On Thu, 26 May 2005, SA wrote: You know what they say, there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers ;-) Anyway,First thing, I wouldn't count on the release date of sarge, on the other its rather stable at the moment. As for releases, when its not near its release date (as sarge IS for a few months now) testing tends to be the most unstable, since most bugs don't propagate, but when they do they stay for a few months. Also, on a normal basis, testing doesn't get security updates.
If you don't mind fixing the small problem every few months or waiting a day for updates then unstable (sid) is the most cutting edge. Its usually the most appropriate for the desktop, although there are a few religus wars about it.
If you're running a server or you want a very stable system at the price of using older packages (only security updates go through, nothing else, so it will become outdated over time) the stable is what you want.
If you choose stable, I would go with sarge as opposed to testing. The slight difference being that sarge is in feature freeze so is rather stable now and will become the stable distribution (hopefully in a short while), while testing will go on to be something else at that point, and woody (current) is VERY old and would be more of a pain to upgrade once sarge is officially stable.
Personaly I use sid for the desktop, sarge for a newer server (about 6 months) and woody for a server thats been running for two years now at the moment.
Dear List, I wanted to install debian on an amd64 / x86_64 SMP machine from IOS images, I can't find a suitable set of images on the mirrors I have looked for these but they are absent. I have found amd64.debian.org however I am still a little confused: Since sarge is due out at the end of the month and this is due to contain a mainstream amd64 distro should I wait unitl next week to do this? If this isn't t the best idea (I am in a hurry and I guess this date might slip) what distro should I use? (I would prefer a 64 bit version). There SID and SARGE. I am not sure which represents the safest or the most cutting edge (testing or unstable)? My feeling to go to for the most mainstream which I think is the sarge distro, is this correct? If I use the sarge distro, will this be able to automatically link and update from the sarge tree once it becomes a mainstream release? Is this a sensible idea? - I use debian on my alpha box and find it extremely reliable and I am looking for an alternative for my many PC varients all of which currently run FC1/2/3 (which is beginning to prove irritating enough to switch). Cheers, SA