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Old 06-20-2005, 02:33 PM   #1
pestie
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stable vs. testing vs. unstable


Hi, all! I just installed Debian (3.1/Sarge stable) for the first time last night and so far I'm extremely impressed. However, I'm at the point now where I'm not sure whether to stick with stable or move on to testing or unstable.

I'm not at all new to Linux, but I'm new to Debian. What doesn't seem to be explained anywhere is the specifics of how often things get upgraded in stable vs. unstable vs. testing. It's explained quite well in a general sense, but I get the impression that specifics can only be gotten through experience.

Basically, I have a non-critical-but-important-to-me desktop system and I want it to have reasonably up-to-date software, but not to break all the time. How often does something in unstable actually break? My understanding is that a lot of Debian users track unstable quite successfully and rarely have problems, and that all the dire warnings about unstable being dangerous from the Debian team is just to keep anyone who really needs a mission-critical system to stay up from stupidly jumping on the unstable bandwagon.

What about stable? Do new kernels/software migrate in there at all over the course of a distribution's lifetime? I shunned the use of Debian until Sarge was released because Woody stable appeared to only support the 2.2 kernel. Did that change over Woody's lifetime or was it necessary to track testing/unstable to get such things?

If I want the latest Firefox, the latest KDE or Gnome, and the latest kernel, which would I be best off tracking? I don't need truly bleeding-edge most of the time - I'll take stability over bleeding-edgeness, but I don't want to get stuck in the dark ages (like using a 2.2 kernel in 2005). If some of you more experienced Debian users could point me in the right direction I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
 
Old 06-20-2005, 02:50 PM   #2
darkleaf
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Well testing and stable are at the moment probably not so different. There will come more difference over time. The only things that get added to sarge are security updates. Etch will get newer versions etc after they've been in sid for some time to catch the big bugs.

I've been running sid (unstable) for nearly a year now without apt-listbugs so I just upgrade everything that's upgradeable everyday. It has never really broken on me that it wasn't fixable. Had to revert a couple of packages to testing for some time because they were spitting errors but it wasn't otherwise crititcal. That doesn't mean it can't go wrong at all. Most packages are in experimental for some time as well so in sid it's usable but there might be some broken dependencies.

It takes some time before the lastest software moves into the repositories. This depends on the maintainers I think. Some packages are updated really fast after they come out while larger stuff like kde or gnome generally take a bit longer. Both etch and sid have pretty new software, sid has newer but it has been tested less.
 
Old 06-20-2005, 03:21 PM   #3
Dead Parrot
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Like darkleaf said, sid/unstable has broken dependencies from time to time and these can make Debian's package management system, apt, unusable. When this happens, you cannot install or remove any packages. If you don't know how to fix apt when it gets stuck, you may have to reinstall Debian. For this reason unstable is not usually recommended for beginners.

Most of these dependency problems should have been solved by the time the packages are moved from unstable to testing. However, it is still useful to install the apt-listbugs utility that will tell you if the packages marked for install/upgrade have any bug reports filed against them. Packages in testing are upgraded often and although they are not quite as up-to-date as in unstable, testing and unstable are really not that far from each other. You can even temporarily change the sources.list from testing to unstable to get a package or two that you want to keep more up-to-date, and then point the sources.list back to testing to keep things safer. In my opinion, testing is the ideal choice for desktop users, especially if you have apt-listbugs installed.

Stable is mainly for server use. Stable gets only security updates, packages are not upgraded to newer versions until the next stable release.
 
Old 06-20-2005, 03:26 PM   #4
Creak
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Seeing your way of using your system, I think the best for you is the "testing" repository.

The Sarge and testing are quite the same for now, but in few months huge packages will come into testing, like the last Gnome (or KDE), the last Apt and (I hope soon) the X.org server. They planned to release stable versions once a year... And if you like a little bit the bleeding-edgeness, I'm sure you'll be frustrated in few months if you stay in stable.

I don't use "unstable" anymore, because one time, on my main computer, i've lost all my mails under thunderbird (indeed i've not read the upgrade documentation that was saying that the mail directory has been changed... but i use my debian to be a little bit productive, not to find or track bugs)... And 2 weeks ago, on my server, after an update all the basic commands (ls, grep, ...) segfaulted... I had to reinstall the whole system, even if i tried to copy some clean libraries and binaries from my main PC (which is in testing now).

So, the more secure/bleeding-edge solution is the testing for me.

Last edited by Creak; 06-20-2005 at 03:29 PM.
 
Old 06-20-2005, 04:54 PM   #5
Noth
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Quote:
How often does something in unstable actually break? My understanding is that a lot of Debian users track unstable quite successfully and rarely have problems, and that all the dire warnings about unstable being dangerous from the Debian team is just to keep anyone who really needs a mission-critical system to stay up from stupidly jumping on the unstable bandwagon.
The breakage over the past year or so has been really rare because sarge wasn't released and noone wanted to do anything too big. Now that sarge is released big changes are happening in sid (and soon etc) like Gnome 2.10, perl 5.8.7, gcc4, etc that will cause problems. But usually if you see a problem you can revert back to the last good package (unless you delete /var/cache/apt/archives too often) and wait a few days for it to get fixed. For example, the Gnome 2.10 push broke Gnome dependencies for about a week.

Quote:
Do new kernels/software migrate in there at all over the course of a distribution's lifetime? I shunned the use of Debian until Sarge was released because Woody stable appeared to only support the 2.2 kernel.
Generally no, new software doesn't get pushed into stable. But there were no problems running woody with 2.4 kernels, I would even imagine 2.6 worked as long as you could find a package or build module-init-tools to load the modules.

Quote:
If I want the latest Firefox, the latest KDE or Gnome, and the latest kernel, which would I be best off tracking? I don't need truly bleeding-edge most of the time - I'll take stability over bleeding-edgeness, but I don't want to get stuck in the dark ages (like using a 2.2 kernel in 2005). If some of you more experienced Debian users could point me in the right direction I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
Once you get comfortable with the way Debian package mangement works, tracking sid is no problem. But if you want the slightly safer option, etch will be fairly up to date as well.
 
  


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