Re: Debian is slower than time (was: adrian's 2.4.x packages)
> > As long as we say, "oh it's all right... just do it whenever you feel
> > like it", then that is what Debian will be: we get things done... umm...
> > whenever. I try to tell people how great the Debian distribution is,
> > but when I'm forced to mention that the last stable release is 2 years
> > old it looses some of its luster.
>
> I've always seen that as a plus. Great for servers, no?
No. We needed a form of web-mail on our servers. Oh, here's "imp".
Wait, it has bugs. Oh, those bugs have been fixed in "unstable" only.
Maybe I can just install that _one_ package from "unstable". No such
luck... The dependencies are waaaay off!
> And if you want an up to date workstation just run testing/unstable and
> you are way ahead of any other dist.
Good in theory, bad in practice.
So now, my servers run unstable because they need newer software. But
guess what... There is no security tracking. If a vulnerability is
found, there are no notices to tell me about it.
Upgrading constantly sounds good, but is a huge headache. Because it's
"unstable" there is no guarantee that an upgrade will use the some config-
file format or be in any way compatible with the previous release. In
fact, some bug may have slipped through that makes that particular version
completely unusable. Sure, it'll be fixed soon but until that time...
I don't have the time to re-certify all of the packages on all of my servers
every week. Once every 6 months I could do. In the intermediate time, I'd
love to be able to install bug fixes without having to worry about
compatibility.
Brian
( bcwhite@pobox.com )
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Until we are first independent, we cannot be interdependent.
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