Re: Redhat user wishing to try Debian - confused.
On 28 Sep 2003 10:27:19 -0500, Shyamal Prasad <shyamal.prasad@sbcglobal.net> penned:
> "Tarun" == Tarun Ramakrishna Elankath <tarun@webkadai.com> writes:
>
> Tarun> I wish to install Debian and take advantage of its package
> Tarun> management system. However I read that one mustn't try the
> Tarun> stable release of Debian as its very old, and must go for
> Tarun> the unstable release instead.
>
> Stable was released in the summer of 2002, and frozen several months
> before that. So, yes, it does not have the latest versions of XFree86,
> KDE, Gnome, gcc and so on. But, as the name suggests, it is very, very
> stable, with excellent support for security patches.
>
> The testing version (sarge) is much more to "up to date" and is
> actually about as stable as a Linux distribution needs to be for
> almost all normal use.
>
> Sid is the bleeding edge where packages first enter the mainstream,
> and in theory it can be unstable and might break a few things some
> days and fix itself up a few days later. I've heard many people say it
> works pretty well (never tried it myself).
>
> Tarun> I am now rather confused on whether to download Sid, Woody
> Tarun> or Sarge.
>
> Tarun> Any help/tips/advice to an intermediate linux
> Tarun> user/developer wishing to install Debian would be much
> Tarun> appreciated.
>
> Ask your self what you want to do. I run Woody (stable) on server
> style machines (these have uptimes over 350 days, don't run an XServer
> etc.), and Sarge (testing) on my laptop. My home workstation actually
> runs Woody (I don't use GNOME/KDE etc. and my video card is a $20 Mach
> 64).
>
> One thing to do is to install Woody. Try it, and if it hurts, update
> to Sarge, and then even to Sid. The nice thing about Debian is you can
> do this ;-)
>
I've run stable, unstable, and testing in my day, all for different
reasons. I've personally found that, unless I need a rock-solid "this
will never, ever, ever, ever break" system, stable surpasses my pain
threshold for old versions. I've actually had fewer issues running
unstable than I have testing, so I certainly can recommend unstable if
you don't mind occasionally putting a package on hold till the system
maintainers get some stuff ironed out. The reason to use unstable is to
get the latest and greatest versions of everything (and even to get
*some* version of certain packages at all!).
Btw, on the upgrade process, it really is painless, so if you do choose
to start with stable, be assured that it's no big deal to move up to
testing or unstable. I upgraded from stable to unstable about a year
and a half ago on one of my machines, and it was no more painful than it
would have been to fetch the latest packages for the current system.
--
monique
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