How does infrequent Debian releases work ?
 

Acccording to distrowatch.com, debian often has 2 years in between releases. Does that mean that people are mostly stuck with old packages ?
I'm mainly worried about hardware compatibity - if distro is 2 years old, then how is newer hardware supported ?

Quite simply you point to the "testing" repositories which are quite frequently updated and fairly stable for desktop needs.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with you on this one. Debian's Testing branch is just that: experimental software that works 'most of the time'. For a desktop, or any other working enviroment, you want software that works 'all the time', 'cause who wants a broken system when (s)he boots up after an update? Fact is that I had a broken Testing system when I used an install-disk from Sarge's testingdays when Sarge just had become Stable. So I had an incomplete and very broken Etch system. :mad: (back then I had a dualboot system, so I rebooted to Win-O$ and d/l'd a new net-install CD for Sarge)

To get Sarge to work with newer hardware, the Backports have been invented: Etch packages, made stable and suitable for Sarge: http://www.backports.org/

I'm using Testing for 3 years now without any problems. You get minor glitches now and then, but nothing has rendered my system useless or unbootable.

# stable: indeed as stable as it gets, with thoroughly tested packages, but at the price of being somewhat outdated by many's standards. This version, once released, only gets security updates, nothing else. Perfect for servers, where stability matters most.
# testing: this version is made up of software that has not been fully tested, but tested enough to ensure a low risk of breaking things. The stable releases must pass through this stage first. While it gets a lot of updates almost daily, it's stable enough (as many of the Debian users say) to choose it as your desktop distribution. Keep in mind though that testing is a transitional version to the next stable release.
# unstable: this is the "foundation" of the Debian OS, its "stem" if you like. All the software that will eventually make its way to the stable version, is first uploaded here, tested for a while and, if it gets green light, it moves on to testing for...more testing. This version will always be the cutting-edge of Debian software, but you get no guarantees that something won't break in the middle of...whatever you consider most important. Some say it's safe enough to use as a desktop system, others say that it breaks sometimes but it gets fixed quickly and others would strongly advise against using it unless you are a developer/tester that is willing to send feedback to the Debian crew. Believe whomever you want.

It all depends on how much you know if problem happen, if you run a server then you definitely want Stable, if you are running Debian on your Desktop and know enough to fix occasional problems
then either Testing or Unstable/Sid are just fine.

I have ran unstable for over 2 years now with few problems, most of which were simply wanting until a package was unpdated for the fix.

How would you guys rate the stable/testing/unstable pools compared to official releases of Suse/Mandriva/Fedora ? In terms of stability.

I would rate distro's like the ones you've mentioned between Testing and Unstable. They work, most of the time, with the latest software on modern hardware but there are occasional mishaps (broken dependencies, overlooked coding errors, etc). Stable is just that: a rock-solid platform to work on. As explained by Craigevil, that does have it's disadvantages.

Since hd space is cheap nowadays, it's a simple matter to run both stable and testing, or even throw sid in there as well.

I've been running sid (Debian Unstable) at home for about 2 years now and have only had 2 minor mishaps when updating that caused breakage. True I don't upgrade often.. Once every 4 months or so maybe.

both times the system broke it was relatively easy to fix by being patient.. Would I run sid on a server that HAD to be stable ? heck no I'd run Sarge (or etch once it becomes stable)

It's all a give and take.. I give up the guarantee of stability for the advantage of newer packages.. has it really been that unstable ? Actually no it hasn't, it's been pretty rock solid..

I imagine if I updated every week I would run into more breakage, but why would I really need to update that often ? To minimize breakage during upgrades of testing or unstable look at apt-listbugs. it will warn you of known issues before performing the upgrade and allow you the choice to cancel and wait for the bugs to be fixed.. or an acceptable risk level. I just found out about this after my last issue, pretty slick !!

The only time I have had problems with testing was during the conversion to Xorg 7. When it gave me problems, I just upgraded to whatever version was in Sid, and that fixed them. Personally, I recommend testing for any use other than a critical server, or production environment where many setups have to be maintained by a central IS organization.

I do a dist-upgrade in Testing every week.

I do a dist-upgrade every day in unstable and except for the xfree to xorg transition I have had no problems that were critical. Even the minor minors are usually fix by the next day.