On 7/29/07, Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:
ciol <ciol13@gmail.com> writes:
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Are you aware of backports.org?
> But backports are recompiled packages from testing, and for instance
> testing is still with iceweasel 2.0.0.3. How is it possible to improve
> this?
In the case of Iceweasel, stable already has
2.0.0.5, as this was a security update. There is supposed to be a testing security team, but evidently they haven't gotten around to the Iceweasel fix. Honestly, it is a bit weird - but a fact of the release system - that testing is actually *behind* stable in the particular case.
If you want to run absolutely bleeding edge code, you have to run
unstable; there's no way around it. Otherwise, you still have to wait for
testing and stabilization of packages. In my experience, that solves more
problems than it creates; I run testing on my primary desktop for the
additional stability and run unstable on my other systems so that I can
test.
This is the problem - most users (mission-critical servers excepted) want to get certain updates on an as-needed or wanted basis. Sometimes this is absolutely necessary especially towards the end of a release's lifespan when most new hardware simply won't work without certain updates. However, they DON'T want a system in constant flux where some major component could break any minute, which is what unstable or even testing is.
Anyway, I guess I'm getting the impression that Debian and its users are more oriented towards the mission-critical server than the average desktop user. I.e. - you're competing more with OpenBSD than with Windows Vista or even Ubuntu (which is, of course, Debian-based). That's fine with me - I definitely know Debian would be my first choice for a mission-critical server. However, my concern is more towards the desktop, and as such I may continue to investigate other distributions.
I appreciate what you're doing - keep up the good work...
Tim