Gravis <ring3k <at> adaptivetime.com> writes:

>
> > well, here's what _can_ assure that the transition will be at least
> > not complete hell and requiring a total abandonment of devuan for
> > debian and vice-versa (i.e. a total and complete wipe-down of a hard
> > drive and a reinstall from scratch):
>
> Why do you say that? I use parts of
> stable/testing/unstable/experimental debian with parts of ubuntu and
> mint just fine without having to clear my system.

wow. you are incredibly brave. much respect. question: are you an
experienced computer user?

the reason i ask: what chances would you rate an average computer user
being able to recover their system if they made a mixture of debian
and ubuntu packages and it went wrong?

for a client, i maintain a system with both TDE (Trinity Desktop) and
deb-multimedia packages on it. the reason why i added TDE is because
KDE 4 is such hell, and gnome has gone the "let's put everything in
binary databases" route, that i was forced to stick with KDE 3.5 for
as long as possible (in order to be able to remotely ssh in and
edit KDE's text-based config files for my computer-illiterate client).

now that i've converted to TDE, i am in a *different* kind of hell - one
where upgrades (including in some cases security upgrades) are flat-out
impossible.

to support the purchase of a new (recent) printer which requires hplip
3.16 for example i had to compile hplip *from source code* because
TDE *even with latest packages* forces hplip 3.12 *not* 3.16.

i cannot do an apt-get dist-upgrade on this system because TDE has
replaced some of the key debian packages and they've not been upgraded
by the TDE team. we are now in "package dependency hell".

this kind of "package dependency hell" is the kind of thing that only
really *really* experienced developers are capable of getting themselves
out of.

the average end-user would just... give up and look for an alternative
OS. or would ask an experienced developer for help.

the only reason why i am accepting this package dependency hell is
because it provides the client with what they need.

... but you and i are both experienced debian systems administrators.

and that's the point: i didn't ask if *in your personal experience*
*you* were happy to maintain a complex system. i was pointing out
that the *average person* is likely to get into absolute hell-on-earth
by even remotely contemplating mixing two incompatible debian-based
distros.

would you agree that such risky scenarios are something that the devuan
team should work hard to ensure that the average end-user does not get
into absolute hell?

l.