Ryo Furue wrote:
Erik Steffl <steffl@bigfoot.com> wrote in message news:<2lhXD-6aE-7@gated-at.bofh.it>...Ryo Furue wrote:[...]In fact I looked at the homepage of nptl. That was kind of scary to me :) The page says that you need to use a rather new kernel and libc.[...]I don't think you can expect a really old version of debian to support new software. If you want to use new software use new software.Excuse me, but I interpret what you say in two ways: 1) The current stable version (which I use) is "old"; 2) You thought I was using an obsolete version (potate or earlier). I don't know which is the correct interpretation, although your reference to "unstable" seems to suggest (1). I'm using the "newest" stable version. :)
it's [1]. debian has very slow release cycles, but unstable is much better quality than you'd expect from name. In general I see unstable being equal to latest releases of other distros (both features and stability) while stable is extremely (the kind you need for servers) but does not have all the latest features.
unstable/stable terms don't only mean how many bugs and how robust the distros are, it also refers to the feature set - stable does not change anymore (bugfixes, including security fixes, are released but that's it), unstable changes all the time - new software and new releases of existing software.
in lot of cases debian stable is simply too old, sometime you can install whatever it's missing yourself, sometime it's better to go to unstable. There are also few options in between (there are new non-standard debs available (I forgot where, you'd have to ask/search), you can install _some_ packages from unstable distro etc.)
I don't see how this is different in windows or redhat or anything else.But, vendors don't sell Windows software that doesn't work on the current version of Windows XP. Perhaps, in your perception,
of course they do, do you remember example of game I bought and couldn't make it work on win xp pro while it was running fine on win98 (that was few month ago, win xp was out for quite some time) [the game is RC Cars published by Whiptail Interactive, developed by Creat Studio, relese date 12/11/2003]
the unstable version of Debian is "the" current version? :) If that be so, the name "unstable" is misleading, which has scared me off thus far.
well, it's a topic of long discussions:-) debian is well known for releasing new stable versions fairly infrequently so for many people the stable version is just not that useful - no support for latest HW, old versions of software...
erik