Upgrading to Ubuntu 20, *how* to back up?

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 28 Apr 2020 at 19:49, Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> A few historical corrections:
>
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 04:57:57PM +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
> > Apt used to have several sub-commands:
> >  • apt-get
> >  • apt-search
> >  • apt-cache
> > ... as well as the bare `apt` command. It was quite confusing.
>
> Until 2013 there was no bare "apt" command; if memory serves this is
> because that command name was at one point taken by some (now
> long-obsolete) Java tool or other.

That's interesting -- I was pretty sure that I remembered using it. Weird.

> As far as I know "apt-search" has never existed (at least not as part of
> apt itself), only "apt-cache search".

I was not sure about that one. Blast. Sorry!

> At one point we did use it as an optional part of the installer in the
> case where you wanted to do manual package selection there.  It was
> never a high-profile thing, and I think it's true that we never
> advertised it as the primary frontend in the way that Debian at one
> point did, but there was a point where we wanted an ncurses-style
> frontend and aptitude was the main game in town.

OK.

> > Instead, Ubuntu improved the `apt` command, and made just `apt` do
> > what was previously done by apt, apt-get, apt-cache and others. So,
> > for instance:
>
> In fairness I must say that this gives credit to Ubuntu where it's not
> clear that it's deserved.  The work was done upstream in Debian, albeit
> by people who are also Ubuntu developers; it had the core functionality
> of apt-get and apt-cache from the beginning, although it was refined
> over time.  (The main author of the changes in question is a Canonical
> employee, but there was a period when they went off to do other things
> before coming back to us, and as far as I can tell the main part of this
> work was done during that period.)

That is _particularly_ interesting, as I did not see the enhanced apt
in Debian itself until many years later -- possibly in Debian 9 or 10.

> The first release of the standalone apt binary was in apt 0.9.11,
> uploaded to Debian unstable on 2013-08-21.  These changes were first
> merged into Ubuntu in apt 0.9.13~exp1ubuntu1, uploaded to Ubuntu trusty
> on 2013-11-23.
>
> It's generally hard to track this sort of thing if you aren't paying a
> lot of detailed attention, because Ubuntu has a long history of having
> several key apt developers involved in it.  And in some respects it
> doesn't matter too much because most of this work has been done in
> common between the two distributions by many of the same people, but I
> wanted to make sure credit goes where it's due. :-)

A good point, well made.

The deepest I have dived into Ubuntu was for my startup in the
2009-2010 timeframe. We sought permission to use it underneath our own
Java UI, based on the upstream (freeware but not FOSS) Eldy project.

We were refused, because Eldy is not FOSS. We were told we would have
to completely de-brand Ubuntu and remove all mention of the name and
the trademark.

I evaluated Debian instead, but it did not support some things we
needed -- I forget what now.

So we used Mint. We approached Clement Lefebvre with the same query my
boss approached the SABDFL and Lefevbre immediately and
enthusiastically agreed, and our first several shipping versions were
therefore based on Mint.

Later, with more staff, we _did_ de-brand Ubuntu as requested, but
this led me to an interesting discovery. The graphical tool for
configuring apt repos, searching for the fastest mirror, adding
proprietary drivers etc. is Ubuntu-branded right in the code. We'd
have to rewrite and recompile it.

But Debian had not done so, so at that time (circa 2012-2013), if you
installed Debian with GNOME 2 & went into that function, and went to
the help/about page, you got a big Ubuntu logo and an inaccurate
message about an Ubuntu version.

This amused me, but it did demonstrate that stuff was getting upstream
effectively!

-- 
Liam Proven – Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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