[ale] linus doesn't like Debian?

[Brian Pitts]

Preston Boyington wrote:
>> 'aptitude dist-upgrade' ranks and presents several options to resolve 
>> dependency problems. 'apt-get dist-upgrade' gives up.
> 
> hmmm, maybe i haven't had this problem?  can't recall a dist-upgrade
> giving up on my in recent memory.  maybe if there was some type of
> version conflict with what was installed and what it believed was
> available.  again, haven't had this problem recently.

Below is a trivial example of the different behaviors. I'm running 
Ubuntu Gutsy, which isn't due for release until October, on my laptop.

brian at dell:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
   linux-backports-modules-generic
The following packages will be upgraded:
   tasksel tasksel-data
2 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 96.8kB of archives.
After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.

brian at dell:~$ sudo aptitude dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Building tag database... Done
The following packages are BROKEN:
   linux-backports-modules-generic
The following packages will be upgraded:
   tasksel tasksel-data
3 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 122kB of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
   linux-backports-modules-generic: Depends: 
linux-backports-modules-2.6.22-10-generic which is a virtual package.
Resolving dependencies...
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Keep the following packages at their current version:
linux-backports-modules-generic [2.6.20.16.28.1 (now)]

Score is 120

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] n
Resolving dependencies...
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
linux-backports-modules-generic

Score is 119

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] n
Resolving dependencies...

*** No more solutions available ***

The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
linux-backports-modules-generic

Score is 119

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] q
Abandoning all efforts to resolve these dependencies.
Abort.