[LAU] AVLinux (Was: a bunch of stuff)

[Jean-Baptiste Mestelan]

2009/7/30 Ken Restivo <ken at restivo.org>
>Linux audio stuff moves fast, and works better with rolling releases,

This was also the point made in a recent thread ('Audio distribution
proposal') ; I bought the idea enough to give ArchLinux +
archaudio.repo a try. And this worked pleasantly well : in a few
hours' time, I could set up a fast and lean system, with good
performance for the main audio apps.

Still, a few updates later, I got to think again about this 'rollling'
model : does the constant upgrading not mean that you are constantly
introducing instability into your system ?
For instance : last month, an update broke 'bash-completion' ; this
week, I found out that 'patchage' was no longer working (is it due to
this recent 'boost' lib update ? ) ... These are small things, but
which prove distracting when you just would have liked to sit down and
make some music ...

On the other hand, rolling updates imply that changes happen
gradually, which allows you to determine what particular package
update caused the problem, and fix accordingly. Well, if you have a
good idea of package dependencies, and if you indeed upgrade
gradually.
So, this brings an other question : what is a good frequency for
updates ? I remember that on Gentoo, it was better to sync the system
frequently, as a two-month-late update could result in hard-to-solve
conflicts. This seems less of a problem in Arch Linux ? (no flamebait
intended)


I am mostly thinking aloud here, but would welcome your experience on
the matter, as I am having a hard time figuring out what a good
process would consist in ; probably, it would involve a rolling system
+ carefully controlled updates, and the ability to rollback updates ?
About this last bit, the Remasterys backup utility included in AVLinux
is a wonderful addition. It only works for Debian/Ubuntu systems
though, ... and I do not know how easily every package manager
provides the ability to downgrade ...

Here are a few relevant links concerning Arch :
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=71987
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Downgrade_packages


Thanks for attention.