[wellylug] Debian and latest XFree86

Richard Hector rhector at paradise.net.nz
Thu Jun 5 20:58:23 NZST 2003


On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 08:11:10PM +1200, Andrew Garrett wrote:
> 
> Stable is for paranoid (you know, professionally so) people to run on
> servers.  Testing is fine for workstations.  Unstable is for people who
> don't mind so much if things break once in a while, or who only dist-upgrade
> when they know they have a few spare hours to fix anything that breaks.
> 
> IMNSHO, the debian distribution labels are a tad misleading - I tend to
> think of them as Stable = Rock Solid, Testing = Stable, Unstable = Still
> Pretty Damn Stable.

Remember that the stability referred to isn't the software itself; it's the
dependencies, and how often the software changes. And testing gets its fair
share of changes, some of which can break things quite severely. Often this
is only for a short time, such as while a new version of libc comes out and
the rest of the packages take a while to catch up, but if that's when you
happen to do an upgrade, it can leave you with quite a mess. And not only
do you need a few hours to fix things, you need a few clues about how the
system works.

Another point is that the security team produce fixes for security bugs in
stable, but not unstable.

Personally, though I've been running debian for a couple of years, and on
several boxes, I'm more comfortable with stable.

I'd pick testing if I was forever playing around and testing things, or if
I was doing development that needed the latest versions of all the libraries,
but since I just want my box to keep working, I prefer stable.
 
> Or, to say it more simply - I think you'd be fine with Sarge.

Well, I don't know the OP, so I won't back that.

YMMV

Richard




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