Hi again, Russ: On Thursday 22 July 2010 14:21:09 Russ Allbery wrote: > "Jesús M. Navarro" <jesus.nava...@undominio.net> writes: [...]
> I don't agree; I think it's very hard to say the same thing about testing. I already told you that's about perceptions and that each one has his own so I'll try this once more, after that I'll leave. > Yes, sid sometimes breaks hard, It's more than that: Sid is *intended* to break hard; it's not a undesired side effect. > although I think if you've been running > Linux for a few years the degree to which sid really breaks is somewhat > exaggerated. Just currently: it won't boot on some archs (the lilo/grub/grub2 issue). Even if it boots, it won't start X on some systems (the Nvidia problems). Even if it runs and it's able to run X you'll find it cumbersome on your desktop environment (the KDE problems). > I've never had something happen in sid that risked real data > loss, for instance; I know we've had cases, but I think they've been > really rare. I've had an unbootable system where I needed to boot from a > rescue CD I think once, and a few cases where X didn't start until I > rolled back some package upgrades. For breakage, that's not bad. Not. For *Sid* that's not bad. For a "bleeding edge end user usable ala Fedora" that's awful. > But on testing, it's been rock-solid for me for years. Again, Testing has been rock solid... considering it is Testing, nothing more, nothing else. > It's not just > somewhat less breakage. I think it's almost no breakage. Occasionally > packages get stranded for a long time at back revs because of various > migration problems, and once or twice I've had to pin something (usually > because of non-free drivers like fglrx or nvidia that aren't really part > of Debian), but it's an experience that I can comfortably recommend. If that's your recommend for an "end user usable quite bleeding edge distribution", sorry I can't support your opinion. > > If anything Sid/Testing could be compared to a "rolling release" > > distribution ala Gentoo or Arch but not to any "fast releasing" like > > Fedora or Ubuntu. > > No, having run both, I honestly think Debian testing is a superior > experience to Ubuntu No, having run both, I honestly think Debian Testing is not superior for a plain end user to Ubuntu. I have about 75 end users that support my opinion with facts. > Packages in Ubuntu > universe break all the time, and worse, they release broken, and it can be > harder with Ubuntu to temporarily install just that package from a newer > release than it usually is with testing to temporarily install something > from sid. I sorrily have to say that if that's really your opinion you live in a different Universe than myself. > *boggle*. Something breaking almost daily is *completely* alien to my > experience even with running Debian unstable. *boggle* Something potentially or even in fact breaking on Debian Unstable daily is my very day to day experience with Sid as it seems to be that of members of debian-users and debian-devel lists. The fact that I'm able to workaround the worst breakages (i.e.: by avoiding upgrading package groups I know by the devel list that are in active development) or manage them (by forcing upgrades, pinning, reinstalls, etc.) doesn't make any less true that Sid is breaking daily -and I wouldn't expect anything else. Cheers. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201007230153.22359.jesus.nava...@undominio.net