On 05/11/10 15:54, ZephyrQ wrote:
In my case, I'd say that I notice something important is broken about three or four times a year, and it's usually sound. If it takes more than about half an hour to fix, I'd call it serious and I'd guess that happens less than once a year, more than once in two years.Andrei Popescu wrote:On Vi, 05 nov 10, 10:18:04, John Hasler wrote:Drew writes:Consider installing apt-listbugs if you're going to run sid.Good point. Also, don't feel that you should "track" Unstable. Upgrade individual packages as needed and do an occasional dist-upgrade if you feel the need to clean things up.Still, upgrading too seldom can make the upgrade more painful, even for testing. YMMV, of course.I hate to ask the question this way, but in terms of problems/fixes/downtime--approximately how often do you find that you have to 'fix' something in Sid? 1x week, 1x month? (I know that my MMV, but if I start playing with either testing or unstable, I don't want to get into a problem/find fix/fix lather/rinse/repeat cycle too often).
The last minor one was about a week ago, when a grub update prevented booting for those who have a separate /boot partition (*not* the first time that's happened, and for the same reason as last time, so at least it was an easy fix). I have twice in about seven years met something beyond my ability to fix (and one of those concerned grub) and needed to reinstall. But it's a workstation, so there's nothing important stored on it, and I take frequent backups of /etc and the package list. I also have other computers, which is important if you consider running sid.
I do upgrade pretty well every day, because the backlog builds up very quickly otherwise. Depending on the position in the release cycle, a download average of 70-80MB/day for a week or two is not unusual, and I'd rather not deal with a week of that at a time. 5-10 minutes a day is manageable, I'd prefer that it wasn't a one-hour session, as I'd keep putting it off until it was a three- or four-hour one.
-- Joe