I've had trouble installing Sid, as it doesn't come with the nice installer. However, I did load Sarge with the net installer.

Once Sarge is installed, is there a way to upgrade from Sarge to Sid easily. I couldn't see an apt command to do this.

As well, is it recommended to upgrade from Sarge to Sid or to just do a clean install of Sid.

I keep hearing that once Debian is installed you never have to install it again.

Thanks,
Rory

change apt sources list in /etc/apt/sources.list to reflect SID / Testing; that is, change all entries from "testing" to "unstable"

after saving the file, then
1) apt-get update
2) apt-get dist-upgrade

it is important to note that once you upgrade, you probably cannot downgrade. So if you jump up to sid and break your system with questionable packages and want to return to sarge, TOUGH LUCK. sid (unstable) is meant for people who have the ability to fix their system when packages are broken. good luck.

he can downgrade to sarge if he adds the pin prio >1000 as testing distri to file:/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf , see the (outdated) reference manual.

but do it at one-shot, or the system will brake, i fear...

careful with mixing sid and sarge, i got a box of bugs.

y
flip

i kow this post is almost a month old but can i do this and just install one or two packages? i want to install thunderbird 0.6 but sarge only has .5.

i can probably do this, install what i want, then change my sources list file back...or do i have to do the update/dist-upgrade?

I've personally chosen to track Sid/unstable but, on the other hand, my Debian box is the Ultimate Geek Box with WindowMaker && it's sound server && funny sounds && All The Absolutely Insane Stuff You Don't Meet On A Sensible Computer.

The choice really depends on your needs, but in most cases I've noticed that if you don't like Sid as it currently is, you never will. The big packages, like KDE and Gnome, may be broken from time to time but the rest, if they break, will bounce back to life usually in less than a week's time, according to my experience.

There is some faulty information going arond, concerning the "apt-pinning". It doesn't really work as well as advertised. Here's, however, a sensible account on apt-pinning:

http://www.argon.org/~roderick/apt-pinning.html

IMO, the best way to get the latest thunderbird is to set the sources.list to point to "unstable" and then to do "apt-get update" && "apt-get dist-upgrade", but that's, of course, only my opinion. You'll just have to use you're own judgement on this.

If you setup apt-get to use unstable instead of testing, do apt-get update to update the apt-get lists of packages, then apt-get install thunderbird, or whatever other packages you want, then you can change your apt source back to testing and apt-get update again. I've done this before myself and it did work for me. I did it with apache and several other packages. You may have to delete the apt cache files as they may give you errors in this process. I'm not sure off hand what dir they are in, but you will get an error that mentions the dir if it does not work. Delete those file, apt-get update again, and then you should be good to go.

thanks muxman. i went ahead and did a complete dist-upgrade and everything seems to be working just fine. think i'll stick with sid for awhile. got thunderbird and firefox working ust fine