On 0, Joe Biron <joe@josephbiron.com> wrote: > Could someone point a newbie to an explanation of the Debian release > universe? A friend explained it to me as "Woody is the newest... you > want Woody". Well, is Potato then the "stable" and Woody the "testing"? Yes. > My \etc\apt\sources.list is > > #deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free > #deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib > non-free > #deb http://security.debian.org stable/updates main contrib non-free > #deb http://debian.yorku.ca/debian/non-US stable main contrib non-free > > # Uncomment if you want the apt-get source function to work > #deb-src http://http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib non-free > #deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable non-US > > # added for Ximian gnome > deb http://red-carpet.ximian.com/debian stable main > > # added for woody update > deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib > deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib > non-free Looks good. > Now, I'm not just a Debian newbie, I'm sort of a Linux intermediabie, > and as I edited sources.list, I had no clue as to what I was doing, but > nevertheless, I seem to have the latest versions of Debian (3.0?) and > GNOME, after hours of playing with apt-get. So I'm happy for now, but I > need some background. Potato is the stable release. This is the one you can get on 'official' CDs. Woody is the testing release - my advice is to install potato from a CD and then upgrade to woody off the network, which seems to be what you have done. In principle, woody is not stable, as it is still in testing status. In practise, woody is stable enough for most uses, and the packages in potato are too old for most uses. Eventually (in fact it may have already happened, I can't remember) woody will be frozen, outstanding bugs will be fixed as well as may be and then woody will become the stable distribution. Sid is the unstable distribution, and always is. When woody is released as stable, then all the packages in sid are migrated into the new testing distribution, which will have a new and different name. HTH (and is accurate) Tom -- Tom Cook Information Technology Services, The University of Adelaide "If it weren't for electricity we'd all be watching television by candlelight." - George Gobol Get my GPG public key: https://pinky.its.adelaide.edu.au/~tkcook/tom.cook-at-adelaide.edu.au
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