A lot of importance is placed on the stability of the woody distribution. I am going to install debian (I've been running slack for a little over a month and am really attracted by debian's design philosophy and package management) and am wondering if I should install the 2.6.7 kernel as opposed to running it with 2.4.26. By doing this would I be compromising the integrity of woody?

Thanks,

Brian

Sarge will very soon http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=1131 become the next Debian stable release and it has both 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels. You most likely don't want to install Woody at this point, since the release candidate for Sarge is already available: http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

OK cool, thanks. According to the Debian website, Sarge (because it is currently in testing), is not supported by the security team. Is this a problem for me (I'm just one guy using one laptop with nothing critical on it)? Is there some monitoring I should be doing of security updates to software before Sarge becomes stable?

Thanks,

Brian

P.S. I might be part of the first generation of Debian users to never have used the old installer :-)

if you want to install the version 2.6.x linux kernel, type "linux26" during the debian-installer boot screen.

i think that sarge will automatically get stable/woody security updates (check your "/etc/apt/sources.list") also with an "apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade" command even while it is still considered testing. i guess that the security updates are just not officially supported on the testing/unstable distributions, but you can still press your luck and install anyway.

trust me...it's a good thing that u don't have to use the old installer.

I found more information. According to the debian-devel-announce mailing list, security support for sarge is planned for August 12th. The Debian Installer page has links to the latest installer for sarge and documentation including a sarge-specific installation manual, an FAQ, and a wiki.

Brian