On Wed, 27 Nov 2002 12:43:06 -0500, Tim Verry wrote: > If one were to put "deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ unstable > main contrib non-free" in my sources.list, uh, I mean one's > sources.list, then ran apt-get upgrade and watched about 200 packages > get upgraded, what exactly would the result be on so and so's > previously woody Debian installation?
You'll get the more "bleeding edge" versions of some packages, there are some packages that are available in unstable that are not available in stable (e.g., GNOME2). If you're still fairly new to Debian (and it sounds like you are), I would highly recommend going to "testing" before "unstable". The "testing" section is basically the "unstable" packages that are more or less known not to break your system, which can happen with unstable. Anybody who's been running unstable for a couple of years probably still remembers the big crash-bang that was the "pam" fiasco. > If a person had done this, is there any way to downgrade certain > things back to earlier versions? This is available after a fashion. It's not quite what you want, though. Threre's no magic way to tell apt, "now make my sid system a woody system". You can force downgrades on individual packages pretty reliably, but doing an entire system is a pretty major task. It's not really recommended, so you should make sure that you really want to get the packages you want before you hit that second <RET> key after 'apt-get dist-ugrade'. You should check out the docs for apt.conf and apt_preferences for some of the more advanced options that are available. Having said all that, I would have no qualms telling you to upgrade to "testing" (aka "sarge"). The stuff that's there is at least as stable as the some of the crap that goes into an RH *.0 release. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen W. Juranich [EMAIL PROTECTED] Electrical Engineering http://students.washington.edu/sjuranic University of Washington http://ssli.ee.washington.edu/ssli -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]