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Re: Redhat user wishing to try Debian - confused.



In article <AI5w.8l5.479@gated-at.bofh.it>, Tarun Ramakrishna Elankath wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I suppose this has been asked before on the list, so please pardon me.
> 
> I wish to install Debian and take advantage of its package management
> system. However I read that one mustn't try the stable release of Debian
> as its very old, and must go for the unstable release instead.
> 
> I am now rather confused on whether to download Sid, Woody or Sarge.
> 
> Any help/tips/advice to an intermediate linux user/developer wishing to
> install Debian would be much appreciated.

You should probably download stable, unless you feel like trying out a 
new, bleeding edge debian installer (might be worth it, I haven't tried 
it yet). You can upgrade from there. (This is the preffered way to 
install testing or unstable)

Woody (stable) practically never gets new features, in about 6 months 
Sarge should become stable with a newer set of features, and you can 
then just upgrade if you feel like it.

Sarge (testing) gets updated approximately continuously, its software is 
about two weeks to a month old generally, although GNOME and KDE aren't 
quite complete in sarge (we're waiting for GNOME 2.2 and KDE 3.1 
packages to finish propagating into Sarge). When Sarge becomes stable in 
about 6 months, all of this is expected to have completed. When sarge 
becomes stable, it stops updating and becomes dated in much the same way 
that woody is right now.

Unstable will carry even newer software, but sometimes it breaks (I 
haven't seen a bad breakage recently, in fact running the mixed 
testing/unstable box that I run tends to break a bit more and require 
more human intervention in upgrades).

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