Re: Jessie sufficiently stable for general use?
On Sat 07 Mar 2015 at 09:14:31 -0500, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> Well, yes and no.
> -- Yes: Typical desktop operating systems (e.g., Windows, Mac OS),
> and applications, "call home" periodically to check for updates,
Debian doesn't work like that unless it is configured to do so.
> but,
> -- No:
> --- in enterprise environments, that's typically disabled - with
> updates distributed internally on a less frequent basis
> --- this is particularly true in server and system environments,
> that are under maintenance -- one doesn't want updates to the O/S to
> break application software (as it quite often does)
Breakage in Debian in this regard does not appear to be common. Do you
have an example?
> Beyond that, pretty much any systems administrator will tell you
> that "stable" is a pretty well understood concept. It's the point
> at which:
> -- most bugs, not caught during product testing, have been caught and fixed
> -- enough security scrubbing has been done that the code has been
> relatively well hardened
Sounds like Debian stable.
> There will always be a few bugs, and there's always the new security
> exploit around the corner - but with any halfway decent coding and
> testing practices, those should be few and far between - to the
> point that an update/upgrade should rarely be necessary.
Sounds like Debian stable.
I hope we are not going to quibble about how many months there are in
"months at a time".
> To me, a "stable" system - and mind you, I'm talking about servers
> here - is one that doesn't need updating or upgrading for months at
> a time, if at all; except in the cases of:
> -- deploying new application software that requires a new o/s featurea
Sounds like Debian stable.
> -- responding to a CERT alert about a newly discovered vulnerability
Sounds like Debian stable.
Reply to: