Re: Disabling automatic upgrades on Sid by default?
On Tue, 2020-12-29 at 13:17 +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> No.
>
> If the person needs someone else to setup/maintain the machine the
> requirements are clear.
If you say so.
> > If their machine is being used for daily work and it
> > possibly becoming unusable for a day or so now and then would be a
> > huge
> > problem, then greater stability will obviously be a must and thus
> > choosing rolling/testing/unstable for it would indeed be stupid.
> > This
> > will not always be the case though; not every linux family/friend
> > machine we may manage needs such stability guarantees and in such
> > cases
> > they may prefer to take the risk for the benefit of getting big
> > software upgrades sooner.
>
> The benefit would be negative.
In many cases yes, but I would not agree that in every case it
absolutely would.
> Anything rolling/changing is nice for a geek toy, in most other
> usecases
> the best solution is to find a working setup once and avoid changes
> after that.
The level of stability offered by Debian stable is perfectly suited to
things like servers. Similar stability can be very important also for
work machines. However, although I can understand where you're coming
from, I take issue with your suggestion that rolling/changing is no
good for anything other than "toy" systems. Rolling/changing systems
are not at all as unreliable in my experience as you perhaps consider
them to be, but naturally when it comes to work environments the
uncertainty can often be unacceptable.
> For non-technical users it can even be a problem when a button moves
> or
> a menu item changes.
Yes, in many such cases it certainly can.
> My laptop would never run anything rolling since I must be able to
> rely
> on that things that worked for me a year ago will still work
> immediately
> if I have to do the same again tomorrow.
Reliability is obviously important to myself also. My laptop becoming
unusable is very a big deal to me, but yet I still choose to run
unstable and have done so for some years now because in my experience
significant problems on unstable have been very rare; the only notable
issues that I recall experiencing are a couple of instances when a
major gnome upgrade broke the ability to actually start gnome on boot,
disrupting things for a day or so. And yes, I install upgrades multiple
times a day.
Minimal delays in major software upgrades can also be valuable to me,
especially in cases where having use of the latest major versions can
make a difference to some of the work that I do.
Those rare big breakages are my only real issue with the unstable
channel; are something I expect users of testing do not experience; and
are something that I expect I too could avoid encountering under an
alternate model offering a rolling channel, with problematic major
gnome upgrades for instance hopefully being better tested first in a
separate prep/test channel. (Obviously the gnome maintainers could
already perhaps do more testing in experimental first, or I could
manually hold back major gnome component upgrades for a few days when
they become available in future, but a proper rolling channel setup
would be better I feel).
I have given occasional thought to moving away from Debian to a proper
rolling distro, or perhaps Ubuntu to try to get away from those rare
big problems, but have not yet done so. I'd prefer to be able to simply
stick with Debian under a Debian rolling channel.
> > You seem to have misinterpreted what I wrote.
> >
> > I was comparing the resource requirements of the current model to
> > the
> > alternative I described. I was suggesting that the burden upon
> > debian
> > resources (maintainer effort, etc) would surely be little different
> > from what it is now, as opposed to the alternate concept of adding
> > a
> > whole new rolling release channel alongside what we already have.
>
> Where are the resources for implementing whatever changes you
> envision
> in your comparison?
Deliberately not there.
The weight of the perpetual burden of providing a rolling channel is
obviously going to be the primary concern for many in any discussion of
Debian offering one. Having brought up the concept I chose to pre-empt
this particular concern by suggesting that there surely would not be
any additional big burden on the workload of maintainers under a
reorganised channel model such as I described, as opposed to just
adding an additional channel.
That was the sole purpose in what I wrote about it. I was not trying to
give a comprehensive assessment of all costs. I would not expect though
the cost of implementation to be particularly big (a change to mirror
contents; a few trivial corresponding tweaks to things like d-i, live-
build, the package building infrastructure, and web interfaces like
packages.debian.org; some tweaks to package migration parameters; some
documentation updates; etc).
> This work would surely be a burden noone except you would do.
I presume you wrote that sarcastically, and I presume that you refer
specifically to the transition work. If I had the time, the access
rights, a thorough technical assessment, sufficient understanding of
the necessary work, and a consensus decision to move forward with it,
then yes you might very well find me shouldering the burden of getting
stuck into it. I am no stranger to putting in a lot of effort to
implement improvements to things for which others also/only benefit,
without any kind of payment or gratitude. In fact FYI I spend far too
much time doing so, to my personal detriment.
Obviously we cannot always be in a position to implement our own
suggestions. A suggestion made without an offer to also do the work
does not automatically mean that the suggestion itself is of no value;
is a waste of time; that the person making it would not do some or all
of the work if they could; or that they do not value the time of those
who otherwise would need to do it.
> There are people who are just a waste of time who are making
> suggestions
> based on a partial understanding of a problem and without any
> intention
> of doing actual work, and there are people who are actually bringing
> things forwards by implementing their own suggestions.
>
> In which group are you?
See above.
I do not appreciate your implication that I'm a lazy, unappreciative
time waster just because I did not include an offer to carry out the
work. As I said, you've misinterpreted the nature of my words. :/
I'm sure that you are likely speaking out of built-up frustration from
underappreciation and having dealt with many such individuals before
though, so I'll just move past it.
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