Re: Debian has turned unusable.
Yea, verily, I say unto you that on this date (Mon, 12 Apr 2004 13:11:55
-0600) "Monique Y. Mudama" <spam@bounceswoosh.org> didst appear within
my Magick Viewing Screen and, being somewhat pleasantly supplicatory,
did polemicize thusly:
> Now, as I'm sure you know, Woody is the current stable incarnation of
> Debian. What you may not know is that "stable" refers to the whole
> distribution, not just one package. The debian developers test the
> hell out of a bunch of packages, and when everything is solid enough
> and works together, that set is released as the current stable
> version. New versions aren't added to stable; instead, the entire
> testing (sarge) set of packages is beat to death, then becomes the new
> stable distribution. The only changes to a stable distribution are
> patches to fix security issues. Thus, right now, shortly before a new
> stable release, Woody actually contains packages that are several
> years old.
>
> The contents of the stable distribution are *not* a commentary on the
> latest version of a package to be trustworthy. They are rather a set
> of packages that have been fully tested with one another and are known
> to be solid and work well together. Bear in mind, it's not just the
> upstream software that's at issue; it's also the package itself. If
> the debian package was not constructed properly, all sorts of trouble
> ensues.
Well said, as was the rest of your post. I would just like to add
(since no one else has(which I can barely believe)) that the 'unstable'
version is decidedly /stable/ for desktop/workstation use. I (no Linux
guru) have had uptimes of 60+ days and only that little because of
electrical outages. The version names are somewhat misleading,
therefore, because 'unstable' is quite as stable as some other distro's
newest and best.
Cybe R. Wizard -of course, YMMV and you get to keep both pieces if it
/does/ break
--
Unofficial "Wizard of Odds," A.H.P.
Original PORG "Water Wizard," R.P.
"Wize(ned) Wizard," A.P.F-P-Y.
Barely Tolerated Wizard, A.J.L & A.A.L
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