Kai Grossjohann <kgrossjo@eu.uu.net> writes: > People at my site wish to migrate away from Debian stable to > something more current. I understand that unstable is more bleeding > edge than testing, and that there is some kind of automatic process > whereby packages migrate from unstable to testing. (That automatic > process makes sure there are no (critical?) bugs filed against the > package, and I think that a package needs to ripen for some time in > unstable, before being allowed to migrate to testing.) > > One can compare the distributions along several dimensions. Here are > some of them. I'd appreciate any comments you might have. Below, I'm > arguing in favor of unstable and against testing (as devil's advocate, > if you will). What do you think about those arguments? Prove me > wrong! 8-) > > * Number of bugs. > > One might think that testing has fewer bugs than unstable. But the > truth is, since testing is an automatic process against filed bug > reports, bugs can always creep in there before they are discovered > and filed. And, what's more, problems will be fixed much quicker in > unstable than in testing, due to the ripening required in testing. Correct. > * Security fixes. > > Security fixes come automatically with the new package installs in > unstable, whereas the security fixes department in the testing > distribution is not to be relied upon. Also correct. Testing can actually be more broken than unstable during transitional phases, since it can take a long time for a transition to completely move to testing. And, a major package like libc6 being broken can bring testing to a standstill for a loooong time. However, when close to a new release (we're pretty close to one now), testing can be very stable, usable, and up-to-date. Personally, I think anyone who runs testing any time not within a month or two of a release is absolutely insane, but a lot of people do it anyway and seem happy with it. I run unstable on all of my machines and very rarely have any problems. YMMV. -- Don't worry, it's *in*-flammable.
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