Re: Possible New User - Intro
On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:16:46 -0600
Kevin Monceaux <Kevin@RawFedDogs.net> wrote:
> > The thing to remember about Debian -- when a release goes "Stable"
> > then it doesn't change, except for security fixes. So if you
> > install etch, you will NEVER see a new version of Hercules other
> > than security patches.
>
> That's good to know. When Etch goes "Stable" does Sid move up to
> "Testing".
Sid is always Still In Development. The new testing will be Lenny,
which will start as a copy of Etch.
> > You can certainly run a mixed system using a "Stable" installation
> > and then various packages from "testing" and "unstable". This is a
> > complicated setup and *can* break if there is a major library
> > change in the newer releases. Also you can run backports of various
> > packages, if they are available. YOu can also pull the source from
> > testing or unstable and build your own backports.
>
> All sound like possibilities worth exploring. And, thanks to VMWare
> I can even experiment without affecting my main box. Can one switch
> from one version to another, from Etch to Sid for example, by simply
> updating sources.list and running an update/upgrade? I do like the
> "rolling update" feature some distribution, such as Arch, have.
Debian is a master of such updates. The upgrade path between stable
releases is tested and documented. It is said there are users that
didn't reinstall for more than 10 years.
Upgrading testing to unstable is not officially supported, but done
pretty often without (major) problem. I did myself an upgrade from
sarge (stable) directly to sid. This involved the transition from
XFree86 to Xorg and introduction of udev. It wasn't without a glitch,
but it worked.
Regards,
Andrei
--
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)
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