MX Linux Forum

This is a general question, mainly for the developers, QSI is not needed
Newer is not always better, and sometimes updates break things that were working fine.
So, the question is, when an update breaks something, or introduce unwanted change, is there a way to roll back to an earlier version?

hasmak wrote: ↑Sat Nov 09, 2024 6:14 pm This is a general question, mainly for the developers, QSI is not needed
Newer is not always better, and sometimes updates break things that were working fine.
So, the question is, when an update breaks something, or introduce unwanted change, is there a way to roll back to an earlier version?

Depends what was broken by the updates.
In simplest case, where only one or so packages are involved, just downgrade to on earlier version,
if you still have such a deb-package.
Otherwise, rollback with timeshift, in case you have prepared a timeshift-snapshot.

If it is a Debian package, and you do not still have it, you can usually find it here:

https://snapshot.debian.org/

Unfortunately not. You must be prepared for this as already mentioned. Timeshift in the past has personally failed me but even if it works it's too much for the case you just want to roll back a certain program. My personal solution is to never clean the downloaded packages apt cache [/var/cache/apt/archives/]. It costs space but it's a quick and reliable solution for these cases.

I have used timeshift since coming to MX and it has worked for me every single time.

You DO have to understand that by default timeshift does not backup anything in the user files, so there is that. However, if you make a timeshift snapshot each time before you update (or have it done once a day on a schedule), then you can roll it back and it *should* work just fine.

Timeshift did have some issues in the past, but I have not seen any issues with it the last four years.

Aptitude is really good at rolling back to a previous version of a package if you specify the version desired, and understand that its dependency resolution may require several tries at it.

The previous version also needs to still be the enabled repositories.

Thanks to all for the valuable input
Timeshift is not an option for me, it can only work on a Linux formatted partition, and I don't have much space on my Linux partition.
Synaptic, like aptitude, has the ability to list available versions, and lock version. But the reality is that there are no available versions on the repo
In many cases you can find older versions on the developer's site, and that can be useful
It would be a nice feature if MXPI can keep track of changes and offer the option to roll back (wishful thinking)
I'll check Debian snapshot
Fore the time being, I'll just stick to the wise principle "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
I have disabled update notification, and will only update individual package when I need to.
I also have a habit of making a complete snapshot on an external drive before any major update, this has served me well in the past.
Thanks again to everyone
Have a nice day