On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 02:11:19AM +0100, Jesús M. Navarro wrote: > On Saturday 21 November 2009 18:44:47 John Jason Jordan wrote: > > I have several years of experience with Ubuntu, but I have never looked > > inside. I'm just a pointy-clicky desktop user. > > By you own accord you are not a suitable user for Testing, therefore you are > not a user for Squeeze (not till Squeeze becomes next Stable, but that's > still months in the future). >
With the best will in the world, this statement doesn't help. This question is a Frequently Asked Question [FAQ] - answered elsewhere in places like the Debian Wiki - but something which comes up fairly regularly on this list. Similarly, people coming to Debian are bewildered by the number of CDs/DVDs - "Do I really need to download all 21 / 5" or whatever, the sheer volume of packages and the confusion of "There are three downloadable versions of Debian but they're all one Debian" and the repeated effective assertion that "Once you get past the installer, you need only ever install Debian once and then apt-get / aptitude update does all the rest" That leaves aside the "ia64 doesn't work on my Intel machine", any mention of sheet music and duelling banjos or why apt-get has an immediately useful moo option and aptitude doesn't :) Herewith a couple of quick answers: if need be, can we work up an FAQ list to be posted here once a month or so in the same way that some very long-established Usenet lists post multi-part FAQs? Which Debian version should I choose? ===================================== Debian has various versions. There is always a stable, released version. There is a "Testing" version and also an "Unstable" version. The testing and unstable versions have more package churn as they settle: packages may be uninstallable for varying periods of time if package dependencies are unavailable. The normal sequence of events is for a package to start in unstable, move to testing after a period and then, on release of the next version of stable, be in the stable release. How long does support for a stable version last? ================================================ For one year after the release of the next stable version. The trend at the time of writing is one release every 22-24 months, so a version is fully supported for approximately three years. How should I install Debian? ============================ Use a CD/DVD/USB bootable image or possibly from a network server PXE boot. As of Debian 5.0.x, floppy installs are no longer practicable because of the size of the kernel. How many CDs / DVDs is it? ========================== One network install disk if you have Internet bandwidth: if you have no connectivity or are behind a firewall, 5 DVDs or 22 CDs. It is not necessary or desirable to install every Debian package. etc. etc. :) All best, Andy -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org