I have a total of 5 packages from Experimental on my system right now, that is the most ever.And they have to do with two apps, Gain and Amarok. Experimental is more a holding tank for packages that devs may or may not be working on. A good way to blow your system away is by using packages from experimental. Sid on the other hand is just fine, I have ran it for two years with very few problems.

Debian -- Debian Releases Most Debian-based distros use Testing, a few build from Sid.

Testing is more than ready for normal desktop usage. So is unstable for that matter, but don't even think about asking for help in #debian if you use sid.

Hummmm there is quite a difference between:

http://people.debian.org/~sesse/bugscan/
Tue Mar 13 16:19:00 UTC 2007 - Number concerning the next release (excluding ignored and not-in-testing): 39
with
http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/
Tue Mar 13 18:00:11 UTC 2007 - Number concerning the next release (excluding ignored and not-in-testing): 66


Don't tell me they found 27 bugs in 1h40 ?!

"Recent changes
5 release-critical bugs were closed and 7 were opened."

Dosn't look like they found another 27 bugs. That line is looking nice and low

Blurb from DD, Erich Schubert's blog today:
Another note related to all the Experimental discussion in this thread. Epiphany-browser v. 2.18 is in 32-bit experimental. Among other things it has a kind of neat-o function. Put a URL in your paste-buffer, middle click on the New Tab button ...

Mmmm, I can't wait. As soon as etch is released I will finally get to see first hand what its like to run testing with no release in site.

Immediately after release everything will get funky for a few days. Probably within a week afterwards, things will settle into "normal" operation. You'll rarely if ever see a problem with testing. Any serious problems get picked up by the unstable users, and the bugs/problems found by testing guys aren't usually widespread deals, just like "feature B on architecture X doesn't work" kind of problems.

Peace,
JimBass

Lovely! should I avoid and upgrades for a weak or so until etch is released? and will I need to dist-upgrade or just a normal upgrade?

You know, why do people say Debain should release stable more often? If its just for corporate desktops and servers, where not moveing is more important than being uptodate surely anywhere between 18-36 months would be fine.

Looks like a very few things are still blocking:


csound
gcc-avr
icewm
jamvm
libbsf-java
libfuse2
libjasper-1.701-1
linux-2.6
mysql-server-5.0
nvidia-glx
odbc-postgresql
openbsd-inetd
uae
wordpress

I wonder what happens for those who have sarge as a keyword. Sarge will be archived to archive.debian.org (probably with a delay) so their apt-get will hit the wrong repositories.
For those using stable, they will now hit etch so lots of fun

When the freeze will be stopped, the new testing will get a lot of new bug (which are growing in unstable).

For the unstable release, I think it will have few impact, it's the usual thing. People will correct more bugs as they have more time.

It's how I see it but I may be wrong..

Tortanick what are you currently running?

That is a tough call. I would go one of two ways, either early and often, or wait things out. I would do a dist-upgrade, just to update any base packages. It may be fine to do a regular update/upgrade as well, but dist-upgrade should be all the new version's software.

I think the push for the new stable this time out has a lot to do with hardware. Sarge is really poor at sata recognition, and many built in gigabit cards also have issues. New hardware will always be an issue when it comes out after a release is made, but now when you get a new machine, it is hard to find one without a sata drive, so installing debian stable would be a major challenge. I also think the immense popularity of Ubuntu pushed the need for a new stable. Even though Ubuntu is based on unstable, their promise of 5 year support for the server version probably has cost Debian a good number of potential installs. If you have a nice new server with hardware sata controller, Debian stable requires backflips to install, but Ubuntu you put in a disk and have everything detected, it isn't a hard choice for many people to make.

I'm sure bragging rights play a part as well. Debian wants to show they are still the pre-eminent distro, and doing that when your typical want-to-be user can't install you doesn't help your popularity much.

[edit]Oh yeah, make sure you set your sources.list to testing or lenny, and not etch or you'll end up with stable![/edit]

Peace,
JimBass

Well at the time when etch is released, lenny will be exactly etch.
Testing will be exactly like Stable.
Then packages that have been more than x days in Unstable will enter testing. A LOT in fact since the freeze in december.
But for package to also enter in testing, they have to have less RC bugs than the previous testing version, which will be 0.
So in fact, only packages with no bug will enter lenny.
As soon as some are found, they will go back to unstable.

Fun

I'm running unstable but for testing, I would stay with etch keyword and wait a few days to put lenny.

Anyway with LQ and BTS, you are not lost at all.

Currently my sources say testing, but with the massive migration from unstable to testing I think I'll change it to etch then change it back a couple of weeks later then apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. Hopefully when lenny hits stable I'll be able to stick with testing and file bug reports rather than just hide in stable for a week


About the new hardware issue. I like the idea of introduceing new kernels to stable. post release. If you keep the kernel stable released with as the default.

Tortanick: I was reading on that page you reffered to as "new kernels to stable" ..what is a "point release" ..is it an updated to the official stable version? If thats so, then i would really like to have new kernels added to updated of the stable release, that being said, it is however no problem at all installing or upgrading the kernel manually by source code.

Very informative thread that has lead me to read about what stable, testing and unstable actually are. Looks like its not too long for release time of "etch", but i think i will install "testing" soon to check it out..of course if etch isnt comming out before

Seems like the installer is just about done, quoting the offical debian pages for this, the release team released the RC2 of the installer today:

Yes and they asked to a lot of people to try it.
Probably during April Etch should be stabilized?

I know i have been participating in the survey of testing the debian installer, but that was a while ago though, i found it quite stable back then and a lot have been fixed since (it has been created an RC2 relase for ex.) so on that part it shouldnt be too long before it is stable, like they mentioned at the site today, they may be releasing this installer to the stable version.

When looking at the graphs on how many bugs there are, then the green line is very close to the bottom line, so maybe we could expect the stable release to be released some time soon, like in april like you said nx5000. It has been frozen for a while now, so its getting close ..i think