Pureos rolling release

Software PureOS
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with debian testing the most painful are the first couple months after a stable has been released in the wild. after that i think it’s pretty ok for people that want the almost bleeding edge to hop in. the recommended way is to upgrade from stable to testing … i haven’t been able to do a clean install of testing so far …

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I haven’t tested them, but install ISOs are available for download.

There are also weekly builds and daily builds image available that allow you to install Debian Testing directly. Some of these are netinstall iso images that require internet connection during installation.

Daily looks as though it’s updated throughout the day and they provide a current directory for your convenience. The current current is missing some architectures, like amd64, so I guess that hasn’t been updated yet today.

1 Like
18

There are currently problems with their cdbuilder. The first problem is a kernel mismatch issue thats been ongoing for 2-3 weeks that prevents a clean install and the second is a problem in that it hasn’t been installing cryptsetup-initramfs by default for luks-encrypted systems, but this could be worked around.

I believe that they have a new point release for debian stable in the next week or so and thse problems should be sorted out by then.

1 Like
19

Maybe you could do a transition to Parrot OS (even maybe collaborate with them)? It’s closer to Testing than Kali, less of a pain in the South, and they actually maintain a Desktop Edition, sans the pentest and forensics tools. They do testing of Testing themselves too.

20

PureOS is a Free Software Foundation approved free software distribution - we do not provide proprietary drivers or source code that cannot be audited by every user.

3 Likes
21

I wanted to let folks in this thread know that I’ve added Byzantium to my /etc/apt/sources.list and have done a full upgrade and everything appears to be working well. This is what you can do if you want to test the rolling release;

  1. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list or add an entry to/etc/apt/sources.list.d/
  2. Add these repos;
deb https://repo.puri.sm/pureos byzantium main
deb https://repo.pureos.net/pureos byzantium-updates main
deb https://repo.pureos.net/pureos byzantium-security main
  1. Run sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

Please note, this is an early release, it is meant for testing, not production.

8 Likes
22

Is there, will there be an ISO in the near future? I want to set my purism 13 newly.

23

I have added the Byzantium repos and can confirm that so far things seem to be working. I performed the upgrade and my Librem 13 restarted without a hitch. I’m now running GNOME 3.34. Thanks! I’ve been waiting to update to the latest version of GNOME since receiving the laptop.

2 Likes
24

I have several dependency issues regarding mutter for example if I’m trying to update.
So I’m waiting a until byzantium is more tested and officially released :slight_smile:

1 Like
25

I successfully upgraded in Batches of about 100.

26

I added the sources updates and security, I main I had added lastly. Now I have about 800 packages, which I have to upgrade in batches again. For example freecad makes problems.

27

I ran into those as well. My workaround was to remove mutter, update, and re-install mutter. This has worked for me;

sudo apt remove mutter && sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade && sudo apt install pureos-gnome && sudo apt --purge autoremove

28

Ok, did an upgrade today (removed mutter inbetween) and switched from pureos-gnome to vanilla gnome and apart from a few extension errors etc. - everythings fine!

1 Like
29

I just did the update from amber to byzantium after today’s blogpost (Byzantium arrived).
I had to reinstall 2000+ packages, of those were 90 new ones and I had to deinstall some 80 packages afterwards. All was done automatically by apt and worked like a charm.
I now run Linux 5.3.0-3-amd64 with the latest Gnome shell. Looks super nice and feels awesome, too, to be on the cutting edge again.
Thank you for your and your team’s hard work, @jeremiah
Have some well deserved holidays.

P.S.: I run a Librem 15 v3

5 Likes
30

Nice! I have done the upgrade as well, it couldn’t have gone smoother (ThinkPad T430). After upgrading the amber installation, rebooting and then changing the apt sources.list to access byzantium repos:

apt update, apt upgrade, apt full-upgrade and finally apt auto-remove

Thanks, pureos team.

2 Likes
31

There are now ISOs being built for Byzantium: https://downloads.puri.sm/byzantium/gnome/2020-01-06/

Please note they are experimental at this point.

2 Likes
32

I would like to ask a dumb question: It is my understanding that a “rolling release” means that the system is continually updated and that the idea of “point releases” does not apply. The advantage is supposed to be the absence of disruption in the upgrade to a major point release. The downside is a series of minor incompatibilities and instabilities that motivated point releases in the first place.
OK, so what do you call the difference when every update in PureOS requires a double reboot and every update in MX Linux happens without any reboot, including kernel and init updates?
Whatever we call that (eg, “sans reboot updates”) is what I want.

33

most updates in the GNU/Linux world don’t require a restart/reboot but there are some who do …

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  1. Not a dumb question.
  2. Yes, you’re understanding is correct. (Or at least similar to my understanding. :slight_smile:
  3. I don’t know much about MX Linux except that it appears to be based on Debian Stable. This means that they likely don’t update the kernel to newer major versions. New kernels will need to be booted, at least if you want to use them, otherwise you can just update and keep on working. The same is true for many daemons on the system, they need to be restarted, but you can either do that on the fly with systemctl or you can wait for reboot. The only caveat with waiting to restart system services is that you may have received a bug fix so restarting services might offer greater security.

If you’re looking for high availability, then there are other architecture approaches, like using a container or a Virtual Machine, but even those need reboot occasionally. You can look at Criu if you need something even more robust.

1 Like
35

Another (possibly dumb) question:

In ArchLinux you always execute pacman -Syu and the whole system gets upgraded. No editing of config files. So in what sense is PureOs rolling ? Does the above addition (of the lines in /etc/apt/sources.list) means that one has to wait for a new announcement from you? Or having the byzantium repos the distribution will roll always without adding more lines to sources.list ?