Hi There,

I hope this finds you well.

Would you please be so kind as to direct me to where I can find simple instructions for the easiest and most trouble-free procedures for upgrading and updating Synaptic?

I hit the Synaptic"Reload" button yesterday and was unexpectedly presented with a terrifying plethora of upgrades, which I've yet to find the courage to install, fearing my old box might explode.

As you might infer from my query, I am an anTIX rookie.

Thank you for patience and for your assistance, and please accept my

Best regards,
carlnyc

carlnyc,

What version of antiX are you running, and also you might post your /etc/apt/sources.list.

cheers,
oldhoghead

Synaptic is best to use when installing or removing single or a few packages. For upgrading is better to use apt-get (apt-get dist-upgrade).
antiX includes a tool called smxi which does that and a few other things too.
So at grub's menu, select antiX's entry and press 'e' to edit, then add the number 3 to the end of the kernel line. This will make it boot to the console, then login as root and type smxi
Then just follow the instructions.
This should be simple but there are some packages from the mepis repo that are presenting some problems in an upgrade lately so if in the middle of the upgrade the packages firmware-linux-nonfree and firmware-linux-free can't be installed, you can solve that by
dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/firmware-linux-free*.deb
apt-get -f install

I'm not sure but I think you could simulate the upgrade by, before running smxi, run
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade -s

For 100% safety, use only the stable Debian repos. Comment out the Mepis one(s) as well.

anticapitalista wrote:For 100% safety, use only the stable Debian repos. Comment out the Mepis one(s) as well.

Dear anticapitalista,

I hope this finds you well.

I've followed your suggestion and punched-in"Reload," which has reduced my"installed (upgradable)" list to a much more reasonable number. All of my"distributions" are now of the"stable" variety.

In the future, would using the"Reload" button be sufficient to ensure safe and reliable upgrades, or should I use"su apt-get upgrade," and"su apt-get update," or both, or neither?

Regardless, thank you very much for your recommendations, and please accept my

Best regards,
carlnyc

carlnyc,

I prefer to use synaptic for the occasional dl, since you said you were new, probably eaiser to use synaptic, you could use the cli, then:

#sux
#(your root password)
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

As you get more comfortable with antiX and cli
to minimize problems the safest route is

ctrl-alt-f1
login as root
(root password)
/etc/init.d/slim stop
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

When the upgrades are done,

apt-get clean
updatedb
/etc/init.d/slim restart

YMMV

cheers,
oldhoghead

Post the output of inxi -r (as user in a terminal) so we can see your sources.list.

If ok, then a regular

apt-get update and apt-get distr-upgrade should be ok.

(Do read the messages though before committing. Default is Yes.)