On Fri 29 May 2020 at 21:57:06 (+0700), Victor Sudakov wrote: > David Wright wrote: > > Finally, pkg delete -a sounds like something from the abattoir, > > rather than anything you'd do to a pet (to use your analogy). > > It's not as terrible as it sounds ;-) It's more from a vet clinic than > from a slaughterhouse. You don't lose configs, you don't lose network > connectivity or remote access during this procedure. You can save a list > of installed packages before deleting them, and reinstall only those you > know you need. > > Unfortunately, the FreeBSD package system is not as mature as DEB or > RPM, therefore until very recently the "pkg delete -a" procedure has > been required to get rid of the dependencey hell.
OK, that sounds more like what people do on Windows systems, where there's a reset option, except that on Windows you can, ISTR, lose all your own files if they're under C:. Debian doesn't work that way: you can remove packages from the system at will in a controlled manner. Isn't that what sysadmins do? > > "apt has a bug, cannot believe it!" > > https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/05/msg00567.html > > Well, I must admit, I can sympathize with this person's frustration. He > just got confused among those AutoRemove* advanced options. I think it's much more than that. The OP appeared to regard the --no-install-recommends option as a *property* that is applied to each package installed under that recommendation regime, and that that property would be preserved for all time. But as the "-install-" in --no-install-recommends shows, it's just an option for the install command itself. > I, too, was surprised by some Debian features like its tendency to start > daemons with a vanilla configuration right after installation. Still > can't say I like this decision. This has been discussed in the past. Using the term "vanilla" suggests that an ordinary upstream configuration is applied to the daemon, which is not true: the Debian developers apply what they consider are sensible secure defaults, designed to integrate with the distribution. This work is usually documented in changelog.Debian.gz or various READMEs. Cheers, David.
