Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

[kortsen]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Yep, if you can boot into recovery mode, try

sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

Then try to boot into your GUI.

Skip the SUDO. Recovery mode is a root console.

[Snowhog]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

I'll add my .03 cents worth here (inflation you know. .02 cents just isn't worth anything anymore!)

Yes, it isn't unrealistic to expect/ask that the user would be warned when they have asked to have a process run that will be detrimental to the system. That said however, the 'protect your from yourself' approach for an OS, which is the way Windoze went with Vista, isn't what we have in Linux, and that, by design. Linux gives the user a level of control which is beyond anything a Windoze user is used to. Hindsight is always 20/20. Knowledge comes from our experiences, both good and bad.

For this very reason, I have come to use, from the command line (CLI), apt-get install --simulate pkg (to test how the actual install will affect things) and apt-get remove --simulate pgk (to test how the actual remove will affect things).

One of the drawbacks to using Adpet Manager is the lack of messages it provides. Running apt-get from the CLI, especially with --simulate, gives you information that you can evaluate before you decide to 'just do it.'

Of course, this .03 cents doesn't help much for the user who has experienced the consequences of uninstalling 'the wrong' package(s) via Adept Manager. It may, though, be of help to others in avoiding a similar fate.

[claydoh]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Now, I could not reproduce anything by removing any of the alsa related packages you did, Adept just uninstalled the requested packages and nothing more, soI cannot venture as to why it would uninstall a great portion of your system.

Removing libncurses has quite a lot of programs that depend on it, and hence a lot would get removed. 740 packages on my system for example.

There are 2 ways to tell this:

first, in the status bar, Adept will indicate how many packages are going to be installed/removed/upgraded, as well as some other information.

Secondly, there is the Preview Changes button right there at the top of the program.

Granted, it does not pop up a dialog as Synaptic does, but the information is right there.

[disturbedite]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

somebody has prolly already said this, but...
(and i really don't mean this in a smartass way)
you really need to look at and pay attention to what you remove and see what (if anything) else it will remove. (especially when using purge). synaptic makes it easier imo as well.
i love synaptic, it so kicks adept's butt. it has more & better features imo and its faster.

[juantovarm]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Very interesting that -simulate flag, haven't used it before. This is open source, one of the beauties of it is that YOU can help the distro and the users themselves not only by witing code but also by writing man pages and community docs, specially when something like this happens. This is your distro, its your software with all the freedoms it brings, so study it, learn from, it, and teach/help others, someone said something about ubuntu being wrong, i'd say it's not perfect, but it's far better than to only have a licence to use a piece of software. You don't need to do anything, you could be a user as passive as a windoze one, but then you are not helping/improving whichever distro/app you like/use. Now you have the experience, do some good and warn others, report a bug in https://launchpad.net/ I don't know, but you can either complain and leave it like that, or complain and do something about it,

just a thought
Juan

[Nomad]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Adept is obviously so smart that when you remove a package, it removes all its dependencies

Obvious that remove all its dependencies? Not obvious, I didn't know, and a newbie don't know :-(

Ubuntu it's supposed to be easy to use, and the logical step is to use package manager it has by default. If the default option is dangerous, in my opinion, Ubuntu is wrong.

But it's only my opinion...

Regards,

Hey, I agree with you. Sarcasm is just harder to notice on the forums.

I think Ubuntu is indeed wrong to make Adept the default manager, or at least not fix it. Both the CLI and Synaptic tell you what it's going to remove, asks for conformation, then removes stuff. I don't know why Adept doesn't. In addition to not handling the dependencies the right way. IMO, they should put Synaptic in.

[lmilano]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

buggy++

I also consider this buggy behavior, a very intrusive popup should warn you before deleting packages, especially if you didn't mean to delete them, but they need to be deleted due to dependencies. Period.

Synaptic is a lot better, a lot safer and a lot more complete than Adept. IMHO, Kubuntu would be a lot better distro if not all the tools would be re-worked for it. And Adept is one clear example. I would take from Ubuntu some of the mature tools as they are. In fact, I run Kubuntu, but use Synaptic. But I disgress.

Back to business. Has anyone filed a bug report for this?

Cheers!

[Fintan]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Now, I could not reproduce anything by removing any of the alsa related packages you did, Adept just uninstalled the requested packages and nothing more, soI cannot venture as to why it would uninstall a great portion of your system.

I couldn't get uninstalling alsa to uninstall anything but the related stuff either.

[dibl]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Hmmmmmmm -- In Adept Manager, I marked "alsa-base", "alsa-tools-gui", "alsamixergui", and "alsaplayer-alsa" for removal, and it shows it's going to remove 5 packages. So, there's more to the story, I think, than just removing alsa. :P

[Nomad]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Hmmmmmmm -- In Adept Manager, I marked "alsa-base", "alsa-tools-gui", "alsamixergui", and "alsaplayer-alsa" for removal, and it shows it's going to remove 5 packages. So, there's more to the story, I think, than just removing alsa. :P

Do you guys had kubuntu-desktop installed?

[dibl]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Yep. This is a default Kubuntu Gutsy 7.10 installation, and kubuntu-desktop is an installed meta-package.

[lmilano]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Guys, here is the experiment. In Adept:

• 1. Select "kdm" for removal.
• 2. No pop-up, nothing, and in the status line it reads "remove 2" (go find this).
• 3. Do "Preview Changes " (the user doesn't necessarily do this).
• 4. "kubuntu-desktop" is listed for removal. Again, the user should need to do that this will totally screw her/his installation. This is a meta-package that include hundreds if not thousdands of packages.
  

I think this is pretty conclusive ...

[dibl]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Guys, here is the experiment. In Adept:

• 1. Select "kdm" for removal.

KDM is the K Desktop Manager! Of course that's going to nuke your entire Kubuntu system! That's not a bug!

I thought we were talking about a bug related to removing alsa? :P


Adept Manager and/or Synaptic are GUI front-ends to the Debian Package (dpkg) system -- a database of installed applications on your Debian Linux system. Adept and/or Synaptic don't know whether you are happily running a Gnome desktop (GDM) or a K Desktop (KDM), or both. Whatever you want to add or remove, they will be happy to do it. Maybe you want to change from KDE to Gnome -- how would you do that? YES, by removing the kubuntu-desktop meta package, of which kdm is a critical component. So it's not a bug that Adept Manager is willing to oblige your request.

[lmilano]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

I beg to disagree

I am not sure "bug" is the best word to describe this though, I think it's a poor user interface, and I understand this is a subjective manner. Anyway, I think this should be improved if we want to fix bug# 1 ;-) We should never assume the user cares about front-end, back-end, packaging system, essential packages et al. We should always give clear messages to the users as to what's gonna happen in their systems, IMHO.

Buy the way, this "bug" has been reported in Launchpad already:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...pt/+bug/104182

I added my bit there. Cheers !

[MepisReign]

Re: Incredible, what happens with Kubuntu?

Before uninstall or modify anything, BACKUP. Also a healthy practice would be READ and pay attention to the messages if they show up during installing or uninstalling any kind of package.

Linux is NOT Windows and hopefully will never be.

Greetz

MepisReign

P.D.: Did u guys tried Linux Mint? I'm testing it right now and so far is looking great. I will not wipe my Kubuntu installation thou