Sidux stability?

[Collins Richey]

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 4:58 AM, Ken Moffat <kmoffat at drizzle.com> wrote:
> Collins Richey wrote:
>  > On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 10:39 PM, James McDonald
>  > <james at jamesmcdonald.id.au> wrote:
>  >
>  > http://www.linuxquestions.org/reviews/showproduct.php?product=807
>  >
>  > So, according to this review, at least 4 more users worldwide have
>  > tried and like Sidux.
>  >
>  >
>
>  I installed Sidux quite a few months ago, when it was mentioned here. I
>  have been using Debian testing since then. IYHO, can I boot that and do
>  an aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade safely? Or does Sidux use
>  aptitude?
>

Not really recommened to try to upgrade from testing. You would be
replacing almost every package in the system! No difference between
Sidux and sid in that respect.

You can scan back through this thread for information I posted
earlier. aptitude and it's various gui cousins are STRONGLY DEPRECATED
on Sidux. The only upgrade sequence permitted is apt-get update and
apt-get dist-upgrade running without X (runlevel 3 for Sidux). Because
of the unique dependancy requirements of sid, even apt-get upgrade is
not permitted (guaranteed to break your system at some point). Most
folks use the Sidux supplied maintenance script 'smxi' to simplify the
upgrading tasks.

Also, to avoid any breakage, you need to update frequently. Any longer
than 2 months is definitely not recommended. If you are averse to
frequent upgrades (up to 200 packages per week), Sidux is not for you.
I usually do the upgrades every weekend, or in the case of the laptop
(which I don't us as much) every 2 weeks.

Using the 'smxi' script, I frequently find that the Sidux developers
have held back packages that have been released to sid but that aren't
really ready for public consumption. Sometimes they don't catch this
until after the fact, but it seldom takes more than a few days for a
fix to be found. A recent example was OpenOffice. The debian sid
developers released a set of updates that were fatally flawed but not
discovered until a few folks had reported  the bugs. In cases like
this, you can nearly always fall back to the testing repository for a
work around until the fixes appear in sid. I happened to miss this
"opportunity" because I didn't update until the next day and by that
time the Sidux folks had held back the poison packages.

In spite of Lonni's opinion, I don't really expect everyone to rush
right over to Sidux. You need to have a taste for development level
systems and the extra care that is required. I've been running it for
7+ months with no major breakages other than the painful period of
transition to the current xorg release (Oct-Dec? can't remember that
far back). That would have been even more painful with regular sid.

-- 
Collins Richey
 If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
 of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.