8.10 Updates damaging applications

[Mario Vukelic]

On Sun, 2009-02-22 at 00:55 +0900, Bret Busby wrote:
> See below - taken from Synaptic -> history, for February 2009, on that 
> Ubuntu 8.10 system.

I'll comment on that further down.

> It might not be hundreds, but it sure felt like it, 

I can understand that, but please be aware that the more exact your
information is, the better the help will be that you get. After all, you
are asking for *free* help here (you can purchase a support contract
with Canonical if that is more your cup of beer). Which means that I am
currently donating my own free time to trying to help you. I don't think
that it is really my responsibility to go and clarify your misleading
information myself.

> In the update utility, I get only two types of updates listed; 
> "Important Security Updates", and, "Recommended updates.
> I do not knowing have anything to do with "proposed updates".

Hm, my lack of kubuntu knowledge is inconvenient here, it seems weird
not to have -proposed. But indeed it seems that I was wrong, read on
further down.

> With for what I use that particular computer, especially the Ubuntu 8.10 
> instalation, I would not turn it into the equivalent of Debian 
> experimental. That computer, and, what I have installed on the Ubuntu 
> 8.10 system, is simply to important to knowingly jeopardise with risky 
> software.

In this case I, personally, would not run 8.10 at all, but would run
8.04 if possible. 8.04 is an LTS (Long-Term Support) release and is
certainly much better tested and more stable.
I would certainly not run a still very new and pretty experimental KDE
version (4.1).

Useless hyperbole ("Debian experimental", "hundreds") will not entice
people to pitch in, though. It was also the reason for my not
exceptionally friendly first reply.

Unless this has changed in recent years, experimental is not even a full
repo that you can run as such. And there is certainly a lot more
breakage in experimental than in Ubuntu 8.10.

So far you have listed exactly one problem, KFTPGrabber hanging and
crashing, and that you "don't know how much damage the updates have done
to other applications". Which means that again you gave incomplete
information while asking for free help, instead of doing your part. You
know, the number of other new issues might just be zero.

You did not even give any info about KFTPGrapper's behavior: when does
it crash, is it reproducible, etc. 

I find two bug reports about crashes of this app. Any of these?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kftpgrabber/+bug/321716
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kftpgrabber/+bug/328002

> You will note that on 16 February, a pile of KDE based updates were 
> installed.

Yeah, I got it wrong and need to apologize. On second look it seems that
I was confused by the package list on intrepid-changes: they are listed
for -proposed, but I overlooked the "(Accepted)" that is appended to
most of the entries. When checking some of the packages in your update
list it seems that they are now indeed pushed through intrepid-updates.