"Alan Ianson" wrote in message [🔎] 200701282014.09436.alianson@shaw.ca">news:[🔎] 200701282014.09436.alianson@shaw.ca...
On Sun January 28 2007 19:44, Oliver Twist wrote:I am a soon-to-be new user of Debian. I have been using other (particularly live) distros for a while to learn linux, but I very much want to move to Debian. In any case, with a new major release (etch - 4.0) coming out soon, I amwondering which release to use right now... the testing release of 4.0 orthe stable release of 3.1 ? A few concerns: 1) How long will security updates be maintained for 3.1 once 4.0 becomes "stable"?Around 1 year, woody was supported for that long after sarge was released.
Etch will be supported for 1 year or untill the release of etch+1: "Lenny", whichever comes first. (Wither way, it should be around a year)
2) If I do choose 3.1 for now, will I soon find it necessary to move to 4.0?Once the security support has stopped I would upgrade.
Yes, although It is likely that a reasonable end user would want to upgrade sooner,
especially considering that backports to old-stable are quite uncommon.
Agreed. There is a slight possibility things could break. But Etch is still far more stable3) Any particular reason why it may not be good to pick 4.0 at this point?Not really (in my view). I'm running etch now and I couldn't be happier. It is still testing so it's possible stuff could happen but etch has been downright stable for some time now although there are still rc bugs being worked out.
then the "stable" versions of most other distros.