Re: Software version issue
On Mon, 6 Oct 2014 11:43:53 -0700
PETER ZOELLER <peter_zoeller@rogers.com> wrote:
>
>
> Hi:
>
> I have been using Debian for sometime and am happy with the
> distribution. However I recently experienced a problem with the Gimp
> supplied by Debian and contacted the Gimp organization with the issue
> I was having. I subsequently discovered through this contact that
> the version of Gimp supplied by Debian Wheezy is old.
>
> How do I make sure that the software Debian supplies is the most
> current? What change do I need to make to the sources list to get up
> to date software?
>
>
Nearly everything in Wheezy is old, dating from when Wheezy was the
testing distribution and became frozen. The point of the stable
distribution is that the software doesn't change, and therefore things
don't (generally) get broken by upgrades. Almost all of the upgrades to
stable are security-related, not fixes of functional bugs.
New software is introduced into unstable, always called Sid, and if it
survives without serious breakage for about two weeks, it gets moved
into testing, currently Jessie. Within a few weeks from now, Jessie will
be frozen, and from then on, there will be very few changes of software
version and no changes of system architecture. It will be released as
the new stable when all the release-critical bugs are removed, which
might typically take about six months. After the stable release, testing
will gain a new name and start evolving very quickly to catch up with
the last six months' new software, plus any system architecture changes
which were too late for the last release. After that, testing will be
back to two weeks behind unstable for a year or so.
So your choice is between testing and unstable, Jessie and Sid. Sid is
a rougher ride, more likely to have things broken at any time and
without warning, but for the next (approximately) six months it is the
only distribution which will receive new software. How new do you need?
Either way, you start by replacing Wheezy by Jessie. With a very
minimal text-only system it seems possible to jump straight from stable
to unstable (i.e. it has worked when I have tried it) but with a more
complex installation the only safe advice is to upgrade to testing
first, then unstable if you choose to. There is no practical way to
downgrade, so if you don't like unstable, you will need to reinstall.
The upgrade from one version of stable to the next is extremely well
documented and pretty well guaranteed to work without disruption.
Moving from stable to testing, and testing to unstable is not well
documented, as the targets are still moving, so the only relevant
advice is to thoroughly backup first. In principle, you stop holding
back any packages which may be on hold, change the sources.list, then
perform a safe upgrade (apt-get upgrade or aptitude safe-upgrade),
reboot, check all is well, then perform a full upgrade (apt-get
dist-upgrade or aptitude full-upgrade). If you have a full-featured
system, both upgrade steps will be slow and require a lot of new
software. You can assume that practically everything will be replaced.
As to the sources.list: the stable distribution may have lines
containing '/updates', which neither testing nor unstable have, so they
can be commented or removed. You only need to change and keep the deb
and deb-src lines which end in either 'stable' or 'wheezy' then all or
some of 'main', 'contrib' and 'non-free'. To avoid future surprises,
use the version name here, 'jessie' rather than 'testing'.
If you have other sources.list lines, such as for multimedia, the
advice is to comment them out until after the system upgrade, then to
restore them and upgrade again. If you decide to go to unstable, do
this for each version upgrade separately.
I don't upgrade large systems, if I want an unstable system I install
a very minimal stable, upgrade, then install the rest of the software I
want. So others may have better advice for large system upgrades.
--
Joe
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