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Re: Question re Debian versions



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"Monique Y. Herman" <spam@bounceswoosh.org> writes:

> On 2004-03-19, Michael Satterwhite penned:
>>
>> On Thursday 18 March 2004 17:31, Brian Nelson wrote:
>>>
>>> However, testing tends to be more broken than unstable.  Testing
>>> works well right now since we're near a release and almost everything
>>> in there is in a releasable state, but after sarge releases, watch
>>> out.
>>
>> I'm sure I'm missing something here. I would expect that the Testing
>> version becomes more unstable after the current Sid becomes the
>> Testing version (which is why I wouldn't update from Sarge to ??? for
>> a few months). But are you *REALLY* saying that the new Testing
>> version will be more unstable than the new Unstable version??
>> Something seems wrong with that picture.
>
> I'm not sure that "less stable" is the right term, but "less usable"
> almost certainly is.

backports.org is your friend.

> Unstable is where bug fixes, new packages, etc are first introduced into
> a debian distribution.  (There's also something called "experimental,"
> but that's not a proper distribution.)

The important ones, like security updates, make it down pretty quickly.

> Say you have package A that makes it past unstable and into testing.
> Then someone finds a bug in package A.  It turns out to be an icky bug,
> and it takes quite a while to fix it.  The bug will be fixed in unstable
> before trickling down into testing.

And in unstable, a package can be broken for months.  It's really not
for people who aren't ready to work for it at times.

> Also, look at security updates.  Updates are provided for stable and
> unstable almost immediately.  Then those using testing distributions
> must wait the allotted amount of time before receiving the unstable
> update in testing.

If you're in a spot where security is absolutely critical, you should
only be using stable anyway.

- -- 
 .''`.     Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.ca>
: :'  :    
`. `'`     proud Debian admin and user
  `-       Debian.  Because it *must* work.  debian.org   aboutdebian.com
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