[lug] Any experience with sidux?

[Collins Richey]

On Sat, May 1, 2010 at 5:02 PM, Davide Del Vento
<davide.del.vento at gmail.com> wrote:
> Folks,
> with the realease of Maverick Meerkat I decided that I'll leave (and
> recommend!) Ubuntu to my aunts, parents and in-laws. Not for me
> anymore.
> I was thinking to move to Debian, but right now I'm considering more
> seriously sidux. I really like its architecture, from the
> rolling-release cycle, to
> as-up-to-date-as-possible-but-without-breaking-as-often-as-sid-does,
> to the cli dist-upgrade, to the strong debian-like philosophy.
> Everything looks just right. The LiveCD iso works great as a LiveUSB,
> and for now it's the only thing that I've tried about sidux (and its
> drivers work fine with the hw I've tried so far).
> I've 4 or 5 desktop/laptop machines to migrate (no servers), and I'm
> really eager to install it and start using it asap!
>
> Is there anybody using sidux on this list? Or anybody that tried it
> and liked or disliked? Any recommendation, comment, gotcha, rant or
> whatever is welcome!
>

I've run sidux for close to 3 years now on desktops and netbooks - no
major problems of any sort. Here are the advantages/disadvantages.

1. sidux, as the name implies, is a Debian Sid (unstable) offering.
The moniker unstable is unfortunate, because sidux is a very stable
distro. There are a few flurries when a major Debian shift occurs (new
version of KDE or xorg, for example), but I've had almost no problems,
and the few that I've encountered were solved within days/hours.

2. sidux (never capitalized) usually provides much more current
versions of everything than other Debian offerings, but due to the way
Debian handles release of Stable, both the Testing and Unstable
streams hold new incoming packages during the freeze prior to a new
Stable release.

3. sidux is maintained by a group (mostly) based in Germany. One of
the developers i a very skilled kernel maintainer, and there is
usually a new kernel release every week.

4. Sid has some different requirements than other Debian variants. All
updating must use apt-get dist-upgrade, not update. The sidux
developers claim that using apt-get upgrade will eventually result in
a broken system. It is highly recommended to exit gui before applying
upgrades.

5. There are lots uf updates, and you need to upgrade frequently.
Waiting longer than 2 months to do a dist-upgrade may also result in a
broken system. I've always updated at l
east bi-weekly, and there are usually 200+ packages ready for update.

6. Because of the very up to date packages and the frequent kernel
updates, you will seldom encounter PCs/Laptops that will not run
sidux. Even most wireless chips are well supported.

7. As is the case with most Debian offerings, sidux prefers the
Debian-free set of packages, but you can upgrade the sources list and
mix in non-free offerings if you wish, and the sidux forum can usually
help you with this (see below).

8. The forum users are very helpful, and unlike Ubuntu where the
developers hide away in an ivory tower (my opinion), the developers
participate regularly in forum discussions.

9. Since the website and forum are based in Germany, inane German
legal restrictions forbid the discussion of multimedia packages such
as mplayer on the forum. You must discuss such matters on the irc
channel.

10. The sidux developers are a quirky bunch. One of the original
developers produce (and still maintains)an excellent system upgrade
tool called smxi that many users like myself use to perform the
dist-upgrade process. About a year ago, the other developers decided
to vote him off the island, to remove all references to his work from
sidux documentation, and in general to go ballistic whenever his name
is mentioned..

11. I would not run sidux without using the smxi tool. It does nothing
that you cannot do with standard apt-get or aptitude, but it has a
rigorous logic that allows you to insure that everything is done in
the correct order. The tool performs the following: insure that gui is
not running, apt-get update (or aptitude, see below), check for kernel
upgrade, if kernel to be upgraded, apply any waiting glib and other
kernel-sensitive packages now, upgrade the kernel, check for package
groups with missing dependencies (quite frequent on sid) and apply a
temporary hold for these, perform a dist-upgrade, release any
temporary holds, offer to do a variety of other package installations,
if kernel or xorg changed rebuild any proprietary video drivers.
That's a lot of stuff to remember on your own.

12. The sidux developers are also violently opposed to the use of
aptitude. I've use aptitude as the base with the smxi tool fror 1+
year now with no problems.

That's about it. You try it, you like it. Always check the forum for
warnings before doing a dist-upgrade (manually or with smxi). The core
users usually find the bugs and raise an alarm if anything is broken.

-- 
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.