the upgrade manager of Debian disable them automatically, like Ubuntu does?
I don’t think so, because it shouldn’t be an automated process. Doing that blindly is a great way to have orphaned and incompatible package versions left on your machine.
Is this worse than an upgrade which breaks the system?
The update won’t break the system if you follow the update instructions (remove packages from those repositories first). The Ubuntu way does break the system (see my other comment).
Well, people do not follow instructions and their systems get broken 🤷 To a much larger extent than an orphaned package
That’s the point - those mismatched packages often break the system. I had to do probably near a half dozen reinstalls after Ubuntu’s “clever” trick wrecked my system. I ran a Debian system from potato through to sarge updating each time with no trouble. My Ubuntu machine had problems virtually every upgrade (though most minor) and required more than a few full reinstalls.
Your words made me look again into the documentation:
I hadn’t realized that “removing these complicating factors” meant removing these packages, not just disabling their repositories. The wording is terribly vague.
Now I don’t say anything against your experience and the conclusions it has led you to.
But my experience was that only repositories were automatically disabled and packages stayed in their place. The upgrades went through smoothly, things did not break. Were I forced to uninstall these packages and look for their replacements afterwards, I’d be quite annoyed. Maybe not as much as you, when you were forced to reinstall the system.
I’ll conclude for myself that both paths can lead to happy outcomes as well as to poor outcomes. Thank you for sharing!
I have no idea, but I don’t think the team would add a bunch of useless crap into the release notes for no reason. Doesn’t sound very Debian to me.
Here’s the link to the relevant section of the release notes, for your reference. It’s short.
Thank you! I guess I prefer Ubuntu’s safety net for upgrades.
The Debian safety net is not to use third-party repos at all.
What do you think, is this release on par with previous ones regarding the amount of complaints?