Re: Debian has turned unusable.
On 2004-04-12, Kevin Ruml penned:
> This topic/suggestion that desktop users should use "unstable" rather
> than "stable", since it's no more unstable than other distros latest
> releases, comes up regularly. What is the reason "unstable" isn't
> renamed to something else to dispel the stigma the name gives? Not
> necessarily "desktop", but there has to be something better than
> "unstable". I've been using Sid on my desktop system for years with
> only a couple glitches over that time period (requiring not "apt-get
> update"ing for a few days 'til it sorted itself out). I'm sure there
> are a number of suggestions forthcoming - "latest" maybe.
>
I'm not sure I agree with your first point. Is it really no more
unstable than the latest releases of other distros? I haven't used
another distro in years, so I can't say that you're wrong, but I don't
know if you're right.
It seems to me that the real solution would be to somehow force would-be
debian admins to read a document describing, in excruciating detail, the
differences among versions.
This is a start:
<http://www.debian.org/releases/>
... but it doesn't explain everything. It does not, for example,
explain that there have not been substantive changes since whenever
Woody became stable ... and the specified release date of Nov. 2003 is
downright misleading.
It's frustrating to see users misunderstanding the characteristics of
stable, testing, and unstable, but when I think about it, this is
information I have acquired over time by reading this list -- it was not
intuitively obvious, nor something I gleaned from reading any debian
docs.
Is there something akin to a "Howto choose a debian distribution"
document somewhere on the debian site? If not, this sounds like
something I could write.
--
monique
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