OP hasn't used AUR much
post
Really should keep that PPA use to a minimum. They're potentially a source of not just instability but possible malware as you're putting a lot of trust in whoever maintains that resource.
Especially because there is no way to limit the packages installed from a PPA AFAIK. If the PPA has a "new" version of NGINX, or of libc, or of Wayland - you get it, too!!!
Absolutely. Ideally you should have zero PPAs. There’s definitely a cost for using this feature. Most commonly it comes in the form of instability when you end up with incompatible or broken packages because the maintainer wasn’t playing an active enough role. YMMV!
You can set packages from a particular repo to a lower priority so that they are only installed when you expressly ask for them
How does one do that, Wise Zorro?
https://wiki.debian.org/AptConfiguration#Using_pinning
The company I work for has a apt repo that both has some tools I like to install, but also maintains super new versions of certain libraries and kernels with configs that would break my laptop.
So I have the priority set low enough that if a package exists in any other repo it it preferred over my companies version.
Also sorry for the slow reply I forgot to check my messages 😄
When I use Debian/Ubuntu, I prefer installing missing/outdated software from Nix package manager or Flatpaks.
This way, I can keep a stable core, while being able to enjoy all the latest versions of the apps that I need.
I think Fedora's COPR carries on the torch, besides Arch's AUR. But generally, yeah, avoid PPA's like the plague. It's been garbage for years now. You'd be better off actually compiling the software yourself.
I saw someone on ml point out that update should come before upgrade
nix flake update
nixos-rebuild --switch --flake .
# Just to keep an update history
git add flake.lock
git commit -m "update"
This may seem like too much work, but it guarantees an all-or-nothing procedure. If some package is broken, the entire upgrade process is canceled, and the system remains in the state that it was.
I have had a couple of partial upgrade cases on Arch. It was not fun live booting to repair it, every time this happened.
I've had updates fail on NixOS. A kernel update didn't generate the initramfs and the system wouldn't boot. Booting to a previous generation and reapplying the update fixed it.
This is very rare, though, and unlike Arch can be fixed without a Live USB.
A kernel update didn't generate the initramfs
This sounds like a bug on Nix configuration, or the kernel build process.
If NixOS had caught the error, you wouldn't have gotten a faulty generation at all. This is different from pacman/apt/dnf, which will happily continue the upgrade, resulting in a broken system with no easy way to fix it.
Upgraded three systems to Debian 13 in the last few days. Went without a hitch. One Proxmox, one media server and player, one workstation.
Wayland still doesn't work, but that's apparently because of the noVideo drivers.
Do you actually need - Syyu or is - Syu fine? I have only really used the latter.
The only difference is that -Syyu forces the database to update
To explain what database means in short, it tells pacman what packages are available in different repos (e.g. core, extra). In some rare cases, the time of the database update may be incorrectly marked, and pacman would not know there are new packages/versions. -Syyu should be used in this case.
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