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Re: How to keep debian current??



On Sat, May 15, 2010 at 10:17 -0500, Hugo Vanwoerkom wrote:
> Alan Ianson wrote:
> >On Fri May 14 2010 11:22:54 pm Ron Johnson wrote:

> >Yep, even though it's called unstable it's like a rock.. :)
> Indeed, and that needs to be stressed. "Unstable" it may be called
> but I find it very stable, as long as you don't burn your bridges
> behind you.

Please don't mix up Debian's definition of stable with the sense of
stable meaning "Not SNAFUing the system". Stable releases in Debian are
those in which no packages will be added or new versions introduced.
Changes to stable are meant to only fix security issues and critical
bugs. This has the side-effect of not breaking your system most of the
time and Debian stable releases are therefore regarded as being
rock-solid (or stable).

The rationale behind this is that system administrators can be sure that
no backward incompatible changes in the API/ABI of the installed
software is introduced and that the behaviour of an installed and
configured system does not change when you install upgrades.

Testing and Unstable are rolling releases that are allowed to introduce
new packages and versions, but this does not mean that new packages are
likely to break your system. It might happen, but DDs strive for
providing high quality packages and these rolling releases can therefore
be regarded as being "stable" in the sense you used above.
-- 
  .''`.     Wolodja Wentland    <wentland@cl.uni-heidelberg.de> 
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