[lmm]

> Apt/Synaptic got me into this broken state and couldn't get me out of it. I don't know what story you're reading, but it doesn't seem to be what I've been writing. There was nothing for me to ignore. The error wasn't something I ignored; it was the problem.

No. Nothing was broken. The updates you had asked for were about to break something if you installed them. The error message was the package manager stopping you from breaking your system.

[dataflow]

> No. Nothing was broken. The updates you had asked for were about to break something if you installed them. The error message was the package manager stopping you from breaking your system.

Uhm... two things.

First: you see this screenshot? https://askubuntu.com/q/814380 Aside from the actual package names, the bottom part is the same kind of error I got.

See how it says "You have held __broken___ packages"?

See how the top answer is "You can use Aptitude to automatically __fix__ the __broken__ packages"?

Yeah, I interpret that to mean I had broken packages. After updating. Not before.

Oh, and actually, I think it's basically the same kind of situation as in that link. Notice it has >17k views, only 2 answers, and no accepted answer? Yeah, I guess it's not so easy to resolve.

Second: Even if I ignore the above and pretend nothing there is currently broken, a system that cannot be updated is, uhm, broken. So not only was this system just broken, it was doubly broken.

[lmm]

> First: you see this screenshot? https://askubuntu.com/q/814380 Aside from the actual package names, the bottom part is the same kind of error I got.

I actually don't, imgur is blocked where I work. But I know the error you're talking about.

> Yeah, I interpret that to mean I had broken packages. After updating. Not before.

Yeah the error reporting is bad, which is where the whole unix philosophy of small cooperating programs goes completely wrong. (Or possibly the error is correct and the package is broken - Ubuntu maintainers in particular seem to make bad packages quite often. But the package manager isn't the problem there)

> Notice it has >17k views, only 2 answers, and no accepted answer? Yeah, I guess it's not so easy to resolve.

More likely the user who asked it (3 questions, 0 answers) got bored and never "accepted".

> Even if I ignore the above and pretend nothing there is currently broken, a system that cannot be updated is, uhm, broken.

In as much as you now can't use the package manager to update all your programs? I mean I'd agree that this qualifies as "broken", but it's exactly as broken as a system that doesn't have a package manager in the first place. You could still update all the individual programs manually like you would on windows. Which is what I thought you were advocating?

[talmand]

I'm really enjoying this thread where it seems the complainer is saying they clicked a button provided by the system that resulted in breaking the system and the defenders are saying the complainer not only clicked the button wrong but didn't understand how to click the button correctly. Therefore, the complainer should have realized they are too stupid to understand how to click such an advanced button correctly and should leave it to the professionals next time.

[Yizahi]

In the separate thread they may later complain about Linux not making it to the desktops of regular users.

[talmand]

I've seen lots of contradictions like that from the community.

"Linux is for haxorz and normies should go away!"

"Why don't more people use Linux?"

But such is expected from a large community though.

[dEnigma]

As you've hinted at in your last sentence, these things are only contradictions if you look at the Linux community as a single entity, and not a collection of individuals. I doubt a single person could hold both views (at one moment in time, of course people change).

[lmm]

Oh, something has gone wrong at multiple levels here, and the buck should stop with Ubuntu if nowhere else (since their whole value proposition is supposed to be an OS that's easy to install/administer). But the problem here isn't package management; removing package management would not make it better.

[dataflow]

> More likely the user who asked it (3 questions, 0 answers) got bored and never "accepted".

Call me, uhm, skeptical. I wonder why he'd get bored, if not for receiving non-working answers. I wonder if it's at all akin to how I'm in the same situation and the answers don't work for me either. That strangely correlates with the lack of an accepted answer. Yeah, "not causation", I know. Doesn't change anything.

> You could still update all the individual programs manually like you would on windows. Which is what I thought you were advocating?

No you can't, which is my point. These programs depend on different versions or libgl/libmesa/whatever is causing the problem. So I can't update anything that needs a newer (or older?) version because it chokes when there are multiple versions needed. That's a non-problem on Windows, and if 10 years ago the story was different that means, well, nothing.

[mmjaa]

Its not broken. The 'error' in the example you gave is: php comes in many flavours and your distro has (wisely) decided not to make this decision for you.

You have to decide which flavour of php you want to use and install the dependency manually, yourself.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Not knowing how to use package management and why you'd do things this way, does not mean that package management is broken. It means you don't know what you're doing.

Honestly: PEBCAK.