On 18.06.15 16:30, zlinw@mcmedia.com.au wrote:
Aptitude wants to remove a large number of packages like blender, gimp, exiv2, the list going on and on. dselect how ever is much more on the ball, it only wanting to remove imagemagik and graphicsmagik. Apt does not appear to know what its doing, for instance it wishs to remove blender for 2 unmet dependencies. Curiously dselect, dpkg AND looking in the /var/lib/dpkg/info directory shows these dependcies ARE on the system.
If apt only wants to remove a few packages, what happens when you do that and then use apt to reinstall them? It won't take long, and could obviate the need for a complete system reinstall. Nothing lost, plenty to gain, maybe. I have to admit that my recent debian 7.8.0 install is piling up notifications of recommended package upgrades, which I ignore because it doesn't provide a list of them I can aim apt at. I'm only willing to use one package upgrade method, and that's not blindly clicking "OK" on a nameless GUI surrender icon.
It's distinctly possible apt is not getting on well with a system thats been instaled from DVD's. I have suffered from similar package system corruption from this cause in the past.
But even a net install is an install from DVD, here at least, since I've always burnt the downloaded iso to DVD. I must admit that I've _never_ ventured a dist_upgrade. That does seem to be asking for trouble. I just update what's really needed, piecemeal, for minimum disturbance, then install from scratch every five years or so, whether it's needed or not. More often would be masochistic, I think, having just discovered that the new debian 7.8.0 install a couple of months ago lost awareness of the HP Laserjet 3050 printer, which had worked fine for years. Each new upgrade seems to confirm that they're a bad idea. Erik -- A Ponzi Scheme is any investment where returns are derived, not from earnings of the investment itself, but from capital injected by new investors. When you look at the yield on rental property in Sydney it is around 3.5%. Price growth has been around 10.2% over the last 20 years. Smells like a Ponzi scheme to me. - Richard, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-15/verrender--a-ponzi-scheme-that-could-r...