until a pacman update breaks your system because you didn't read the release notes telling you it needed manual intervention beforehand 🤣
this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
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That's happened like once in the last 3 years and the notice was right in pacman before you accepted.
guix upgrade
And that’s why I don’t use PPAs, but you do you, I guess…
Of course it won't do anything, you need to update (refresh the index) before you upgrade (download and install updates), silly you
God this is the one thing I just hate about Ubuntu. I just avoid ppas now
sudo emerge -avuDN world
sudo emerge -avuDUg world
--changed-use, -U:
- Tells emerge to include installed packages where USE flags have changed since installation. This option also implies the --selective option. Unlike --newuse, the --changed-use option does not trigger reinstallation when flags that the user has not enabled are added or removed.
--getbinpkg [ y | n ], -g:
- Using the server and location defined in PORTAGE_BINHOST (see make.conf(5)), portage will download the information from each binary package found and it will use that information to help build the dependency list. This option implies -k. (Use -gK for binary-only merging.)
topgrade --no-retry --cleanup --yes
rpm-ostree upgrade && reboot
Why -Syyu and not -Syu?
You ... you understand pacman cli switches?
Yes. -Syyu is for "Sync (repository action), database update (forced), upgrade packages", in that order (though the flags don't have to be). Doubling a lowercase character like yy or uu is to force the operation. yy in particular shouldn't be needed, as it only overrides the "is your database recent" check. Unless you're updating more than every 5 minutes, using a single y is perfectly fine.
Using Debian as my main laptop distro, I am usually an arch user but figured with it being a light weight laptop I wouldn't need arch, its been fine but installing updates can be frustrating, after a few weeks gnomes appstore breaks, then I need to use terminal to apt update, apt --fix-broken install.
Which Debian distribution are you using, stable, testing, unstable?
I take care of a couple machines for family members. Those have Debian stable with automatic update (unattended-upgrade). I can't recall the system or packages ever breaking. At most users are a bit confused when an update change the UI a bit.
Sticking to stable and avoiding third party repos gives a pretty solid system. Only developers or sysadmins might consider Debian testing. Only people working on Debian itself should use unstable.
Don't use gnome appstore. It's always broken
Don't use gnome.
Don't use.
Fuck gnomes
Debian users:
What do you mean by PPA?
Also: apt-get is intended as low-level APT interface for scripts, just use apt instead. I get why people are confused nowadays, because APT documentation is terrible.
apt-getis intended as low-level APT interface for scripts
Ah, that's what they call it now.
I wonder to what they degraded dpkg then?
Isn't dpkg just the program that installs DEB files, without handling dependency resolution?
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And yet I’ve never had an apt upgrade break my whole system.
Agreed. I ran a system upgrade at home and then went to a coffee shop. My machine didn't boot at the coffee shop. I installed Fedora instead of doing what I had gone there to do
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Shouldn't update come before upgrade?
Yup
sudo nix-rebuild switch
nix flake update
nix flake check --no-build
git commit -a
nh os switch
Is the routine I've settled into. Flake update because I use flakes, flake check because it's easier to see any warnings about deprecated options and the like so I can fix them preemptively, git commit after the check to avoid back-to back commits where the second is fixing some issue with the first, and nh because I like the pretty dependency graph and progress bar.
Lots of useful stuff here. Taking all of it.
Does nh use fast-nix-build (or whatever the fancy nix builder CLI is called) to build your system?
uhm, akshually it's sudo nixos-rebuild switch --upgrade
Actually nixos-rebuild switch --sudo.
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Zypper gang, dup!!
[an hour later]
Done!
(But actually I like it.)
zypper is unironically the best package manager. Absolute s-tier god-mode. It's slow as hell, but that's because it makes atomic updates. If the install doesn't go well, it just rolls it back. I fucking love zypper, and I want to shake the hands of the people responsible for it.
Totally!!
I'm fully spoiled by it.
(And one of the reasons family and friends happen to run Tumbleweed.)
Never had an update break on headless Debian. Even when switching from 12 to 13. That shit is solid.
I'm getting used to arch on my main desktop and I still can't figure out why the hell "sync" is the wording pacman uses for updating or why 'y' is refresh. Sync refresh upgrade my ass. I will admin, it is fast.
Because you’re “sync”ing with the state of the repo. You’re not necessarily upgrading. Sometimes the repos have a lower version than what you have, so you would be downgrading in that case. Or sometimes you’re just using it to install a new package and its dependencies.
-u is upgrade. And -uu is upgrade or downgrade. It’s used to filter the packages that sync operates on, so basically you’re syncing any packages that have a different version than the repo.
-y for refresh? No idea. -r is root, so I guess it was already in use by the time someone added refresh?
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