With 2.2.20 kernel you're stuck with ext2. It's not that bad, but reiserfs is better.

Here's an introduction to the differences between stable, testing, and unstable:

http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-...en.html#s4.6.4

To cut the long story short, Sarge/testing is stabler than Sid/unstable, so Sarge/testing is a good choice to begin with. You can always dist-upgrade to Sid/unstable later on, if you wish.

As you say, once you've chosen the Debian mirror for sources.list, you can simply change every "stable" to "testing" in order to track Sarge instead of Woody.

I guess it worked!! Cool!! After a ~460MB download, apt-get took my system to testing. Not without a few issues I don't get, but I guess I'm going in the right direction.

- Apt-get actually removed kde from the system. Why? After logging to gnome, I issued " apt-get install kde" and now its downloading another 107MB worth of kde's.

- Dpkg exited with error=1 one or two times during the installation. Was that expected?

- This is gnome 1.4.0.5. Updated? Isn't 2.6 the current?

Installed kde without problems. Debian is starting to like me, he he...

Ok, after all that, I tried to update my kernel. I need reiser support.
So, I chose the kernel image (kernel-image-2.6.5-1-k7) from apt-cache and did a
apt-get install kernel-image.etc etc.

BUT, the problem is that I chose not to install lilo, and I wrote a boot floppy. I prefered that, instead of messing my already installed and running grub from suse.

When apt-get tries to install the new image, it prompts me for rerunning lilo, editing its files, inserting initrd, etc.. How do I do this on the floppy?

************

The output was:



You are attempting to install an initrd kernel image (version 2.6.5-1-k7)
This will not work unless you have configured your boot loader to use
initrd. (An initrd image is a kernel image that expects to use an INITial
Ram Disk to mount a minimal root file system into RAM and use that for
booting).

As a reminder, in order to configure LILO, you need
to add an 'initrd=/initrd.img' to the image=/vmlinuz
stanza of your /etc/lilo.conf

I repeat, You need to configure your boot loader -- please read your
bootloader documentation for details on how to add initrd images.

If you have already done so, and you wish to get rid of this message,
please put
`do_initrd = Yes'
in /etc/kernel-img.conf. Note that this is optional, but if you do not,
you'll continue to see this message whenever you install a kernel
image using initrd.
Do you want to stop now? [Y/n]Y

- This is gnome 1.4.0.5. Updated? Isn't 2.6 the current?

Gnome 2.6 is current in Sid but Sarge has currently only Gnome 2.4. Generally, Sarge has older (but more tested) software than Sid.


I tried to update my kernel. I need reiser support.

A bit late for that now. I've already said that you need to choose reiserfs in the initial installation. You're stuck with ext2 now, I'm afraid.


BUT, the problem is that I chose not to install lilo, and I wrote a boot floppy. I prefered that, instead of messing my already installed and running grub from suse.

When apt-get tries to install the new image, it prompts me for rerunning lilo, editing its files, inserting initrd, etc.. How do I do this on the floppy?

I don't know the answer to this one -- I have done my best to avoid using boot floppies. Maybe there's some config file on the floppy, which you could edit to add the new kernel? Or maybe you should install lilo (I prefer grub myself) to your Debian root (/) partition and then make a new boot floppy? Or maybe there's no need at all for a boot floppy after you've installed lilo to the Debian partition? Check this other thread to find out how some other Debian users have solved the problem of using two distros in one computer:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=199496