Kent West wrote:
Rodolfo Medina wrote:
I've been using Debian for more than three years now, but always using the
official DVDs of the most current stable version: first Sarge, and then Etch.
Recently, many times I've been needing to use a testing/unstable Debian version
for many applications that were too old in stable Debian, so now I'm thinking
of switching to a testing/unstable Debian version for good.
Now, my question is: which one is more advisable, testing or unstable?
All my non-critical work stations run unstable. This way I get the
newest stuff. I tried to run testing for a while, but when bugs creep
in, it sometimes took two weeks for them to creep out. With unstable, I
run the risk of bugs creeping in more often, but they also tend to creep
out within a day. And the unstable branch is still more stable (yes, I
know, I'm mixing the meanings of the terms) than Windows. I think in
about ten years I've only been bitten once by a serious bug, and even
that worked itself out in about two days. (Just stagger the updates of
your various boxes, so you always have at least one box that doesn't get
horked.)
+1 I also have several boxes running unstable (including my main work machine). I've been doing this for years. In general
testing will have important things broken for longer periods of time (due to delays in dependencies bubbling down from unstable).
Kent's advice above is very good. I also highly recommend installing apt-listbugs and reading the output (and possibly excluding
some packages based on bugs that might affect you) when upgrading.
~c
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