Re: Why I left Debian

[Jerome BENOIT <jgmbenoit@mailsnare.net>]

Bruno wrote:
> On Saturday 28 October 2006 15:37, Jerome BENOIT wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > why did you not try first the current stable version of Debian ?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Jerome
> >
> > Bruno wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I really do not want to start any flame here but after all, as I used
> > > Debian for few months, I find honest to say why I'm leaving it.
> > >
> > > So few months ago, I installed etch on my laptop (previously had Fedora-5
> > > on it) just to try it and because I think is good and important to try
> > > other distros when you have some free partition / computer and time to do
> > > it.
> > >
> > > Hereafter main problems encountered (some recurrent) these last months :
> > >
> > > - as I installed etch around 50% of shutdowns never complete. So common
> > > that I was used to unplug battery simply to shutdown. Same for 'logout
> > > session' which allways freeze the laptop with a new login attempt.
> > >
> > > - recently I had to 'pinning' apt-get (or dpkg..do not remember..) on
> > > previous version because latest version continuously break apt-get
> > > repository. Only cost few hours of googling to find a solution.
> > >
> > > - 'kde su root' reject root password (...which was accepted in a 'su
> > > root' in a console)
> > >
> > > - flgrx / mesa / libGL often block apt-get update/upgrade seems because
> > > of a dependency about libGL. Difficult to install a 3D system but even
> > > more difficult to keep it stable that I decide to forget 3D when using
> > > etch on my laptop.
> > >
> > > - others..sorry only remember hours of googling to find solutions..
> > >
> > > Once again I do not want to start any flame here : indeed Debian is a
> > > superb distro (packaging system is really superb) but, IMHO, dedicated to
> > > 'Linux techies' ?
> > > However my conclusion is this week-end I'll move back to Fedora (even if
> > > yum is so far behind dpkg).
> > >
> > > Bye,
> > > Bruno
> > --
> > Jerome BENOIT
> > jgmbenoit_at_mailsnare_dot_net
>
> You're right. However IMHO versioning at Debian looks confusing, or (more 
> correctly) at least make me confused : Etch is out since a long time now and 
> people (obvously wrongly) consider it as 99+% mature even if 
> labelled 'testing'.

Cycles are long for Debian: the criteria is stability and nothing else:
so `testing' really means testing as you had noticed despite yourself,
`unstable' is really unstable, and `stable' is solid rock.
When you install testing on your box, you must be ready for the worst:
a few days ago there were troubles with the Xorg stuff, namely no more
working Xserver: I you are not ready to face this kind of issue,
you must consider the `stable' distribution. With some experience, you can
easily manage issue in testing, but first you must familiarise yourself with
the stable distribution.


> In fact, I read somewhere that the delivery cycle will be reviewed to make it 
> more 'readable' (I didn't wrote 'commercial'), is that correct ? 

I have not heard about this part.

Jerome

>

--
Jerome BENOIT
jgmbenoit_at_mailsnare_dot_net