Mixing Stretch and Sid

[pawRoot]

Doesn't testing also have some old version of Gnome ?

[GarryRicketson]

Postby MarkDees » 2018-02-12 09:12
Thanks gents. I appreciate all of the advice.

I'm thinking that I should just proceed and use Testing only.

That would be a better approach, at least in my opinion

[Bulkley]

Remember that Testing is exactly as named; it is for testing. Unstable is unstable. Those who use either should be prepared to deal with their unique problems.

[Thorny]

Gnome desktop is hardly just "a software package" and I would think sid ver diverges quite a bit from initial state, but I haven't tried it.

The reason people on here sometimes seem dogmatic is that people misquote, or selectively quote from documentation without reading it and understanding what it says. People who have read this forum for a long time have seen the results of this many many times, it's not pretty.

+1

Running a mixed system has, at least since Woody that's as far back as I go with Debian, been considered an advanced topic, and thus not recommend for anyone who has to ask about it. So, somewhat self-selecting.

However, I have seen information on the Internet somewhere from one of the authors of said Handbook, Raphaël Hertzog, talking about running a sid system.

It's fine for someone who knows what to do when things break and often things get fixed quite quickly when they break but it is not a good idea for anyone who isn't capable of dealing with the possible rough ride.

Sometimes, a different distro is the sanest choice.


@MarkDees

It turns out that the new Gnome is also in testing (not just unstable). From what I read, it looks like security updates do find their way into testing so I should just use that instead of sid.

Be aware that there is no security team tracking testing. Yes, upgrades will migrate in the normal fashion and really important ones might have enhanced migration. But you might get stung if you aren't careful. Sometimes migration is held up as new bugs are discovered.

I have backups so I am OK to do things that might break my system.

That is smart and might save you. Everyone should have backups and know how to restore them. You should probably consider versioned backups, a topic I leave for you to research.

[edit] I suppose I should add, running testing when it is close to freeze for a new release is usually easy but we aren't very close to forecast Buster release date and Debian often goes past the forecast because the mantra is "release when it is ready".

[Wheelerof4te]

You should probably consider versioned backups, a topic I leave for you to research.

All mainstream browsers today offer synching feature, so most people will get by using one external disk or USBs for their most important data.

[cds60601]

...even the Debian Handbook touches on this in the following section:
<snip>
More specifically, 6.2.6. Working with Several Distributions...

That section does not say to add gnome desktop from sid on stable. It says this:

For example, after having installed a Stable system, you might want to try out a software package available in Testing or Unstable without diverging too much from the system's initial state.

Gnome desktop is hardly just "a software package" and I would think sid ver diverges quite a bit from initial state, but I haven't tried it.

The reason people on here sometimes seem dogmatic is that people misquote, or selectively quote from documentation without reading it and understanding what it says. People who have read this forum for a long time have seen the results of this many many times, it's not pretty.

... and I did not mention Gnome as you allude to nor did I quote (much less misquote) - I simply posted a link for all to take away what they read into it.
You are being disingenuous by alluding that I am referring to the Op's choice of Gnome and alluding that I am selectively quoting when in fact, I presented a link for whomever to reference...
I simply addressed the juxtaposition of a user being told not to mix the Stable/Testing/Sid and what is posted at the Debian site.

[GarryRicketson]

Oh, ok , yea your right, we are wrong, and thank you for confirming my suspicions. Thanks

[stevepusser]

A newer GNOME is probably going to break a lot of other packages in Stretch, since they change the APIs so often without providing for backwards compatibility. If you just want newer GNOME packages on a stable base, maybe you should look into flatpaks.

[MarkDees]

Thanks again to all in the thread. It's really heartening and part of why I choose to be in the Open Source world.

What I did, short version:

Remove Gnome and dependencies, set sources.list to stretch and backports only. Reinstall Gnome. I am running 3.22 and it seems fine. I plan on staying here on Stretch unless there's a compelling reason not to do so.

More info...

Why I wanted Gnome 3.26:

I have actually been very conservative in Debian. I started on Jessie a couple of years ago for my personal machine and have been learning by hacking on it and gradually got it dialed-in. There are some bits that have been complicated like firewalling and routing for virtual machines.

I knew I wanted to get to Stretch and a newer Kernel but this would break the old VMWare Player I was using. The newer VMWare Player doesn't do "Unity mode", so part of my upgrade involved moving to Virtualbox. Because it's my live environment, I setup a second machine to test all of the pieces and get them working. On that test machine I had an issue (now I can't remember what) which seemed to be fixed with Gnome 3.26. I didn't want it because it was shiny, but because it was fixing something. Whatever that was, isn't effecting my main machine.

Thanks again to all!!

Mark

[Wheelerof4te]

Newer kernels are only necessary if your hardware is not supported in default stable kernel. Some non-free firmware and modules are built for and work in specific kernels.
For example, module for my Broadcom card fails to build on kernel 4.15, and needs to be updated. It's even currently removed from Buster. Sometimes hardware can experience regressions on certain kernels. The best option is to stay on LTS kernels, if possible.

[stevepusser]

Newer kernels are only necessary if your hardware is not supported in default stable kernel. Some non-free firmware and modules are built for and work in specific kernels.
For example, module for my Broadcom card fails to build on kernel 4.15, and needs to be updated. It's even currently removed from Buster. Sometimes hardware can experience regressions on certain kernels. The best option is to stay on LTS kernels, if possible.

You can get it to build if you cherry-pick a couple of patches from the Ubuntu 18.04 version, so no doubt the Debian testing version will be back up shortly.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Sometimes hardware can experience regressions on certain kernels. The best option is to stay on LTS kernels, if possible.

+1

EDIT: except if you're worried about Spectre:

Code: Select all

~ $ grep -r . /sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/                                                     
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v2:Mitigation: Full generic retpoline
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/spectre_v1:Mitigation: __user pointer sanitization
/sys/devices/system/cpu/vulnerabilities/meltdown:Mitigation: PTI
~ $ uname -a
Linux Xanadu 4.15.3-1-zen #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 12 23:24:45 UTC 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux
~ $