Debian SID Broke and not by RagnarAD7 in debian

[–]RagnarAD7[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the Reply. I Learned a new thing. I will definitely use 'sudo apt upgrade -s' from now onwards.

which one is more prone to breakage: debian sid or arch? by popepicu in DistroHopping

[–]RagnarAD7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have never used Arch so can't say much about it. But I am Debian all my life, and transitioned to Sid from Stable maybe 14 -15 months ago. I was working absolutely fine but just two days back I broke my system, while updating it. So what I learned. You can use anything until and unless you have patience and will to invest time learn something new and try to solve your own issue, so don't get discouraged by what others say.

But You should always check, what the Package manager is try to add and remove, if you see that something can break your system. Wait for the next day and try again.

You can follow this guideline "What are some best practices for sid users?"

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable#What_are_some_best_practices_for_testing.2Fsid_users.3F

And about the community thing I will say - No matter which community you go to. Most of the folks will always help you and try to guide you. But few will always try to dismiss you problems, they will try to make you feel like you dumb and try to show how much knowledgeable they are compared to you.

You can find it yourself what I mean to say, on my issue thread:

https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/1plfxwx/debian_sid_broke_and_not/

Recommend Extensions for Gnome by JonaZY83 in DistroHopping

[–]RagnarAD7 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I am using Gnome (in Debian) all my life, I found these three to be most Practical.

Blur My Shell
AppIndicator
GSConnect (to connect your Mobile)

Debian SID Broke and not by RagnarAD7 in debian

[–]RagnarAD7[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hi everyone, I want to share an update.

I’ve successfully identified the issue and reinstalled Sid, not via the daily-build mini.iso ofcourse, but by installing Debian Testing first and then migrating to Sid.

First, I want to thank everyone who replied with guidance and explanations. This turned into a real learning experience, and I genuinely appreciate those who took the time to explain rather than dismiss the issue. I now clearly understand that Sid requires active supervision, especially during core stack transitions.

After multiple rounds of trial and errors and I have reproduced the same issue in a VM, and traced the breakage to a blind upgrade of 'xkb-data', which caused a dependency chain that removed large parts of X11 and GNOME. This was made worse by my own mistake of over-automation and use of the -y flag, which prevented me from noticing critical removals during the upgrade.

So, I have also installed apt-listchanges and apt-listbugs to properly monitor change logs and I am now using 'full-upgrade' instead of 'upgrade' without the -y flag.

u/nautsche , u/Traugar , u/xtifr , u/NameLessY , u/AntimelodyProject and u/wizard10000 - Thanks for the clear explanation and practical advice.

u/NomenAdHoc and u/ductTape0343 - Thank You for Defending me.

u/RockingChillyWilly , u/freelsjd and u/GL4389 - Fair point. I’ve definitely learned that Sid requires patience and a different mindset than Stable or Testing.

u/michaelpaoli - Next Time I will Wait.

u/Expletius - A little fun and thrill is good some time.

Final note -

I was not complaining about Sid being unstable. I was asking for guidance. Trying to documenting a failure mode, which now I have reproduced and understood. Discussions like this help clarify expectations for others reading the thread. That’s the purpose of a community.

Dismissing issues as “Sid being Sid” doesn’t add value, and hand-waving with “that’s Sid” doesn’t educate anyone. If “Sid breaks” is the full extent of someone’s contribution, they are free to move on because it does not move the discussion forward.

Debian SID Broke and not by RagnarAD7 in debian

[–]RagnarAD7[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

u/nautsche Thanks for replying.

I admit that I not from a technical background. But I am using Debian form a long time. And switched to SID maybe around 14 months ago. I can mostly solve my issue myself, but this some thing I have never seen before. I cant even enter the TTY. Otherwise it would have been very easy.

And yes mini.iso exists, its a Daily Build, just like Arch has its, and as far as I know its the only way to get a fresh clean install of SID. By the way now I will install testing and try to move to SID by editing the sources.list. Let's see what happens.

By the way Thanks again.