On Fri, Aug 07, 2026 at 01:06:54AM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
> Before doing anything, I'll backup /home (approx 30 gig tbz) and /etc
> to a usb drive. Also how do I get a list of packages that I've
> manually installedd via apt... without also getting the gazillion
> dependency libs they pull in? The least garbage/verbose I could find
> via Google was...
>
> (apt-mark showmanual | while read -r pkg; do apt-cache rdepends --installed "$pkg" | sed -ne '1,/^Reverse Depends:$/d;{p;d}' | grep -q . || printf '%s\n' "$pkg"; done)

> First question; is Excalibur fully stable or are there any gotcha's?

Very general question, most gotchas are around full-feature
(aka heavy) window environments.

General stuff is fine. It took me ten years and finally
using AI to let my linux machine print jobs from my wife's
Mac, but that is administration. Depending on your
use case, there could always be administrative work.

> Plan A) Is it possible to upgtade in place?

I have upgraded in place since the late 1990s. Debian then Devuan.

> Plan B) Nuke and repave, followed by restorung from USB drive.

Never done this, usually debian packages are very helpful
when config files will change, offering you choice between
current config file, package supplied default config file,
or looking at the diff.

I think this is actually an advantage compared to nuke and
repave upgrading.

Good luck upgrading!!! It usually goes well, especially
to a stable distribution.

> --
> Walter Dnes <waltdnes@???>
> There are 2 types of people in this world
> 1) Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data
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--
Joel Roth