Okay, so the wisdom, then, is don't bother to try upgrading anything, just install fresh again, and again, and again. FWIW, the full-over-base install seems to be working fine (same version of antiX as loaded from the CD/USB, seems like no reason it shouldn't). The real question is why selecting"testing" repos wants me to install almost a thousand upgrades -- and what'll happen if I install them. The one attempt I've made to do just that with 13.1 64-bit, installed clean in a new virtual machine before upgrading (presumably to 13.2) via the recommended path, led to something that convinced me it had changed to a different distro.

Beyond that, if preserving an old /home is such a bad idea, why does every distro I've installed (so far, Mint a couple years ago, MEPIS in the same time frame and recently, and antiX 13.1/13.2) offer that option, and then ask (when I create a default user of the same name) if I want to use the same old /home/user folder, instead of at least carrying a warning that I ought to create a new user name or use a different folder?

Or, in other words, why does everything and everyone in the Linux world seem to assume I know everything they do? Has everyone in earshot got Asperger's syndrome (not impossible, I suppose)?

Or, in other words, why does everything and everyone in the Linux world seem to assume I know everything they do? Has everyone in earshot got Asperger's syndrome (not impossible, I suppose)?

Take into account I am a Biker on a Saturday nite posting on a forum drinking Jack Daniels and Tecate Beer.
The reason Mint, and other distros can keep home is that they don't have base or core install releases.

The AntiX preserve home option is used when you break a base. You reinstall base and keep your home.
You break and full install. You reinstall Full and keep your home.
You break a core install. You reinstall core and keep your home.

If going from 13.1 to 13.2. /home changes again because of team changes to hidden files in /home that are different.

That is why Anti mentions bugfixes and enhancements. To us s /homelong time users. That is shorthand speak for
don't keep you stock previous /home because the team has tweaked the text files in /home on the upgrade release.

Mint is not lean and mean. Neither is Mepis. They have single desktop enviorments with the same menus. We have Mutiple Window managers with tweaked menus on every release. Guess where they are located. Hidden folders in /home. They (Mepis and Mint) are bloated distros. We have to think for ourselves once in a while and if one of
us stumbles. Then you get tipsy responders like me going"Don't sweat it! We got your back!"

I hope you take my post as assistance. I am crashing into bed after this and if I offend or say something wrong.
Just know my heart is in the right place.

Silent Observer wrote:Okay, so the wisdom, then, is don't bother to try upgrading anything, just install fresh again, and again, and again.

I was responding to what you had said before:

I might just point out that installing Linux isn't a primary hobby for me; I quit seeing the computer as an end in itself and started wanting to treat it as primarily a tool ...

Perhaps I misinterpreted but it seemed like you were saying you were tired of messing about and you just wanted it to work so you could use it for doing other things.

TBH, although I work on antiX, my main system runs Gentoo which is the ultimate rolling release. I highly recommend Gentoo if you really want to learn what is going on under the hood or if you want a lot more control over your system. OTOH, it takes more work than just installing a binary distro (like antiX and Debian).

The quickest and easiest path to getting to release X will always be to install release X instead of upgrading from an earlier release. It seemed like you wanted to take the scenic route so people were helping you along the scenic route until you let slip that what you really wanted was the direct route.

Or, in other words, why does everything and everyone in the Linux world seem to assume I know everything they do? Has everyone in earshot got Asperger's syndrome (not impossible, I suppose)?

You are not the first person to have this complaint. I often like to look at communication difficulties in terms of languages. People in the Linux-world speak the Linux-world language. I had a friend who would go up to people at parties and ask them"Do you speak Polish?" in Polish. Occasionally the person he asked did know Polish so they would start speaking to him in Polish. Unfortunately my friend didn't understand Polish at all. He just learned that one phrase by rote.

It is like that here. It often sounds like you are speaking the Linux-world language so we start talking back to you in that language. We certainly don't assume you know everything we do! We respond to the questions in the same language they are (or seem to be) asked.

I was very surprised when you said you were not approaching this as a hobby. I really thought you were trying to do everything your own way (sometimes the most difficult way) because you were treating it as a learning experience. One thing that fooled me is that instead of asking"what is the best way to do A", you would say"I'm doing X, and Y, and Z but it is not working out like I expected". Or you would ask"what is the best way to do X" without telling us your ultimate goal was A.

It's like navigation. If you want to plot your own course, that's fine. No one is going to try to stop you and we will try to help you along that course. We will, of course, assume you are knowledgeable enough to be plotting your own course so we will answer your questions in that context. If you don't want us to assume that you sort of know what you are doing then it would be better if you asked us what the best course is instead of asking us to help you along the course you have already chosen for yourself.

Sigh.

Sometimes I wish there were written rules on how to communicate with Linux gurus. One forum, you ask"what's the easiest way to accomplish A" and you get"goddamn you noobs, why can't you RTFM and Google before you ask stupid questions?" (not pointing any fingers, but I'm only on two Linux forums); other times, you ask"I'm trying to do this myself and it's not working" and get"why are you doing it the hard way?"

Yeah, I guess I kind of knew that the quickest way to get a working 13.2 would be to install 13.2 and start with a fresh /home/user -- but that abandons all customizations and still requires me to reinstall everything (and see above, I apparently can't just import the list of previously installed packages because some are broken and I'm not allowed to do anything until I fix the broken stuff -- only some of it won't fix). When something is called"upgrade" I expect it to be an upgrade, not a replacement (that is, if I add a turbocharger to my engine, I don't expect to have to drop in a new long block in the same job -- never mind that a new long block built to take the higher combustion pressure will most likely last longer and run better, it's not necessary to get a drivable turbocharged car).

Beyond that (to carry the analogy just a little further), in order to get full use out of the new turbocharger, I have to let it put new tires, shocks/struts, brake rotors and calipers, spark plugs, air filter, muffler, rear view mirrors, bumper covers, driving lights, Recaro seats and five point harnesses, rocker panel lights, and a roll cage into the car -- a process that takes five times as long as actually installing the"upgrade" and, in the process, removes the"Pantera" logo from the back of the bumper and replaces it with a Chevy bowtie.

Now, I just finished (re)installing 13.1 in a VM with Testing repos -- it took (not counting unknown overnight idle time waiting for my permission to replace a"modified" config file in a brand new, virtually untouched install) at least three hours to install almost a thousand upgrades to go from Wheezy to Testing -- and that still doesn't resolve the question of why doing that with a fresh 13.2 apparently converted it from antiX with fluxbox to vanilla Debian with icewm. Meanwhile, I guess I'll get my second machine (the one that runs antiX all the time) started with running a new install and Testing upgrade -- taking a moment to rename the /home/user folder before installing, so I can use the same user name I'm used to.

I'd suggest it might make sense to have, in addition to Full, Base, and Core versions of antiX, different ISO downloads pre-packaged with Wheezy, Testing, and Sid already on the CD (in fact, I wonder if it isn't possible to use an active web page to put that large number of variants together on the fly at download time -- 27 options plus checksums and MD5 is a lot of download choices). Given the claimed ease of remastering antiX, this shouldn't be a huge job, but if there's adequate information available to new users, should greatly reduce the number of folks who start to try antiX and leave when it either takes hours to upgrade instantly after installation of a days-old release, or"upgrades" itself into something else entirely.

Why are you using the Testing repos if you don't want lots of downloads?

And the same thing -- assuming I know what I'm doing just because I've picked up some of the lingo (I presume). Just a day or two ago you were telling me that antiX"defaults" to rolling, which is Testing or Sid (as opposed to Wheezy). I'm not saying frequent updates are bad, I'm just saying it would be easy to assume, based on the results I've gotten the last couple times I've tried a Testing install, that there's a problem when I have to get (based on ongoing 13.2 installation) more than a thousand upgrades to a system that was released just days ago. That is to say, it would be less daunting to start out without having to do so much catching up.

Speaking of daunting -- I'm being told by dpkg (invoked by Synaptic) that there isn't a swap space available, despite conky happily reporting I'm using only 36 KiB of 2.0 GiB on my swap volume, in which case"userspace suspend" may not work; I should choose another swap space, or I'm being prompted whether to continue without swap space. I'm swaying back toward the opinion that Linux installs that actually do what is usually considered the main strength of Linux (ability to run on older hardware, etc.) should have a warning label:"Caution: attempting to install or use this software without a personal guru may result in cranial explosion, head banging severe enough to result in building structural damage, and initiation of a drinking problem."

Now that you mention it, I have had the message about the swap space, but I don't suspend, and I figured it was something I did, so I didn't think much about it.

Lots of warnings about"cannot open pixbuf loader module file such-and-such" too. MEPIS folks tell me to always run updates in a terminal and watch the output, as it can be a clue to problems. Not much one can do about any problem one might spot at an unknown level of progress in an upgrade of a thousand packages.

I said that up until antiX-13 series, it defaulted to Testing.

Those pixbuf messages are down to how Testing uses gtk themes, differently to the 13 series Stable/Wheezy default. You simple need to change the theme in antiX control centre -> Cahbe gtk2 and icon theme. I recommend using the medittaranen theme if you have it, or clearlooks if not.

Okay, well everything is completed, none of the various warnings and errors that scrolled by seem to have caused trouble. I need to go find the instructions I had a while back for putting a non-SSE2 version of Flash on that machine (Athlon XP 2000+, last processor ever made without SSE2, I think, but the version that's in the repo is still way old), but I've got my critical items (BOINC, Skype and Java) installed, and the system didn't change my default UI or try to convince me it had changed to Debian this time.

I got a distaste for"clean install labeled as upgrade" when I was using Windows (95, XP, and every"upgrade" since) and had literally ten years or more of installed software that had to be reinstalled after that kind of"upgrade" when I finally went to XP -- much less of that with antiX (or any Linux) because I've only been installing stuff for a few months. Maybe I can get over automatically objecting. Meanwhile, thanks for the help, everyone, looks like 13.2 is going to behave.

Now if I can just find a widget that will automatically notify me when I have updates, so I can keep up to date -- I don't shut down at night, so putting"apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" into my startup file won't do it (and anyway, I'd rather choose when it happens than have it always take place during a startup).

Whew! After all those upgrades, the importation of my markings from the old Base install went smooth as silk (though I did catch the system trying to install some Base Desktop settings -- which failed, so I was able to unmark them). Apparently something in that thousand packages fixed the fourteen broken packages in the imported marks -- go figure! So, now I've got all my games and bits and pieces back, though I'm still trying to find a screen saver/locker that works in fluxbox, and waiting for verification that apt-watch will tell me when there are updates (a Gnome utility, and the Gnome screen saver I installed doesn't show in the menus, nor does apt-watch).

don't forget to run"Update Menus" after installing software. sometimes gnome utilites show up in strange places.

And if you are using Testing repos, be prepared for a lot of upgrades.

Silent Observer wrote:
I got a distaste for"clean install labeled as upgrade" when I was using Windows (95, XP, and every"upgrade" since) and had literally ten years or more of installed software that had to be reinstalled after that kind of"upgrade" when I finally went to XP -- much less of that with antiX (or any Linux) because I've only been installing stuff for a few months. Maybe I can get over automatically objecting. Meanwhile, thanks for the help, everyone, looks like 13.2 is going to behave.

.

I just want to remind everyone that Windows XP was released onto the public while still in the Beta testing stage. That was one of the major reasons for all the updates and upgrades. As problems were found, Microsoft quickly learned that they had to fix it. That is one reason most people loved Windows XP near the end. They finally got it right. Then Microsoft released Windows 7, which was based on their NT version.

jdmeaux1952 wrote:I just want to remind everyone that Windows XP was released onto the public while still in the Beta testing stage. That was one of the major reasons for all the updates and upgrades. As problems were found, Microsoft quickly learned that they had to fix it. That is one reason most people loved Windows XP near the end. They finally got it right. Then Microsoft released Windows 7, which was based on their NT version.

The other reason was because XP remained the current major version for much longer than 3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, or any newer version has (ten years?). After XP, they released Vista -- still in the beta stage. Still haven't learned; after Windows 7 (which was Vista in a post-beta form) they released Windows 8 still in beta condition (and had to come up with 8.1 in a matter of weeks). With the upcoming sunset of even security updates for XP, I was finally forced to admit I no longer wanted to pay every few years to be a beta tester; at least with Linux, when stuff is broken, I can console myself that I didn't pay to test it (and it'll likely be fixed on about the same time frame as Windows would be). I probably will never, however, get used to the way Debian redefines certain common words like"stable" and"testing".