On Wed, Oct 09, 2002 at 09:39:33AM +0530, J.S.Sahambi wrote: > It might be a stupid question, but I want to know how one relates Woody, > Sid and Testing, Stable and unstable distributions? Debian is constantly working on three distributions: Unstable, Testing and Stable. The Debian developers upload packages to Unstable, and, if they're relatively bug-free, then onto Testing after two weeks. Every now and then (currently every ~2 years), Debian releases a new Stable. Stable is only ever updated by security patches and extremely serious bug fixes, until the next Stable is released a lot later. Each distribution has a codename: Unstable is always called Sid, Testing is currently called Sarge, and Stable is called Woody. When the next Stable release is made, Sid will remain Sid, Sarge will become Stable, and Testing will get a new name. Debian Stable is stable as anything...it's always rather behind the times software-wise, but it Just Works. Debian Testing is also fairly stable; the two week buffer from unstable means that it's insulated from the worst of instability, but you're still going to need to know a bit about how to fix your system should it get messed up, or at least have a knowlegdable friend. Debian Unstable is where the action is. Major changes happen here continuously; at the moment, it's switching to Perl 5.8, XFree86 4.2 and will be moving to GCC 3.2 soon. It's also fairly stable, but you want to keep an eye on things...If you need Perl working right now, for instance, hold back on the apt-get dist-upgrade for a while, until things are all sorted out. > Another question: I wanted to install avidemux but my "apt-cache search > avidemux" did not give me anything. My sourses.lst file is: > > deb http://202.141.80.72/debian testing main non-free contrib > deb http://202.141.80.72/debian-non-US testing/non-US main non-free contrib Is it in Debian? If it's in unstable and you want to get it without completely moving to sid, then look through the mailing list archives for `apt pin preferences'. It's quite easy to do, but I can't remember off the top of my head. -rob
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