Re: Many packages missing from testing

[Johan Kullstam <kullstj-ml@comcast.net>]

loos <loos@qt1.iq.usp.br> writes:

[snip rant against "testing"]

> I just totally agree with you. A little difference, I switch my
> production machines (stable) to testing somewhere during the "frozen"
> time (of course using testing real name. I prefer having a manual
> control on the oldstable->newstable update. I am around since ham and
> this worked without problems for me.

I agree.  The fixed names are much better.  There was a thread here a
while back (6 months, a year?) about making the default be a fixed
name like "woody", "sarge" or "etch", rather than "stable".  I think
that would be a much better default.

> My desktops use unstable.

As are mine.  Sid is pretty solid for me so far.  I can recover from
most of the mishaps.  But at work I do worry since I could lose hard
if things go really badly.  I guess that's why they make stable.  But
that's so boring ;-).

> The problem is always the same: Newbies don't understand the sense of
> the word "unstable" as used by Debian. 
> In fact they lack understanding what a distribution is, and therefore
> what a stable (or unstable) distribution is.

Exactly.  I was using "testing" for a while and got tired of losing
when a package broke and wouldn't get fixed for ages.

Of course, a savvy user could default to testing and drag in unstable
(with whatever pre-reqs) whenever a breakage occured.  Perhaps this
method could be made more known.

-- 
Johan KULLSTAM