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Re: Is Wheezy going to be more stable than Squeeze?



On 28/10/12 02:43 PM, Russell Gadd wrote:
Is Debian Wheezy going to be any better than Squeeze when it's
released? I know this is a leading question since many of you may
think Squeeze couldn't be faulted.

Better in what way I hear you ask. Well really my main focus is
stability. My experience with Squeeze was patchy. I originally got
into Linux with Sarge then Lenny and Squeeze. I was happy until
Squeeze but I was never impressed with the quality of Squeeze, so I
migrated to Linux Mint.

I can't remember many details, but one issue stands out in my memory.
When printing a second document to my HP Laserjet it would wait up to
4 seconds before the GUI panel to initiate the print would complete.
This was reported as a bug but not solved at least for many weeks
until I finally got fed up and went to Linux Mint. I'm not sure if it
was ever fixed. As Mint was a derivative of Ubuntu which itself was a
derivative of Debian I don't know why the bug didn't show up there -
maybe more effort is made these days by the derivative development
teams? Or is it because they are much larger, in which case I should
stick with a derivative distro maybe.

Now I find that Mint 13 is less impressive than when I started with it
(Mint 9 or 10 I believe). Also they have split the distro into 2 and
appear to be more enthusiastic regarding the Cinnamon version which is
more experimental and therefore less stable. So I think the future of
the current more stable Maya version is likely to be more patchy as
time goes on despite it being a long term support version (which was
attractive to me as I don't want to keep swapping around). There are
already bugs in Firefox which have reappeared after having been fixed.

I tried Ubuntu but I always found some problems with it and with the
latest version the user interface is beyond my patience to try to get
used to its odd pseudo-tablet way of working. I have a tablet but this
is for a PC not yet endowed with a touch screen, and anyway I'd still
want a keyboard. Maybe in the future the PC system will evolve that
way but I don't see it's there yet.

So I wonder if it's time to be thinking about a possible move back to
granddaddy Debian. I will wait until the official release of Wheezy so
I have time to ponder the question. I'm in no hurry but I'd love to be
able to use it if it is likely to be stable during its lifetime. At
this stage I am wondering if it's going to be worth the effort to
properly trial it. Your views could perhaps help me to make the
decision.

I'm just looking for a desktop PC OS which is a practical workhorse
for everyday needs. Any mainstream modern Linux would probably suit in
terms of facilities. Of course the choice of desktop will be material
and comments on that will be welcome. I used Gnome rather than KDE. I
don't need flashy features and don't want to customise it heavily. I'm
prepared to make some changes to the way of working if not too
radical. I can find my way around using a terminal perhaps writing
simple scripts for backing up, etc. but not really wanting to get
immersed in the technicalities.

Really I'm just looking for personal views not necessarily with any
particularly well-reasoned justification. For example someone might
say "Well of course when Squeeze was first launched the development
teams were distracted by the problem of ...." (this is just by way of
example only, I have no reason to believe it may be true)

I expect this post could cause annoyance in some quarters but I can
stand abuse if you want to give it. However positive thoughts would be
more welcome. I just thought I'd throw out the question and see what
responses come.
I've never had any problems with Squeeze myself, but then I run it on servers. Workstations usually have more software installed so they are harder to upgrade properly. Sometimes going back to a fresh install cures a lot of problems.

Another issue with workstations is that the software usually has more complex data files to upgrade. It's easy to lose information in an upgrade.

However, your issue seems to be minor bugs more than stability. Frankly, I'm amazed that software works at all considering what today's developers are trying to do with it. I'm afraid we're always going to have some bugs in our systems and not all bugs can stay squashed.

Personally, I run Testing on my desktop and find it stable enough. There are some problems from time to time, but the extra features in the newer software usually makes enough of a difference to make Wheezy worthwhile.


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