It's the command line. The command does what the user asks it to do. That is what's supposed to happen. It does ask you if you are sure and want to go ahead before installing and listing everything it will install. Unless the user gives it the -y option it always asks. That is the time to read what's on the screen and act on it. I ran the command in an experimental pi and even though it gave me a huge list of packages that were going to be installed if I pressed the Y key, and by huge I really mean huge list. You actually have to go out of your way for this command to not show the list of things that are going to be installed/updated and not ask you if you really want to do it.I am shocked and appalled at the level of "blame the victim" (*) that is going on here.
It is 100% clear to me that if apt thinks uninstalling systemd is the right thing to do - and is what the user wants to happen - then something is wrong. That should cause apt (and/or apt-get) to put up a red flag that says "I'm not doing this".
BTW, I got burned by this recently. Luckily, it was a pretty much fresh install, so little was lost.
It boils down to: If you are doing anything with apt more complicated than a simple "apt install something", you should run it first with -s and see what it plans to do. That's the lesson I learned from my recent adventure.
(*) And "circle the wagons".
Same goes for sudo rm -rf / or any of its variants. The user is issuing the command. With very few exceptions, it is upon the user to find out what the command does and how it works before running it. If when tech support tells me to run something I ask what it does and why I am supposed to be running it.
It is unfortunate it happened, but the command did what it was told to do.
Statistics: Posted by memjr — Wed May 29, 2024 5:35 am