Alexis Lee lxs@sdf-eu.org wrote:
On Wed, Apr 23, 2003 at 12:23:42AM +0100, Andrew Savory wrote:
On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Ian Bell wrote:
Is it common to use unstable or is it only for the very brave.?
Use of unstable is pretty common - I use it on my desktop at the moment (stable on my servers). But if you're not used to Debian, it's worth working with stable for a while until you get the hang of package management and the "debian way".
I would also add that unstable works best if you have broadband, so that when stuff breaks you can download updates. While you can do this over 56k, it's rather painful.
*mutter* now try it on a 33.6k modem - and people wonder why I don't often apt-get autoclean (if things go back, I roll back rather than forwards generally, untill I've got a spare day to get it out the way properly ;)
I'd suggest stable, right now, not least because it's a brand spanking new stable. It was only released a few months ago, so new testing (sarge) is hardly different at all and (correct me if I'm wrong) unstable (sid) is rather tempestuous right now.
stable is still massively out of date, but usable, testing has a few things stable doesn't, don't forget that just because stable was only released a few months ago that before that it had package freeze for a few months. A few months in this world can mean a *LOT*.
You can do clever stuff so that your 'core' release is stable, but you can still have some packages from other groups. Mail me and I'll send you what I use.
most people do that with a testing/unstable mix rather than stable/testing, afaik (could be wrong, but I'd have thought that was the better way, and I certainly wouldn't mix stable and testing on our servers, though I do every now and again have to backport some things from unstable and keep my eyes open so that I can roll new packages when there's a security alert :)
Just my 2ps worth, obviously.
Brett.