Re: moving to Debian
On Wednesday 12 December 2001 11:08 pm, Matt Greer wrote:
> If I did decide on woody, how exactly would I install it? I know that
> question has been asked many times, but I'm confused about the optimal way
> to do it. Most seem to suggest installing a very minimal potato (although
> what "minimal" means I'm not exactly sure, kernel, modules, bash, apt?),
> then do "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade". This would require unstable
> sources in my source.list file, right?
No -- you'd need testing sources in your sources.list file. Debian has three
different versions: stable, testing and unstable. "Minimal" generally means
a base install, with things like a kernel, MTA, basic libs, etc. but nothing
like apache, X, Perl, etc. Then, you apt-get your way to Woody (or Sid --
see below) and start installing all the extras that you want.
> Does this upgrade the kernel and/or lilo? Just reboot and there's woody?
It upgrades everything except the kernel. That you have to do manually,
though you can still use the debian package management tools to help you.
> Sorry if I'm being too vague. I no longer have Debian installed. My
> computer is the gateway/NAT for my LAN, and people weren't willing to have
> their net connection go up and down so I could play :) (I'm looking into
> getting a dedicated server for that).
Honestly, I'd recommend skipping testing and going straight to unstable.
Despite the name, unstable is quite acceptable as a desktop machine. I
wouldn't run it as a server, but I wouldn't run testing on a server, either.
Testing has too many dependency conflicts that don't get resolved in a
timely fashion because of the way testing works. Testing really isn't meant
for human consumption, IMO. When unstable has problems, they're generally
resolved within a day or two.
I had more problems running testing than I've had since I've moved to Sid.
YMMV, however.
hth
--kurt
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