more user-friendly than Update manager?

Mr Chris Aitken chris-n/jUll39koHNgV/OU4+dkA at public.gmane.org
Sun May 6 21:59:10 UTC 2012


Thanks for everybody's help.

Distro...

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=11.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=oneiric
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 11.10"

I'll just do one update session at the beginning of each month. I'll 
just pick 'em all by hand as usual (it was really that you can't 
Shift+Click to multi-select things that bugged me). However, I forgot 
that sometimes deselecting one thing deselects its dependencies as well 
(which helps a bit). I still have lots of space on my computer. I'll 
deselect obvious things like Evolution-related stuff and I can deselect 
other stuff as I learn what it is.

Chris


On 12-04-30 04:24 PM, Christopher Browne wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Mr Chris Aitken<chris-n/jUll39koHNgV/OU4+dkA at public.gmane.org>  wrote:
>> Is there a more user-friendly way to get updates than Update manager?
>>
>> I see hundreds of suggested updates for things like Evolution that I don't
>> even use. You can't Shift+Click to deselect ranges of updates. So I have to
>> click each update of hundreds.
>>
>> Is there a faster way to do this?
> I would suppose that if you don't use Evolution, and don't want
> updates for it, then perhaps you should tell the package manager to
> de-install it.
>
> Then, you could just install "everything" that is recommended, and get
> a more reasonable set.
>
> This can sometimes work out badly if you ask to de-install some part
> of (say) GNOME that a lot of other things depend on, some of which you
> *do* care about.
>
> My inclination would be to strategically pick certain things that I
> *know* I don't want.  Evolution would be near the top of my list.  I
> remove the set of undesirable things, which turns that "update of
> hundreds" into more of a dull roar of "dozens," which I'm rather more
> willing to accept.
>
> I just ran apt-get update/apt-get dist-upgrade on my work workstation;
> it's proposing to upgrade about 120 packages.
>
> I notice that it includes a bunch of mono packages.  If I request to
> 'apt-get remove' one of them, that drops out a bunch of packages, the
> only one of which I care *at all* about being sparkleshare, which is
> loosely a "cloud filesystem" app.  I'm willing to drop that, which
> cascades out 30 packages directly.  A run of "apt-get autoremove"
> drops out another 30-ish packages, mostly libraries.
>
> I notice it's upgrading sisu, which I experimented with a while back;
> dropping that nukes ~6 more packages.
>
> After that, the list falls to 94 packages to upgrade.  That looks like
> it'll take ~5 minutes, and I think I can live with that.
>
> Trying to have *no* updates seems like a losing battle to me.  Your
> choices fall between two endpoints:
>
> a) Pick a distribution that doesn't bother updating anything anymore.
>
> That sucks, because it's likely got buggy software that won't get
> fixed, and some day, some of those bugs will affect you, and your only
> choice will be to do some sort of massively disruptive upgrade to a
> massively new version.
>
> "Oh, crap, Slackware 6.0 can't support my favorite app without me
> compiling all of GNOME from scratch by hand.  Gotta upgrade."
>
> b) Pick a distribution that continually updates things.
> Debian/testing is a good case in point.
>
> That sucks, because you'll have something of a torrent of new versions
> of packages coming in.  Mind you, as long as you do upgrades
> *reasonably* often, then there won't be a "massively disruptive
> upgrade."
> If you're running Ubuntu, and it's asking to update 100 packages, I'd
> think that if you imagine you want to NOT do that, then I draw the
> conclusion that Ubuntu is likely the wrong choice for you.
>
> Any time you find yourself fighting against your distribution's
> package management policies, then, more than likely, either:
> a) They're right, and you're wrong.  (Which is pretty possible.  The
> makers of the distribution should have greater competence at knowing
> how to manage it than you do.)
> b) The second possibility is that you want something that is good but
> that the distribution makers didn't intend to make easy.  Which
> implies that you made a poor choice of distributions.
> c) Least likely is that you're right, and that they are morons.  Which
> means you picked the wrong distribution, and you should see about
> choosing otherwise, immediately, if not sooner.

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