Re: [solved] Re: How to uninstall Emacs?

[Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com>]

Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Bob Proulx writes:
> > This is just one of the things that person running
> > Sid Unstable is expected to know. Because Unstable
> > isn't recommended for people who don't.
> 
> That is a bit exaggerated especially if we talk
> a computer for desktop use with no indispensible
> service relying on the computer's
> around-the-clock functionality.

If you treat it as you are suggesting, as a victim system for testing
and learning, then I agree.  Play.  Learn.

> What you don't know you can learn by crashing the
> computer because you didn't know it. If you do that,
> you'll know for sure you didn't know it :)

But the problem is that people don't actually do that very often.
They don't learn first with a victim system and then work through the
problems.  Instead people run their critical production servers that
way.  They run their main desktops that way.  And then when they have
problems they complain that the OS is terrible, it crashed their
desktop, they can't read their email, help!, and they sling enough mud
at it.  They can't wait to move off that terrible horrible
distribution and move to the next one which is a thousand times
better.  Really!  I see this all of the time!

I decided to keep a log of problems on my Sid system.  Without going
into great detail since 2011-04-03 to the current day I have had 142
serious problems with Sid that required manual interaction to
correct.  Some of those are small problems.  Some of those are very
serious problems.  Sid is the development and test environment for the
Stable release.

Many of the problems are related to package dependencies.  Perhaps
most of them.  A Sid user needs to be skilled in identifying package
dependencies, will need to hold packages, will need to manually
install older versions of packages to avoid bugs, will need to
explicitly choose newer versions to migrate across transitions.

Sid has been frozen for six months or so as preparation for Jessie 8
being release.  Jessie 8 is scheduled for relase in two weeks.  After
that Sid will be unfrozen after six months or so of freeze.  That will
open the floodgates.  History is sometimes a good predictor of future
behavior.  If this unfreeze is similar to any of the previous
unfreezes then there will be 3-4 months of serious thrash and breakage
flood through Sid.  There will be a lot of people who will say, "I
have been using Sid solid for the last year and it has been great."
Yes.  For the last year.  That was while it was in development and
enterring freeze.  They haven't seen the winter thaw of spring.  We
are in winter and everything is frozen.  But Spring is coming![1]

Bob

[1] With apologies to Game of Thrones.