[gNewSense-users] Re: Upgrade path

[Yavor Doganov]

Luis Alberto Guzmán García wrote:
> 
> I don't wanna be unpolite, but this isn't Ubuntu.

I know very well that this is not Ubuntu (and I've never used Ubuntu
anyway).

> A lot of changes have been done from gNewSense 1.1 to 2.0 (based on
> Dapper initialy).

TTBOMK, these changes do not entail fiddling with package
dependencies.  If modifications are made to relationships within
packages, it is essential to modify them in way that upgrades work.
Sometimes this is not trivial, but a few test upgrade scenarios would
help to discover most of the bugs.

The last time I had to reinstall a system because the distro didn't
supported upgrade was in 1996 or 1997.

> The Xorg files, Mesa, and many other stuff (kernel included), that makes
> this upgrade almost imposible, 

Could you please explain in technical terms how this unfortunate
situation is at all possible?  The kernel image packages should be
the same, only with the non-free stuff missing.  Likewise, the
X.org/Mesa upload Brian did a few months ago did not touch any
dependencies and did not break anything (I mean anything related to
the package system).  I suspect almost the same modifications are done
for the new X.org/Mesa stack.

> In anycase, i'm sure that if you say, - Hey, can i borrow your CD
> drive,

It is not only about the CD drive.  I do not upgrade by reading "GNOME
warnings", there should be a way to do this on the GNU/Linux console.
I never do upgrades from a X session as I have limited memory (also
sometimes maintainer scripts restart xdm/gdm, which kills the whole
process!) and there are machines I have no physical access to.

Requiring an upgrade via a graphical environment is very limiting,
just like the requirement to use the mouse.

Anyway, I don't have the moral right to complain, I just asked for
details so that this grave misfeature is resolved.