"Tarun" == Tarun Ramakrishna Elankath <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Tarun> I wish to install Debian and take advantage of its package
Tarun> management system. However I read that one mustn't try the
Tarun> stable release of Debian as its very old, and must go for
Tarun> the unstable release instead.
Stable was released in the summer of 2002, and frozen several months
before that. So, yes, it does not have the latest versions of XFree86,
KDE, Gnome, gcc and so on. But, as the name suggests, it is very, very
stable, with excellent support for security patches.
The testing version (sarge) is much more to "up to date" and is
actually about as stable as a Linux distribution needs to be for
almost all normal use.
Sid is the bleeding edge where packages first enter the mainstream,
and in theory it can be unstable and might break a few things some
days and fix itself up a few days later. I've heard many people say it
works pretty well (never tried it myself).
Tarun> I am now rather confused on whether to download Sid, Woody
Tarun> or Sarge.
Tarun> Any help/tips/advice to an intermediate linux
Tarun> user/developer wishing to install Debian would be much
Tarun> appreciated.
Ask your self what you want to do. I run Woody (stable) on server
style machines (these have uptimes over 350 days, don't run an XServer
etc.), and Sarge (testing) on my laptop. My home workstation actually
runs Woody (I don't use GNOME/KDE etc. and my video card is a $20 Mach
64).
One thing to do is to install Woody. Try it, and if it hurts, update
to Sarge, and then even to Sid. The nice thing about Debian is you can
do this ;-)
Cheers!
Shyamal
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