new kernel 5.6 and I cannot boot, but I could on 5.3

[djk44883]

I am 100% sure dist-upgrade is correct on debian. (but very dangerous on Ubuntu if you have experience there). If dist-upgrade breaks your debian, then you did not follow the anti franken debian best practices.
run man apt-get

Yes, I read the man page, where it says it can add new and remove some. That's what the command does, just because you can, doesn't mean it's the best way to go about it.. If you want to upgrade Debian stable, according to The Debian Administrator's Handbook - https://www.debian.org/doc//manuals/deb ... ex.en.html

6.2. aptitude, apt-get, and apt Commands - https://www.debian.org/doc//manuals/deb ... et.en.html

6.2.3. System Upgrade
Regular upgrades are recommended, because they include the latest security updates. To upgrade, use apt upgrade, apt-get upgrade or aptitude safe-upgrade (of course after apt update).

For more important upgrades, such as the change from one major Debian version to the next, you need to use apt full-upgrade. With this instruction, apt will complete the upgrade even if it has to remove some obsolete packages or install new dependencies. This is also the command used by users who work daily with the Debian Unstable release and follow its evolution day by day. It is so simple that it hardly needs explanation: APT's reputation is based on this great functionality.
Unlike apt and aptitude, apt-get doesn't know the full-upgrade command. Instead, you should use apt-get dist-upgrade (”distribution upgrade”), the historical and well-known command that apt and aptitude also accept for the convenience of users who got used to it.

apt-get dist-upgrade is indeed a Debian command - it is not intended for routine upgrades for a system running stable... at least not the way Debian has it documented. Running Debian Bullseye testing or sid it is recommended.

As for apt vs apt-get - from the begining of the article

apt is a second command-line based front end provided by APT which overcomes some design mistakes of apt-get.

Both tools are built on top of the same library and are thus very close, but the default behavior of apt has been improved for interactive use and to actually do what most users expect.

(don't have to like it )

[MagicPoulp]

I disagree. If you would break more your system by using upgrade or dist-upgrade is not fundamental in the command. It depends on your application and your scenario.

If you have only stable repositories set up for upgrades (no backports), then in general dist-upgrade is better. But that was not my case, that is why dist-upgrade fetched 5.6 from buster-backports.

If a package has a certain dependency version, it should use it. But only dist-upgrade will replace installed packages. That is why in general, dist-upgrade is better.

It is important to remember that debian is not a rolling release like Fedora. And new packages are added in a minimalist way with the goal not to break running systems.

A dist-upgrade produces a result nearer to what you would get by installing debian from a daily build or the latest debian .iso.

I get the following from the man pages.
And upgrade says "under no circumstances are currently installed packages removed, or packages not already installed retrieved and installed".

upgrade
upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the system from the sources enumerated in
/etc/apt/sources.list. Packages currently installed with new versions available are retrieved and upgraded; under no circumstances
are currently installed packages removed, or packages not already installed retrieved and installed. New versions of currently
installed packages that cannot be upgraded without changing the install status of another package will be left at their current
version. An update must be performed first so that apt-get knows that new versions of packages are available.

dist-upgrade
dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions
of packages; apt-get has a "smart" conflict resolution system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most important packages at the
expense of less important ones if necessary. The dist-upgrade command may therefore remove some packages. The /etc/apt/sources.list
file contains a list of locations from which to retrieve desired package files. See also apt_preferences(5) for a mechanism for
overriding the general settings for individual packages.

Using either apt-get or apt is almost equivalent, with only the interface to the user that changes. Apt-get does not have critical design mistakes. It is just more verbose.

If you have debian 9, dist-upgrade will not move you to debian 10.

[djk44883]

You're right the man page explain how/what the command does - that's it. Not necessarily how or why to use it. Debian does have an extensive documentation, - https://www.debian.org/doc//manuals/deb ... ex.en.html
"Debian 10 The Debian Administrator's Handbook Debian Buster from Discovery to Mastery"


backports set a "default" priority for installed applications - there should be no need to dist-upgrade to pull them in.

priority 100
to the version that is already installed (if any) and to the versions coming from archives which in their Release files are marked as "NotAutomatic: yes" and "ButAutomaticUpgrades: yes" like the Debian backports archive since squeeze-backports.

I got that from a man page, so I'm out.

[MagicPoulp]

So you mean than I would have aquired 5.6 even using apt upgrade?

But if a new package was part of 5.6, but not part of 5.3, apt upgrade does not fetch it.

THe linux kernel is a meta package and the sub packages include the kernel number in the name. So it really seems I could not get those with apt upgrade.

[stevepusser]

What did I mention the tweaks for Intel and Nvidia as fixes for? Adding a Tearfree option?

The new firmware isn't in backports yet, but it's been perfectly safe to install the upstream packages in Stable in the past.

[MagicPoulp]

What did I mention the tweaks for Intel and Nvidia as fixes for? Adding a Tearfree option?

Re: linux tearing in the browser
Postby stevepusser » 2020-07-14 04:20

I recently backported enlightenment-0.24.1 from Debian Experimental on a Buster base for MX 19, and it runs nicely in my tests without tearing, but I'm using the Intel driver with tearfree anyway. Maybe I'll update my OBS repo for it--I haven't done anything in it for a couple years.

Yes for tearfree, especially in the browser.

Are those intel drivers present in the debian repositories? In the non-free firmeware*intel* ? Or did you refer to something else? PLease be clear if you mean firmware or driver.