APT 2.3.12 package manager released, will no longer let you break everything

The fact that it only needed a Windoze ignorant noob (unknown to the wider public, and no matter that he is sympathetic and his action was funny from the Linux perspective) with the classic Windoze mentality of ignoring ALL prior Warnings to force a complex, battle-proven -in so many facilities, institutions, science centers, servers, etc. around the world- package manager to alter its functionality, driven by an impulsive Pop! OS young dev of proposing a horrible, horrible, "cheap bandage" like this https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/-/merge_requests/196 (an extra file that would exist or not) in the first place, is in my opinion not much of an honor for Debian, one could even say "embarassing". This event can be "historically registered" now, and I'm not sure that his actions will help Linux grow anyway (picture emphasized how easily you can break Linux instead of where stupid actions can lead).


Last edited by sudoer on 19 November 2021 at 2:48 am UTC

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: AussieEevee

Quoting: ObsidianBlkThose neon warning signs are there,

I think part of the problem was that there was no neon warning signs. The only warnings Linus got was an error from popshop that wasn't clear on what was happening... and a giant wall of text from apt.

That 'wall of text' ends with "you are about to remove essential packages, type exactly, 'Yes, I know what I'm doing' to continue."

I'm not sure what side I end up on in this, but I'd like to note that is not how it goes. The wall of text ends with "you are about to do something potentially harmful. To continue, type in the phrase". The mention of essential packages is eleven lines up from that part.

"Potentially harmful" doesn't really sound that bad. It also sounds vague, like the kind of message you get when the computer doesn't really know just what you're doing or whether it's actually going to do anything important, but is just putting in the boilerplate because the command generally has the potential to do serious things. Especially if you come from the Windows world, where I think the OS bitches every time you do anything other than browse the web with Microsoft Edge . . .


Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 19 November 2021 at 1:48 am UTC

Quoting: ObsidianBlkOn the flip side, Linus has been heavily in the tech industry for years. Granted, he's predominantly Windows focused, but he should be well versed enough in the quirks of computers in general to know that, unless you're familiar with a particular situation, you don't just blindly ignore warnings. I get that this whole challenge is them trying to work with Linux like an Average(tm) gamer, but Linus is not. He's got more IT qualifications than an average gamer and the fact he nuked his system kinda makes me feel like he almost intentionally played dumb in this particular situation. I don't actually think he did, but he definitely came off looking like a sloppy IT professional to me in that moment.

Linus primary goal is to make money like so many others on YouTube and twitch etc etc.
A headline "Linux hates me" will be clicked and watched a lot more then "Linux loves me".
So yes I find it fair so assume it was intentionally.

I can't count how many times I messed up my linux installs in the early days but I learned a lot from that, including reading of messages instead of clicking OK.

But I guess as Linux becomes more mainstream and the masses begin to use it, it needs to be more dummy proof.

Dreading they day we need to install symantec for Linux.....

Will Pop!_OS be pushing this update to a new ISO? Wasn't the main issue in the beginning was that Linus didn't update before he tried to install Steam?

Quoting: PhiladelphusHence why eletrical sockets the world over have mechanisms to ensure that you can only plug a device in the correct way, rather than backwards which might fry your device or start a fire*. It sounds like you can still "plug things in backwards" with APT if you really want to, it's just removed the label on the plug telling you that's possible, which should stop a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't think to do it.

*And yes I know North American sockets can technically allow plugs to be flipped either way (because for some devices it doesn't matter), but that's both an exception to the rest of the world, and if the device really should be plugged in only one way there are two different physical mechanisms to enforce that. (Making one prong slightly larger, and using the third grounding prong.)

This is actually wrong. The UK has those huge sockets that can only work one way for electrical reaons (as far as I can tell), but other countries really don't. The US situation you describe is the norm, not the exception. This is alternating current, it'll work both ways because the current changes direction multiple times per second.

In Poland we have these grounded sockets/plugs that actually can be plugged in one way because there's a ground rod in the socket, though that is a limitation of the physical, not electrical, design. In neighbouring European countries they use almost the same plug but without the third rod and with two contacts on opposing sides of the plug and these can be put in every which way.

As for the topic at hand: this change should not have been made. LTT only cares about clicks and advertising revenue and they will do/show anything that will bring those in.

Linux and apt have been fine before they came along and breaking one's system is part of the learning experience and now there will be people who will be denied that.

This is clearly bad PR for Linux, it's enough to read the comments under the video a bit, but ultimately PR is PR. It's not like you can't break Windows by deleting system files. Also, he didn't break his system, he just broke the GUI and his problem was easily fixable by reinstalling the packages.

That said, the wall of text of apt is clearly deficient and should be improved.

I kinda wish they would use the error message "Please make my system unusable" (or similar) that you got (still?) on some versions of apt-get when you try to uninstall libc6, that one really drove home the point.

(for reasons: NEVER remove libc unless you want the system ruined, really)

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: AussieEevee

Quoting: ObsidianBlkThose neon warning signs are there,

I think part of the problem was that there was no neon warning signs. The only warnings Linus got was an error from popshop that wasn't clear on what was happening... and a giant wall of text from apt.

That 'wall of text' ends with "you are about to remove essential packages, type exactly, 'Yes, I know what I'm doing' to continue."

Which is more than enough to say 'stop, you're about to do something horrendous to your system.' I have made many jokes before about not being able to do flashing red text in Confluence because of people not following the wiki... But really there are two things to blame here. 1) Linus being smart enough to be dangerous. 2) Linus not being patient enough to read the warning.

Since Linux distros wait for more users coming over from the Windows realm, package managers should expect users coming that have been trained to ignore most of the text that is beeing thrown at them during installation of software. For them it is almost unthinkable that the installation of a gaming software could uninstall parts of their OS.
So I think it's an improvement that such users now actively have to search for the command that can do harm, instead of being able to use it by just ignoring something.
I would love the error message being clickable (depending on the kind of error of course), linking the user to a site where he/she can read about and report problems and solutions with the package that led to the error.

Quoting: metalinuxI politely disagree with the APT developers on this change. In my opinion, a new user to Linux coming from Windows wouldn't be in the terminal in the first place and even if they do have to use the terminal for something, the warnings in the output clearly stated:

[...]

With the user having to type "Yes, do as I say", so even accidentally entering the "Y" key will not execute the command.

Therefore, APT has done everything it can to inform the user that a major change will occur in their system. The impetus is now on the user. Like with anything in life, you should read and understand something to the best of your ability before accepting the terms and conditions.

The unfortunate reality is that using Linux without using the terminal simply isn't possible in some instances. This is made even more difficult by the majority of guides only providing instructions for bash and not a graphical application. Many new-to-Linux users will find themselves in the terminal, following these instructions, because they can't figure out how to do the same thing with a graphical application. New Linux users ending up in the terminal is not only common; it's an inevitability.

I disagree that Apt has done everything it can. I have issues with the way this warning is presented. The formatting of Apt makes it difficult to parse because everything is clumped tightly together, with no bolding, italicizing, or color usage at all. This would be okay if what you needed to type was "Yes, remove these essential packages", but what you need to type is much vaguer, and if it's the only thing you read, it should be much more obvious.

Personally, I might have limited the changes to these, because I think these are genuine UX issues.

Quoting: metalinuxI think the focus should be on guiding a new user to the appropriate documentation/resources, so they can learn why if they enter "Yes, do as I say", it could break their system.

Regardless of size, making changes to the wider ecosystem of Linux due to any YouTuber or "influencer" reaction, is not the direction we want to be going in. I hope this change by the APT devs can be reverted, but the decision is ultimately theirs of course.

Most users of Ubuntu-based distributions are not going to read documentation (and Ubuntu's documentation is quite old now, anyway), because the audience they target are not expected to. This would be different on Debian, I assume, so my opinion is that this particular change should have been made downstream to Ubuntu's version of Apt. The UX issues should have been fixed upstream, but removing the ability altogether and not indicating how this can be bypassed is probably not a change that should have made it into mainline Debian, because Debian doesn't target the same users as Ubuntu-based distributions tend to.

I agree that changes should be based on merit and discussion, not clout, which is what happened in this instance: https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/-/merge_requests/196

Though perhaps, based on this commit message, the maintainers aren't that happy about making this change: https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/-/merge_requests/198

Regardless, passing --allow-remove--essential isn't too big a stumbling block for those who know what they're doing.

I think a simple rewording of the phrase to a more precise: "Yes, I do want to remove these essential packages" would solve this problem.

I also do think that Linus actually played dumber than he was. He was acting as a role, aka the total newb. I'm not saying he knew exactly what he was doing but I am pretty sure that he at least had an awkward feeling about typing that message and that maybe the GUI priorly refusing to install could be related to a common deeper issue.

But he knew that if he breaks it naively this way it would be a good story, so there was a reward for being overly naive and quick.

Not to say no one ever would have made this mistake.

Quoting: ObsidianBlkSomething that might help all distributions of Linux might be a central site where users can post their Linux tutorials, organized by Distribution, Distro Version, Topic, and Date. This way, when a user comes to the site looking for a tutorial, they should always get the most recent and relevant information up front. The site could also put up a warning at the top of the site if the tutorial being viewed is for an older distribution version, or if it hasn't been updated in some specified amount of time (like "Warning, tutorial is over 6 months old and may be out of date"). The site could also implement a rating system for how successful users have been using the tutorial.

I'm just spitballing. Honestly, though, there definitely is an issue with so many disparate tutorials out there from as far back as a decade or more, and, unless you pay close attention to distro version or date information that may, or may not be in the tutorial (depending on the whims of the author) you can easily have a newbie find an Ubuntu tutorial from 5 or 10 years ago, not realize its age, and be completely lost.

I don't think this is a problem. How i see it there are 2 main problems.
When you are catering to windows users, you are catering to people who do dumb shit operating windows (well thats because windows is essentially crap) and they are stuck in their ways. You can patch the package manager all you want this will still remain a problem.

The other one is that new users should be made more aware of that they shouldn't learn "Ubuntu" or "Arch", but rather the little programs and subsystems that are 99% identical between systems and one package manager. Even if they don't memorize the manual (nobody does) they will get a much clearer picture of how their system works much faster.