[EN] Hey My Fellow Sids!

[Ze_Mind]

I have been using Debian ever since Squeeze. Since then I've been going through about every "main" distro (except Gentoo or Knoppix) OpenSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu (cough), Mint + LMDE, and have previously been on Arch. Did vanilla Arch install, but went for the others, like ArcoLinux, Endeavour, Garuda. But right now, I'm using Sparky. A distro based on Debian Test Branch.

The reason I left Arch, is because I didn't like the daily ~100 updates. And if you skip a couple days, you get a HELL lotta updates. Now Debian Testing has a lot of updates too, but as many. Is Siduction like Arch, in a way? Just not as well documented?

Enlighten me, guys.

[devil]

Hi there,
with siduction you might as well have 100 updates per day, depending on the chosen desktop and/or installed packages. But that is not every day. For example, if there are updates for Plasma or LibreOffice, that already accounts for many packages. When running siduction, you should not be update-lazy and update at least once per week. Accumulating too many packages could cause clutter. Quite a few of us in the team have been running siduction productive for many years. The install I am writing from is six years old, and I bet there are much older ones around. So, if you know your Debian package management, you have a quite stable OS at your hands, despite its unstable nature. It is a good idea to check the 'Upgrade Warnings' section on the forum before doing your regular dist-upgrade.

When it comes to documentation, of course, we cannot compete with Arch. Who can? But we believe that our siduction manual is quite comprehensive as well. Of course, I am biased, but maybe siduction can stop your wandering days as a distro hopper. Just give it a try,

[edlin]

I think you should make a fundamental decision:

- Do you want a distribution that receives few updates because it is based on a stable version (e.g. of Debian)? However, this will mainly only provide you with security updates and will be based on older proven package versions.

- Or would you like to take advantage of a rolling release with up-to-date packages? Then you will have to make friends with regular updates. This also applies to Siduction.

I myself have been using Debian since Potato and later only distributions based on Debian/unstable. With apt and dpkg, Debian has a tried and tested package management system that also makes it easy to manage Siduction in daily use.

I personally update daily so that the process remains manageable. This morning there were 45 packages, but most of them concerned libreoffice. Really big updates are rare and occur during transitions (Perl, switching the time format to 64 bit, ...).

I'm a bit more relaxed about the documentation. All the important things about installation, administration etc. are included in the Siduction manual. Otherwise you can find help here in the forum.

edlin

[dibl]

...
The reason I left Arch, is because I didn't like the daily ~100 updates.

I love my updates!

If you dislike updates, you will dislike siduction. You don't have to update every day, but just like Arch, if you wait for a week, then you will have a bucket full of updates. It's the same problem -- the software is under active development and updated packages are continuously flowing into the repos (and then to our installed systems).

I'm a happy siduction/aptosid/sidux user for ~14 years, desktops and laptops and notebooks. I use qemu/KVM, LibreOffice, gimp, wire, and browsers, mostly. Proprietary graphics and open graphics. It's all good.

[Ze_Mind]

Maybe it's just me.

I think I hated arch more because of their "based on" philosophy goes, like Manjaro is.. I hate Manjaro. They call themselves a rolling release? They aren't.

I am currently happy with Sparky, but.. I want something more.

[dibl]

I want something more.

If you think Debian is a pretty good Linux distribution, then what could be better than the next version of Debian, today?

[Ze_Mind]

If you think Debian is a pretty good Linux distribution, then what could be better than the next version of Debian, today?

I dunno, I'll probably put it on my laptop first. I test different distros on it. Before it goes on my desktop.

[RunLevelZero]

I distro hopped for years. I've used Linux since 1999. I used Slackware for years and then went to a LAN party and was shown the beauty of Debian. I hopped Debian distros for years and landed on Mint Debian edition for a while. I like latest and greatest and found siduction back in oh, 2017 I think. I haven't looked back and only installed a new distro on a ventoy USB stick to play with and then I'm back to my SID. Like the others have said, updates are a part of this, but then you get the latest and greatest, if you know how to manage your OS then you're golden, the community has been awesome for me and I always check the upgrade warning when there is a disturbance in the force. The latest was the 64 bit transition. Many dared to walk the path first and I am grateful. My system was at 900+ updates when I got ready to do the update. I did copy the to be removed and to be installed and checked every single one. It was tedious but I was confident in what was being removed and installed. Clicked the go button and had zero issues. Those who walked before me and provided info gave me the confidence. Not sure that helped AT ALL but just throwing in my vote to go for it. Run it on a system and force yourself to use that system for a few months. That should give you a good idea of life with Siduction. I dist-upgrade once week and during big transitions just apt upgrade until things settle, then dist-upgrade. That's the general rule besides check the upgrade warnings.

[Ze_Mind]

I distro hopped for years. I've used Linux since 1999. I used Slackware for years and then went to a LAN party and was shown the beauty of Debian. I hopped Debian distros for years and landed on Mint Debian edition for a while. I like latest and greatest and found siduction back in oh, 2017 I think. I haven't looked back and only installed a new distro on a ventoy USB stick to play with and then I'm back to my SID. Like the others have said, updates are a part of this, but then you get the latest and greatest, if you know how to manage your OS then you're golden, the community has been awesome for me and I always check the upgrade warning when there is a disturbance in the force. The latest was the 64 bit transition. Many dared to walk the path first and I am grateful. My system was at 900+ updates when I got ready to do the update. I did copy the to be removed and to be installed and checked every single one. It was tedious but I was confident in what was being removed and installed. Clicked the go button and had zero issues. Those who walked before me and provided info gave me the confidence. Not sure that helped AT ALL but just throwing in my vote to go for it. Run it on a system and force yourself to use that system for a few months. That should give you a good idea of life with Siduction. I dist-upgrade once week and during big transitions just apt upgrade until things settle, then dist-upgrade. That's the general rule besides check the upgrade warnings.

Yeah, when I was on arch, there's always something I was missing. Something that I never forgot from Squeeze days. apt. It's just drilled in my head. sudo apt _____

I'll try this out on my laptop, an old ThinkPad, before I dump Sparky.

[RunLevelZero]

I distro hopped for years. I've used Linux since 1999. I used Slackware for years and then went to a LAN party and was shown the beauty of Debian. I hopped Debian distros for years and landed on Mint Debian edition for a while. I like latest and greatest and found siduction back in oh, 2017 I think. I haven't looked back and only installed a new distro on a ventoy USB stick to play with and then I'm back to my SID. Like the others have said, updates are a part of this, but then you get the latest and greatest, if you know how to manage your OS then you're golden, the community has been awesome for me and I always check the upgrade warning when there is a disturbance in the force. The latest was the 64 bit transition. Many dared to walk the path first and I am grateful. My system was at 900+ updates when I got ready to do the update. I did copy the to be removed and to be installed and checked every single one. It was tedious but I was confident in what was being removed and installed. Clicked the go button and had zero issues. Those who walked before me and provided info gave me the confidence. Not sure that helped AT ALL but just throwing in my vote to go for it. Run it on a system and force yourself to use that system for a few months. That should give you a good idea of life with Siduction. I dist-upgrade once week and during big transitions just apt upgrade until things settle, then dist-upgrade. That's the general rule besides check the upgrade warnings.

Yeah, when I was on arch, there's always something I was missing. Something that I never forgot from Squeeze days. apt. It's just drilled in my head. sudo apt _____

I'll try this out on my laptop, an old ThinkPad, before I dump Sparky.

Let us know how it goes.

[eriefisher]

I think you'll find Siduction rock solid. Sure there's an occasional hiccup but there never fatal if you pay attention. Be sure and watch the Upgrade Warning thread. If there is a problem you'll likely see there and likely a solution as well.

I've never tried a full on Arch install. I install Manjaro a while back and it was nothing but problems. Polkit would not start on boot so no root access. After spending the time to learn most of the package management system, getting update and set up to where I could actually use it I found it way too buggy and abandon it.

[RunLevelZero]

Two quick things I realized. First I don't dist-upgrade like I said previously lol. I full-upgrade once a week. Also, and this got me when I first started using Siduction, before a full-upgrade, log out and drop to a tty and "init 3". I didn't do this and lost my DE. It may not be necessary every time but I do it to be safe. I would also RTFM. It'll benefit you later if you decide to keep Siduction.

[humon]

I am a newbie, more or less.  siduction is sweet.  I've been running computers since the '70's and linux systems since the days of Caldera.  I only got serious with linux in about 2004, though.

I love MX.  I run Manjaro, Mint, Raspberry whatever, LibreElec, OSMC and I've tried 50 to 100 others from Haiku to Tiny, Puppy to Knoppix.  The thing I've found with Manjaro is that you need to use the command line package manager to get it to work well.

But I really love siduction.  Updates are just part of life.  Better than the mystical windows voodoo.

I'm still trying to RTFM because on the last dist-upgrade I blew my desktop away so I now have to figure out how to repair that.  It's happened once before but was more critical so I had to do a full reinstall.

Reading these posts have given me several ideas on better ways of doing things.  Thanks to all you folks who have contributed to this thread.

Good luck.

[eriefisher]

Two quick things I realized. First I don't dist-upgrade like I said previously lol. I full-upgrade once a week. Also, and this got me when I first started using Siduction, before a full-upgrade, log out and drop to a tty and "init 3". I didn't do this and lost my DE. It may not be necessary every time but I do it to be safe. I would also RTFM. It'll benefit you later if you decide to keep Siduction.

full-upgrade/dist-upgrade....Same thing, same effect.
Personally I haven't dropped out of X to upgrade in a long time.

[Ze_Mind]

I think you'll find Siduction rock solid. Sure there's an occasional hiccup but there never fatal if you pay attention.

Same as Arch.

But yeah, I'll keep looking around. I forgot, I need to order a new SSD for my laptop. Forgot about that..