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

2009/7/30 Ken Restivo <ken(a)restivo.org> 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.