Alejandro Salas wrote:
Currently unstable IMHO is not in a great shape. There are a lot of transitions going on (KDE, g++) etc., and there is a freetype transition (http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005/11/msg00016.html) coming up. But if you are fine with couple of packages not working 'once in a while' then you can install it.Hello everyone, When I installed it I went for the Stable version, but now I'm thinking of switching over either to Testing or to Unstable. First I wanted to ask how unstable the Unstable distro is?.
It is a one way process (well at least for newbies) from stable to testing to unstable. The downgrading (ie unstable to testing to stable) is not supported and users usually have problems doing a downgrade.Cuz I heard that most of the time you can work with it pretty well. The other thing is, Do I need to reinstall the system?, or is there a safe way to change distros without reinstalling?.
Upgrading from stable to testing to unstable should not involve any reinstallation. You can just update your sources.list and do 'apt-get update' followed by 'apt-get dist-upgrade' or 'apt-get upgrade'
Upgrading most probably does not require a reinstall. But downgrading might require a reinstall (or spending lots of time with configuration files)...Being as paranoid as I am I'll probably reinstall, but I wanted to know anyway.
You might find my document http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/debian_choosing_distribution.html useful. It answers some of your questions in more detail than what I explained here.
hth raju -- Kamaraju S Kusumanchi http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/ http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/