- This topic has 1 reply, 2 voices, and was last updated Mar 6-2:14 am by sybok.
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Koesherbacon
Hey AntiX users. I’m a huge fan of both AntiX and its sister distro MXLinux. I’m also a fan of Sparky because it utilizes Debian’s testing branch, aka Bullseye. I have decided to stop using Arch and head back to Debian on a new laptop. One of the distros mentioned above is probably the one I’ll most likely switch to, after narrowing down the plethora of Debian-based distros available.
As an Arch user before, I’m a fan of ‘rolling’ software packages but I’m honestly ready to stop using bleeding-edge versions. As I mentioned above, I’ve vigorously tested many Debian-based distros. I really like the builtin utilities like iso-snapshot available with AntiX but at the same time I like how sparky uses Bullseye as it’s default Debian branch.
I see that AntiX appears to make swapping branches pretty easy after checking out the repo sources in
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/. It’s pretty cool to see that the stable brance is enabled by default but it also includes commented-out and therefor disabled repos of both the testing and unstable branches.So here’s my question. Has anybody swapped over from Buster to Bullseye? When you made the switch did any package stop working? Did you completely brick your computer with an incredible amount of broken packages? Or was it smooth sailing, where everything worked out perfectly fine?
I’d love to get some input on this topic. If it turns out to be as easy as it seems AntiX will probably end up being installed as my primary os. On the other hand, if switching to the testing brance can get dicey I’ll have to go back and reevaluate which is more important to me: AntiX’s great utilities versus Sparky’s rolling method for software packages.
Looking forward to hearing your I out on this question. Thanks very much!
⁓ Ev
sybok
I usually switch to testing to have more up to date packages. Works well at my home PC, worked in my previous work as well.
The only disadvantage I have found so far that e.g. some systemd-dependent packages may not be (easily) available/installable in testing.
E.g. recent announcement of virtualbox (VB) upgrade made me excited but VB failed to install in my testing-based system because some of the libraries in testing are of newer version and the old ones were not installable (seemed to no longer have a release candidates).
One could try apt-pinning (in this case mixing testing and stable) but I am a rather cautious and not that adventurous.If you rely on a package you are unsure it may get broken, you can try to:
1) install a stable antiX in virtualbox or other virtualization tool [henceforth Virt-antiX]
2) list all installed packages on (a presumably existing) stable real-machine install [Real-antiX], e.g.
dpkg -l | grep '^ii' | awk ' { print $2 } ' > installed_deb.txt
3) Virt-antiX: install all the packages obtained in step 2) (assuming you have transferred it from Real-antiX to Virt-antiX)
sudo apt install "$(cat installed_deb.txt | tr '\n' ' ')"
4) Virt-antiX: switch repositories to testing.
5) Virt-antiX: do apt update/dist-upgrade and see the output of apt, e.g. what is to be removed etc. If OK, accept it.
6) Virt-antiX: test the updated system.- This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by sybok. Reason: clarify step 3)
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