I've been using sid for past two years or so, but I'm getting tired of spending up to a full day or more reviving my computer when sid breaks something. It is an excellent learning experience, but I just don't have time any more and I've reached my frustration limit. For instance, right now with yesterday's upgrade in sid, xorg is broken because I cannot get the right nvidia drivers for it. (Please spare the lectures! )

I would like to change from sid/unstable to testing. Does anyone have advice for the least painful/troublesome/time-consuming method of doing this? I currently have around 2000 packages installed, but as far as I know, there is nothing that really requires sid in regard to new stuff.

My background: Debian user for about 4 years, have good experience in certain areas but still shaky in others. This is on my personal computer/workstation.

Thanks!

Hobo1

Downgrading really isn't support, in theory it is possible but you stand a big chance of trashing your system. In the three yrs I have ran Sid not once has my system been completed hosed where I had to spend time fixing things in order to get it to work.

Newest nvidia drivers work just fine with new xorg, including the legacy driver for older cards.

$ infobash -v3
Host/Kernel/OS "craigevil" running Linux 2.6.22.7-slh-smp-1 i686 [ sidux-20070111-d:5 ]
CPU Info AMD Duron 64 KB cache flags( sse ) clocked at [ 1800.092 MHz ]
Videocard nVidia NV34 [GeForce FX 5500] X.Org 1.4.0 [ 1280x1024 @50hz ]
Network cards Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet, at port: e400
Processes 83 | Uptime 2days | Memory 471.4/2027.4MB | HDD ATA WDC Size 80GB (49%used) | GLX Renderer GeForce FX 5500/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!
| GLX Version 2.1.1 NVIDIA 100.14.19 | Client Shell | Infobash v2.67

Same here Craig.

There are new nvidia drivers in sid. You just have to rebuild them. After that comment out sid and wait for testing to catch up.

Videocard nVidia Unknown device 053e X.Org 1.4.0 [ 1280x1024 @50hz ]
Renderer GeForce 7025 / NVIDIA nForce 630a/PCI/SSE2 | GLX Version 2.1.1 NVIDIA 100.14.19 | Client Shell | Infobash v2.67

duplicate post

I can imagine if you are tired of sid breaking your system just keep track of the packages on lenny or testing. and stop upgradeing sid. stop doing the normal apt-get upgrade apt-get dist-upgrade. just let the system sit. if it works let it be.. you should be able to switch your sources.list to testing and just wait and keep track to see when testing reaches where sid was the last time you upgrade and go from there.

My answer is from a dim memory- and no particular Debian expertise, but I believe if you put Lenny/testing in your sources.kist, and pin the system with testing at 1001 (above 1000), you can downgrade.
There may be more steps in there- as I say- I'm no expert.

you can put sidux in sources.list. and do update next install sidux script. then smxi will fix most things. I did this after upgrade to new xorg . convert from sid to sidux is not suported anymore but works fine. then you stick to sid and at the same time not so mutch things to fix on your own.
bertil