Can someone please point me in the direction of a good tutorial on how to make debian unstable? Or if the steps are pretty easy, could you please just outline them?

Thanks. Much appreciated.

Have a look at /etc/apt/sources.list
and change sarge to sid (testing to unstable)
(or _add_ duplicate lines with sid instead of sarge)

then execute 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade'

You've got to change the Pin-Priority in /etc/apt/preferences too. Set unstable higher than testing. Something this:

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 400

Package: *
Pin: release o=Debian,a=testing
Pin-Priority: 300


After that, add the unstable repository addy in your /etc/apt/sources.list for example:

deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib
deb-src http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib

After that execute 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade'

Sid is not for people like you.

Sid is for users who know what they're doing in the few times when something goes wrong. It's not for newbies who haven't taken the time to find out how to do things. You have to sit down and do some serious reading at debian.org, this forum, and the internet. Stay with Sarge.

i would have said the same thing :-). If a problem occurs, you have sometimes to correct it yourself. If i had more time, i would use sid, but i use sarge on all my machines. Once i was using sid and if i didn't knew enough debian it would have been a nightmare :-). I had to handle sometimes dependencies myself, correct few bugs when i couldn't wait for a fix...

Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

"Sid is not for people like you"

For a moment I thought I was back at the OpenBsd forum. I agree uberNUT69, if you don't try you never learn. Don't be afraid to experiment curly08 and use the search facility.

I am a newbie to Linux. I have only been playing around with it since December of last year, but in that time I have tried several distros. I actually find Debian Sid to be one of the more stable ones.

I have ran MDK, Xandros, PCLINUXOS, Linspire, SUSE 9.2, Fedora Core 3, and a few others. Plus I ran over 30 Livecds.

I found early on with Sid to look at any bugs listed, check dependencies and to look for conflicts when installing or upgrading. My source list has quite a few entries from apt-get.org. I also learned to pin certain packages to avoid conflicts or bugs in newer versions.

If one takes the time to read the documentation available Debian kicks butt.

Just thought I would put in my 2cents.

> "Sid is not for people like you"
>
> For a moment I thought I was back at the OpenBsd forum.

Let me help possibly clarify: It's my understanding that Sid is for folks who are interested in helping in the Debian development process. If you're willing to file bug reports on the bugs/inconsistencies you come across -- and sometimes even fix those bugs, possibly forwarding on patches to the relevant folks -- then Sid is for you.

If you aren't interested in the above-mentioned activites, yet install Sid anyway, you will not get the sort of support from other Sid users that you expect. See, they will mostly all be the bug-fixing-and-reporting sort of folks, and when you ask them for help, they will expect a certain amount of legwork from you in advance.

Look at macondo's distro info on the left: he's a pretty smart cookie who helps out a lot of folks here, and *he's* running Sarge -- not Sid.

No one's being rude here when they say, "Sid's not for you" -- they just estimate from your post what sort of user you are, and are trying to save you some trouble. Otherwise, you might upgrade to Sid, have problems, post about them, and then get frustrated when it seems to you that other Sid users/devs aren't as helpful as you expected them to be. Really, they're helpful; they're just mostly already busy fixing or reporting-on other bugs.

Sarge is safer, no way of denying it. Sid might be too much of a challenge for someone just beginning

to learn Linux. Sid likes breaking systems (my own, for instance). I wisely got back to using Sarge.

And "even" Sarge is GREAT !

Cheers

After doing the changes in /etc/apt/sources.list (and optionally in /etc/apt/preferences) and doing "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade", remember to install the apt-listbugs utility. It will warn you before you install packages that have been reported to be buggy. Packages where bugs are marked as <done> should be safe to install, ones marked as <open> are to be avoided.

But even with apt-listbugs installed, unstable is recommended only for those users who can fix things if APT breaks your system. On the other hand, Debian testing (with apt-listbugs installed, plus a package or two from unstable) makes a really good and reliable desktop system. Over the years I've come to appreciate stability and reliability over "cutting edge" features, but it's free software and you can do what you want. If you like to live dangerously, then go ahead and upgrade to unstable.

Curly08 said in a previous message in this same page:

<beginning of post>

Installing Debian ( post #1)

"If I used the images labeled debian-30r5-i386-binary-1.iso, debian-30r5-i386-binary-2.iso and so on, do I need all of them, or can all of the packages just be downloaded from the repositories using the first disk?

Also, is i386 the right choice for a IBM t42?"

<end of post>

Now folks, does this sound like a guy ready for Sid? Really?
The reason some of you guys don't eat grass, is because your neck is too short.

Am I being rude and insensitive?

Or do i sound like a guy who's doing Curly08 a favor by saving him a world of pain????

"The more I deal with people, the more I love my dog."
-- Oscar Wilde

Now folks, does this sound like a guy ready for Sid? Really?
The reason some of you guys don't eat grass, is because your neck is too short.

Am I being rude and insensitive?

Possibly. I don't understand your "neck's too short" expression.

I don't think it's a matter of being "ready" for Sid -- it's just a matter of how much time you're going to need to put into it given your current level of experience. None of this is rocket science, eh? :)

Now, if you want to see *rude*, well, stroll on over to comp.lang.perl.misc... ;)

I think you are probably right, however:
'Don't judge others by your own limitations'
is something I've learnt by trial and error .

You'd need a better class of humour to achieve those dizzy heights

Your advice may have seemed more like a favour if it hadn't been pervaded by an air of superiority.


Best Regards to all,

and please forgive me for fueling a futile thread.

I'm a n00b and been using Sid for about 5 months or so. Nothing ever broken on me so far. It's rock solid. I'm that lucky?

Dead Parrot, thanks for the info on the apt-listbugs.