Hi all,

Just two (newbie) questions:

01 - What's the difference between Debian Jessie Alpha release and Testing? (Please explain in detail - thank you!)

02 - If I want to use Jessie (alpha) what would be the ideal source.list?

Thank you for your time!

the answer is here.
i think jessie is debian unstable branch?
you have to replace the names ("sid", "jessie", "wheezy") but otherwise that post explains it 100%.

here's another, even older thread explaining the whole thing.

the codenames are confusing, because e.g. wheezy was testing and is now stable, but it's still called wheezy.
for better understanding it's better to go with the definitions "stable" "testing" and "unstable" and always look at the date of the post you're reading.

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01 - At this point in time Jessie and Testing mean the same thing, there is no difference between them. This will change when Jessie is released as the new Stable, Testing will get a new codename and move on with development.

02 - Not that I want to discourage you, but if you have to ask that question I wouldn't recommend to run Jessie/Testing. While usually pretty stable, Testing is still a development branch and can break at any given time (especially now with the transition to systemd, I would think). Users of Jessie/Testing are expected to be proficient enough with Debian to deal with those breakages.

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The Alpha release is for the Debian 8 "jessie" installer.

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Regarding 02, I'd suggest looking here.
Regarding 01, Jessie is definitely NOT the unstable branch. The unstable branch does not change its name (in contrast to testing and stable). Its name is always Sid. I'd never heard of "Jessie Alpha" so thanks to cynwulf for enlightening me.
jdk

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Thank you everyone for stopping by and taking the time to enlighten me on this subject.

I have been enjoying the (rock-solid) stability and excellent security of Wheezy for a long time and will continue to do so until Jessie freezes in November (or perhaps till it becomes the next Stable in 2015). I have tried testing before and I didn't like it much.

I just wanted to install Jessie alpha thinking that it might not be the same as Testing on one of my extra disks and have a look at the new features. I was wondering whether Jessie (Alpha) is treated differently than testing (as it now has an identity (which is Jessie) even though it's an alpha release). The 'problem' apparently lies in my ignorance about the software release cycle . I think I need to read more about that (which I will do now) . Anyway, thanks again. If you have more information on this, please share with me (us).

Debian's development cycle is pretty simple, actually. Debian has basically four branches: Oldstable, Stable, Testing and Unstable.
New packages arrive in Unstable. If there are no bugreports for a package in 10 days it is introduced into Testing. Stable never gets new packages, not even bugfix releases, only security fixes are allowed. After a certain time (usually about 1.5-2 years, but also depending on development goals like the switch to systemd) Testing is frozen, from this point on only bugfixes in Testing are allowed. Only in rare cases newer packages are introduced to Testing at this point. When the number of release critical bugs goes below a reasonable amount (with the over 30,000 packages in the repository it practically impossible to get this number to zero) Testing is declared the new Stable, the old stable becomes Oldstable (which is usually supported for one year after release of the new Stable), Testing is unfrozen again and gets new packages from Unstable again. At this point the procedure begins from the start again, until the new Testing is frozen, ... .

Thanks, Tobi! I finally found the sources.list I was looking for. I will post it here. There might be somebody out there who is in the same quest.


deb http://deb-mirror.de/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb-mirror.de/debian/ jessie main contrib non-free

deb http://deb-mirror.de/debian/ jessie-proposed-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb-mirror.de/debian/ jessie-proposed-updates main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free


I had the entry "jessie-updates" in the list and it was giving me errors (apparently that repo doesn't exist at the moment). I only had to change it to "jessie-proposed-updates".

Like you I like Wheezy a lot; it is rock-steady and never breaks. Testing is quite stable, on occasion things may break. Unless you feel comfortable doing some trouble shooting maybe stay with Wheezy. I will upgrade when 8.0 is out.

@ hitest - Thanks for your input. I am waiting for the next Stable version too. I see that you are familiar with OpenBSD. I've been wanting to test it. How has been your experience so far? Is it worth the trouble?

I run Debian 7.5 on my netbook. You are very welcome. I have used OpenBSD since 5.0; at the moment I am dual booting Slackware64-current and OpenBSD 5.5. I like OpenBSD a lot. For me it is worth the trouble. However, you may wish to give OpenBSD a try in a VM (Qemu) before you commit to a HD install.

What do you like so much about OpenBSD? How would you compare it with Debian? I'm sure there are their own strengths and weaknesses. I have read lots of reviews on OpenBSD, but would be happy to know (if you have time) about your experience too - Thanks.

OpenBSD is similar to Debian in that it is very stable and a joy to run. OpenBSD is arguably one of the most proactively secure operating systems on the planet. OpenBSD is not Linux as it runs a BSD kernel. If you're curious perhaps give OpenBSD a try.