Re: Benefits (and risks) of using Sid

[Paul Scott <pslist@ultrasw.com>]

Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 05, 2008 at 02:09:34PM +0100, andy wrote:
>   
>> Hi all
>>
>> This is just a general enquiry about the benefits of using Sid on a  
>> desktop or a workstation. Aside from obtaining up-to-the-minute software  
>> (and related patches), are there any other benefits to using Sid? I am  
>> aware of the risks - i.e. frequently broken applications - but to be  
>> honest, how often does this happen?
>>
>> Any thoughts (no flames please - I recycled my asbestos suit!!)
>>     
>
> I find sid doesn't break that often for me. I can think of maybe two
> instances in the past three years where I've had a serious enough
> breakage that I had to stop everything else to solve the problem. 
>
> Lately though, I've gotten lazy and haven't kept up with the
> updates. I'm probably running closer to lenny at the moment... If you
> don't keep up with the updates, you quickly fall *way* behind and have
> to plan the updates. If you do it every day, it's no big deal... a
> handful of packages. If you wait a week, you have to stop and think
> and pay close attention. If you wait a month, set aside a couple of
> hours in case something get's hosed because you'll be updating
> hundreds of packages. 
>   
My essential point is to install apt-listbugs as soon as possible and
use the information it gives to either wait for the problem to be fixed
or research the problem.  I have no idea whether apt-listbugs is part of
the basic installation.

I might be concerned right now because the current version of apt has
some bugs.

aptitude makes it easy to "plan the updates"

Paul Scott