Re: Understanding the two-year release cycle as a desktop user (and a Debian newcomer)

[songbird <songbird@anthive.com>]

John Hasler wrote:
...
> *Don't* "track" Testing or Unstable by upgrading nightly.  I don't
> understand why people want to do this.  A full upgrade (after a test
> upgrade) about once a month is plenty.

  different people have different purposes.  :)

  my reasons for my morning routine is to determine what is
being changed or worked on in the packages that i use/have on
this machine.  most days i scan the proposed updates and see
that they are things i don't mind if they get updated.  they're
not too likely to impact the few things i do the most.  so
for me to just get them updated means the next time i do use
them i will either help with the testing part or more likely
i won't notice any difference at all.  which is good.

  if i do see a bug and have the time to report it then i've
done what i consider part of my giving back to the developers
and users of the same code base.  they can at least be aware
that somewhere ahead "There May Be Dragons!"  having a nice
running computer system that does what i want and expect is
my goal.  to do that at times means i can't always keep exactly
up to date so i will put some updates on hold until i have a
bit more time to investigate or ask questions or file bugs or
...


> If you have packages you need to have the current release of wait until
> they've been available for a week or so without serious or important
> bugs that would matter to you.  Then do a test upgrade so that you can
> decide whether you can go right ahead, have to do a full upgrade to make
> it work, or perhaps should wait a bit.

  yes, if something looks very intrusive to the basic
packages i use every day i try to make sure i have time 
set aside to make sure it all goes as expected.  most often
in the past that has meant 99.99% of the time that i don't
have any problems at all.  once in a while "stuff happens[tm]"
and having a booting stable set up is sufficient for me to
get what i need done accomplished.


> I've been doing this with Unstable for most of this century with very
> few problems (and none recently).
>
> And a caveat: I don't use either Gnome or KDE.

  ditto.  they kept changing in ways that got in the 
way of my workflows/habits/expectations.


  songbird