Hi all,

I am little confused with Debian's repositories. From what I gather, there is:

etch (stable)
lenny (testing)
sid (unstable)

However most servers also have testing,unstable and stable repositories. So:

1)Is there any difference between:

http://mirror.pacific.net.au/debian etch main
http://mirror.pacific.net.au/debian stable main

http://mirror.pacific.net.au/debian lenny main
http://mirror.pacific.net.au/debian testing main

http://mirror.pacific.net.au/debian sid main
http://mirror.pacific.net.au/debian unstable main

2)Is sid safe enough to use? i.e. doesn't have lots of missing/broken packages?

Thx,
Adam

Debian sid FAQ
http://wooledge.org/~greg/sidfaq.html

Debian -- Debian Releases
http://www.debian.org/releases/

Would be good places for you to start.

stable is just a link to etch, testing to lenny, etc.

imho new Debian users should stick with the Stable (etch) repositories until they become familiar with Debian.

no user should mix multiple repositories (stable, testing, unstable) on a single machine in the sources list unless they understand how to use apt-pinning properly to manage a mixed machine. I still prefer to run one of the three without trying to mix the different builds.

Once you become familiar with Debian and it's package management system a dist-upgrade to testing or unstable is not unreasonable, as both are relatively stable for home use, but keep in mind they are both for testing purposes and both can break on occasion. you will gain access to newer versions of most software by moving to those builds.

as for separate repositories for stable/etc and testing/lenny there is a reason for that as well.

stable, testing, and unstable repositories will always be just that.. the names do change over time.

if you choose etch in your sources list then all your updates will be etch updates and when etch moves from stable to old stable you will still receive etch updates. Lenny will move from testing to stable so if your sources point to lenny, when that change occurs you will be running the new stable. if your sources point to testing you will always be running testing no matter what the current 'name' of testing is. sid/unstable will always be the unstable version and will never change names.

Hope that helps to clear it up a bit and didn't just confuse you more..

Thanks, that has cleared it up.