Sarge, Etch or Sid?
 

Hi! I've just done a testing netinstall - took me a couple of hours just to figure out how to do it (initially disable ata_piix + remembering to add the http:// part of the proxy setting).

Anyway, I was thinking about going 'unstable', but I'm not quite sure on how? Is it just a matter of replacing the testing sources in sources.list with unstable ones, and then do dist-upgrade?

Yep, anywhere you see "testing" in source.list, change it to "unstable" -- but may I inquire why you want to change your whole system over? If it's just one or two programs, you can install those and leave the rest of your system as "testing" (assuming the necessary deps are there).

I'm having tremendous difficulty in finding working non-us testing-repositories, and some of my favourite apps, such as amarok, doesn't appear to be available from the us sources. I don't know what is causing the 404s I get from the non-us, as the source is perfectly accessible through a browser.

Here's one of the troublemakers:

There is no non-US for Sarge and after (see here). Perhaps the package you are looking for is not in testing at all?

This is getting a bit confusing/frustrating...
The application in question is amaroK, and I really thought it would be available through apt-get. I've probably messed things up along the way.

Think I'll just do a re-install, go with sarge or sid, and then take it from there...

What is Etch and Sid.

I am a new user and I think I understand that Sarge is the name of the current stable distribution...I think.

Are Etch and Sid the names of other revisions to Debian ?

Regards,

Phil

maybe this will explain http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-ftparchives.en.html

Conjurer: what does your sources.list look like because i have amarok installed.

I just used the default sources.list that Etch produced during install. Anyway, according to http://amarok.kde.org/amarokwiki/index.php/Debian, amarok is not in testing - meaning you've either got it from Sarge or Sid.

Anyway, I've upgraded to Sid now... and for some mysterious reason my laptop hasn't exploded, the house hasn't collapsed on me and nobody has hit me in the head.
Now, whether or not my upgrade has speeded up the coming of the apocalypse is an entirely different matter, of course. :)