Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On 2006-09-14 17:33:17 +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote: This is the rule for stable. Grave bugs are fixed for the next update though. And this can take months. Losing mail for months is not acceptable. There are other problems with Debian/stable, such as external software that can't be installed because Debian/stable is not up-to-date; such external software may be necessary for some users. Another example is Subversion, that needs a recent version of OpenSSH (with connection sharing) for performance reasons. That's not a bug, it's a feature. A lack of feature, due to the fact that stable is not up-to-date. That's exactly what makes stable so stable. Backports helps sometimes. But backports are no longer stable and have their own problem (e.g. security updates are not guaranteed, which may make them worse than unstable). If, for example, X is broken (which can and did happen), how is he supposed to write to d-u? I cant imagine the average cluebie to be able to use TUI mailers. No need for X to write to d-u. And even if the whole machine is broken (which can happen any time, even with stable, e.g. due to hardware failure or intrusion), you can use another machine. -- Vincent Lefèvre [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Web: http://www.vinc17.org/ 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: http://www.vinc17.org/blog/ Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Andrei Popescu wrote: This is the rule for stable. Grave bugs are fixed for the next update though. Vincent Lefevre writes: And this can take months. Losing mail for months is not acceptable. Updates are available from proposed-updates. -- John Hasler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On 2006-09-16 10:00:12 -0500, John Hasler wrote: Updates are available from proposed-updates. I wonder why the Debian web pages don't mention it. -- Vincent Lefèvre [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Web: http://www.vinc17.org/ 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: http://www.vinc17.org/blog/ Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On 2006-09-16 10:00:12 -0500, John Hasler wrote: Vincent Lefevre writes: And this can take months. Losing mail for months is not acceptable. Updates are available from proposed-updates. Also, these updates seem to be for the current stable version. And the maintainer didn't want to have the problem fixed in the current stable because it could introduce bugs. So, the user would have to wait for several months to use a fixed version of spamassassin in stable. -- Vincent Lefèvre [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Web: http://www.vinc17.org/ 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: http://www.vinc17.org/blog/ Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Am 2006-09-13 11:03:27, schrieb Kim Christensen: That's not the case anymore, there's only testing on these discs - at least the last two releases. No, unstable is there too, but you must use the expert modus or set priority=low Thanks, Greetings and nice Day Michelle Konzack Systemadministrator Tamay Dogan Network Debian GNU/Linux Consultant -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ # Debian GNU/Linux Consultant # Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 50, rue de Soultz MSM LinuxMichi 0033/6/6192519367100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On 2006-09-10 06:02:57 -0700, Marc Wilson wrote: That's a nonsense statement. Whether or not something is up-to-date has zero to do with whether or not it's more or less buggy. Well, in the past, I had mail lost due to the spamassassin from the stable distribution. The maintainer (or some other Debian developer) agreed that there was a problem, but refused to make any update of the package because this wasn't a security hole. There are other problems with Debian/stable, such as external software that can't be installed because Debian/stable is not up-to-date; such external software may be necessary for some users. Another example is Subversion, that needs a recent version of OpenSSH (with connection sharing) for performance reasons. Witness the current sysvinit fun in unstable. Such problems are quite rare. And maintainers should provide a way to fix them. And here, it seemed to be the case. You expect your average cluebie to even understand the problem, let alone how to go about fixing it? Fortunately the maintainer is right on top of that one, but how many cluebies read d-u? Everything should be in the NEWS file. Anyway clubies could still ask someone who knows (whatever the OS is). -- Vincent Lefèvre [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Web: http://www.vinc17.org/ 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: http://www.vinc17.org/blog/ Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Vincent Lefevre [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 2006-09-10 06:02:57 -0700, Marc Wilson wrote: That's a nonsense statement. Whether or not something is up-to-date has zero to do with whether or not it's more or less buggy. Well, in the past, I had mail lost due to the spamassassin from the stable distribution. The maintainer (or some other Debian developer) agreed that there was a problem, but refused to make any update of the package because this wasn't a security hole. This is the rule for stable. Grave bugs are fixed for the next update though. There are other problems with Debian/stable, such as external software that can't be installed because Debian/stable is not up-to-date; such external software may be necessary for some users. Another example is Subversion, that needs a recent version of OpenSSH (with connection sharing) for performance reasons. That's not a bug, it's a feature. That's exactly what makes stable so stable. Backports helps sometimes. Witness the current sysvinit fun in unstable. Such problems are quite rare. And maintainers should provide a way to fix them. And here, it seemed to be the case. You expect your average cluebie to even understand the problem, let alone how to go about fixing it? Fortunately the maintainer is right on top of that one, but how many cluebies read d-u? Everything should be in the NEWS file. Anyway clubies could still ask someone who knows (whatever the OS is). If, for example, X is broken (which can and did happen), how is he supposed to write to d-u? I cant imagine the average cluebie to be able to use TUI mailers. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
* Michelle Konzack [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006-09-11 01:20:58 +0200]: Am 2006-09-09 01:30:50, schrieb Andrei Popescu: (Snapshots of the testing and unstable distributions are created weekly.) But I don't seem to be able to find them anywhere. If you go the CD link on the Debian website, there is a link, which let you go dirtectly to Testing... Note: The last time I have used a Testing-Netisnatll-CD, it gaved me the choice between Stable, Testing and Unstable That's not the case anymore, there's only testing on these discs - at least the last two releases. Of course, you can always downgrade the system when installed, but I guess that's not always an option. -- Kim Christensen I am Jack's broken heart. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Kim Christensen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Michelle Konzack [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2006-09-11 01:20:58 +0200]: Am 2006-09-09 01:30:50, schrieb Andrei Popescu: (Snapshots of the testing and unstable distributions are created weekly.) But I don't seem to be able to find them anywhere. If you go the CD link on the Debian website, there is a link, which let you go dirtectly to Testing... Note: The last time I have used a Testing-Netisnatll-CD, it gaved me the choice between Stable, Testing and Unstable That's not the case anymore, there's only testing on these discs - at least the last two releases. Of course, you can always downgrade the system when installed, but I guess that's not always an option. After a discussion between d-www and d-cd people, it seems there is a possibility to install directly unstable with the business-card image. The complete information will be posted on http://www.debian.org/CD/faq/#unstable-images Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Am 2006-09-09 01:30:50, schrieb Andrei Popescu: (Snapshots of the testing and unstable distributions are created weekly.) But I don't seem to be able to find them anywhere. If you go the CD link on the Debian website, there is a link, which let you go dirtectly to Testing... Note: The last time I have used a Testing-Netisnatll-CD, it gaved me the choice between Stable, Testing and Unstable Thanks, Greetings and nice Day Michelle Konzack Systemadministrator Tamay Dogan Network Debian GNU/Linux Consultant -- Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/ # Debian GNU/Linux Consultant # Michelle Konzack Apt. 917 ICQ #328449886 50, rue de Soultz MSM LinuxMichi 0033/6/6192519367100 Strasbourg/France IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Michelle Konzack [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Am 2006-09-09 01:30:50, schrieb Andrei Popescu: (Snapshots of the testing and unstable distributions are created weekly.) But I don't seem to be able to find them anywhere. If you go the CD link on the Debian website, there is a link, which let you go dirtectly to Testing... Note: The last time I have used a Testing-Netisnatll-CD, it gaved me the choice between Stable, Testing and Unstable Nice, I will try it out as soon as I change my laptop (running sid) Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Kevin Mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: anymore updates. Also, dist-upgrade is not usually needed if you are 'upgrading' within a version whereas 'dist-upgrade' is usally needed if you are moving to a differnt version (cf. stable-testing,stable-unstable, testing-unstable). cheers, Kev It is needed if you run unstable. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Kevin Mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: reinstall the OS and any apps. INSANE! I know there exists a company that makes a live-cd based on windows which could be modified to provide AFAIK windows can't be used for a live-cd, as it requires write access to the root partition. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Hello Andrei. reinstall the OS and any apps. INSANE! I know there exists a company that makes a live-cd based on windows which could be modified to provide AFAIK windows can't be used for a live-cd, as it requires write access to the root partition. It can, look for Windows PE and BartPE. Regards, Mathias -- debian/rules signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 11:12:30AM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote: Kevin Mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: reinstall the OS and any apps. INSANE! I know there exists a company that makes a live-cd based on windows which could be modified to provide AFAIK windows can't be used for a live-cd, as it requires write access to the root partition. Regards, Hi Andrei. check here: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ cheers, Kev - -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org | -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFA+p5v8UcC1qRZVMRAm36AKCNaxZUZBPDF2bxy/GJ5jQy5jpQRACfZUME QGhHhWSxiNznh6MmjcwyBPI= =7y5n -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 04:56:04PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote: I've been using unstable for a few years, and haven't had any real breakage. It may happen that some package no longer works for a few days and it may be difficult to revert to the previous version, but at least, one has up-to-date software (compared to Debian stable), hence less buggy in general. That's a nonsense statement. Whether or not something is up-to-date has zero to do with whether or not it's more or less buggy. Witness the current sysvinit fun in unstable. You expect your average cluebie to even understand the problem, let alone how to go about fixing it? Fortunately the maintainer is right on top of that one, but how many cluebies read d-u? Before that, we had the mis-handled Xorg transition. Myself, I simply didn't allow the packages to install until the dust settled... but that same average cluebie isn't going to do that even if he understands *how* to do that. People who immediately pipe up with I haven't had any real breakage do these cluebies a great disservice. *You* haven't had any real breakage because your definition of real breakage doesn't match his. If you are not prepared to reconstruct the box from a smoking hole in the ground on a daily basis, then you should not be using unstable. 'Nuff said. -- Marc Wilson | Q: What's buried in Grant's tomb? A: A corpse. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 11:08:32AM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote: Kevin Mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: anymore updates. Also, dist-upgrade is not usually needed if you are 'upgrading' within a version whereas 'dist-upgrade' is usally needed if you are moving to a differnt version (cf. stable-testing, stable-unstable, testing-unstable). It is needed if you run unstable. Occasionally it is. But people who advocate that you should always use the 'dist-upgrade' target if you use unstable should be shot. I have a simple metric... I ask unstable users if they know the difference between the 'upgrade' and 'dist-upgrade' targets. Most don't. Do you? Most of your random package $FOO disappeared! nonsense from cluebies can be traced directly to their being told to use 'dist-upgrade' without their also being told that 'dist-upgrade' can change the installation state of a package, while 'upgrade' cannot. -- Marc Wilson | Every time I think I know where it's at, they [EMAIL PROTECTED] | move it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[OT:] windows live cd [Was:] Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Kevin Mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 11:12:30AM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote: Kevin Mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: reinstall the OS and any apps. INSANE! I know there exists a company that makes a live-cd based on windows which could be modified to provide AFAIK windows can't be used for a live-cd, as it requires write access to the root partition. Regards, Hi Andrei. check here: http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ cheers, Kev Interesting. But now I switched to linux. I don't remember when I last booted win and I would wipe it if it weren't for a few games :) Also because I recently moved to another city I don't have friends to support. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Marc Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 11:08:32AM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote: Kevin Mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: anymore updates. Also, dist-upgrade is not usually needed if you are 'upgrading' within a version whereas 'dist-upgrade' is usally needed if you are moving to a differnt version (cf. stable-testing, stable-unstable, testing-unstable). It is needed if you run unstable. Occasionally it is. But people who advocate that you should always use the 'dist-upgrade' target if you use unstable should be shot. You can (always) use dist-upgrade, if you're careful enough what the changes are. But I never do unattended (dist-)upgrades and always have a good look at what the changes are, _especially_ what gets removed. Of course, I learned most of my lessons the hard way, but I also solved most of them on my own, thank you. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Jordi Carrillo [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? I run unstable/sid rather than testing. You have to be aware that in unstable you sometimes get minor glitches (not often, really only every few months for me) that need to fixed up. For example, just this past couple of days, the sysv-init package broke by not installing /etc/rc?.d stuff properly. A new init package came out yesterday or so with a warning and some instructions. I had to figure the packages that have init.d stuff that was recently installed. Then I just had aptitude reinstall them. This is the kind of thing that happens in unstable. You kind of need to be aware and keep on top of things and be able fix the stuff that goes pear shaped. I haven't had a major hosing of the system but that's always possible. Testing has an aging process which prevents stuff like the above init problem from entering. However, the aging process is automatic and has no override (unless you drag down stuff from unstable explicitly yourself - which is a very valid mode of operation). This means that if a bug does enter testing, it can take a while for the fix to arrive. If dependencies churn, it can sometimes take a really long time for that fix to arrive. And did I mention that the aging/dependencies is automatic? No help will come to debian testing for broken packages except through the aging or your explicit installation of unstable packages or compile your own. Furthermore, security bugs are not fixed in testing until the package ages properly. Truely, testing is the distribution in which you are most on your own. I figure I am better off running unstable than testing. My personal opinion is that stable - if you run a server or system upon which you depends (e.g., a computer used for your job that you really don't want to have issues with -- even if that's a desktop) or don't want to be on top of upgrade details. unstable - if you want new stuff and can handle the occasional breakage testing - not for user, only for people assembling the next stable Others will of course disagree. Thanks -- Johan KULLSTAM -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Sun, Sep 10, 2006 at 04:45:24PM +0300, Andrei Popescu wrote: You can (always) use dist-upgrade, if you're careful enough what the changes are. Oh, please. Your average cluebie passes dist-upgrade -y to apt-get, and then wonders what happened afterward. If he's *really* unclued, he does it with a cron job someone gave him. Super bonus points if he does it with aptitude and gets completely unrelated software removed as well. I will always maintain that people should be discouraged from using unstable. -- Marc Wilson | All these black people are screwing up my [EMAIL PROTECTED] | democracy. - Ian Smith -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Johan Kullstam wrote: This means that if a bug does enter testing, it can take a while for the fix to arrive. If dependencies churn, it can sometimes take a really long time for that fix to arrive. And did I mention that the aging/dependencies is automatic? That's not completly accurate about it being automatic. New versions can be uploaded with a high urgency for important bugfixes and security issues and will reach testing in two days. Though dependency issues can still conspire to keep such updates out. -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
I think it is becoming overstated. Unstable means changing, not the usual meaning that the software is unstable and thus unusable. I used to do things answering yes, yes, etc. Never really had a big problem with it. I now do a test run first and find out that stuff will be removed so skip the offenders. Apt-listbugs warns me of other stuff to wait on. Sid is usually just fine. This said, however, the word unstable is no pass to post packages that doom someone's box. A few weeks ago, I had that xorg ABI problem. Once I got xorg going again by futsing around with paths in my xorg.conf (no way the packager's version due to all the ATI mach64 DRI business, now no longer relevant, using Nvidia), there were no fonts showing in KDE. All in all however, the box still worked and with some trouble got snapshots through the wounded KDE (using Opera which showed some text) and with a perfectly OK command line console finally installed the xorg package that instantly fixed it a all day later. But this is, as said, not for everyone. We owe it to our community to exercise elemental care in posting upgrades. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Marc Wilson wrote: I will always maintain that people should be discouraged from using unstable. Seconded. If someone has to ask how to upgrade to unstable then they should not be using it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 10 September 2006 14:57, Marc Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: I will always maintain that people should be discouraged from using unstable. Once I had installed and run Stable (upgrading from pre-Buzz through Hamm), I was interested in learning more about how things worked. When I finally had two systems instead of one, I left the first with Stable and used Unstable. Fixing the occasional glitch has taught me a great deal about how Linux systems and Debian work. I would not have learned so much without these periods of system administration. So folks who are not interested in learning more than they do about their systems are best served running Stable only. Or not Debian at all, but Linspire, Mepis, Ubuntu or one of the other pre-selected kinds of distributions. But for anyone who wants to learn, I actively encourage them to first install Stable, see how to get it working as they like it, then upgrade to Unstable and see the elephant. I have avoided the sysvinit problem by not having turned off my desktop for the last two weeks. I am not enthusiastic about what might happen, so I guess it's time for a full system backup! This is what running Unstable means, _learning_. Curt- - -- September 11th, 2001 The proudest day for gun control and central planning advocates in American history -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iQEVAwUBRQRrHC9Y35yItIgBAQKUxwf9Fnd9z3QG09p/C4jeK+AN6qhmthj92Ltb tjsaOnORbBnhtHqbzPsbdZGqFBaNM9UgOvs4ji7dKcrk9GBTNzbG8smyyZ1KQOF9 E3biLbheV++NuulHICH8bAx1SsmXE12tp2TnWNVz4h36mhyj81QV1ov5GEyTJZZ2 iyANbN1xV4QPMJlaDfOS2noVAftp+TKHgp4aQ45266yf+atX5cgLzG9w6r0eLwKd q+zLicg10wUK31ZqygbrKjPi+N+enayxXEuRJC0aYHwlK3F/O/gYz5IZqnGrZJdp kJWSOuhfmV0kKKIAuxhHy1UzRHcpfbsqWHGlncqX4KrJy2ZBLjgBKw== =JQNm -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Marc Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I will always maintain that people should be discouraged from using unstable. I do agree. Especially the ones asking questions like the OP. Let's say I know my way around computers, maybe even linux and I've been running Debian stable, maybe even testing and now I'm curious about unstable. I wouldn't rely on opinions from other people. The perspective might be totally different. What I call stable enough might not be enough for others. I would just install it (sid) in another partition and try it out for myself for some time. And when it breaks eventually I repair it (maybe with help from this list) w/o blaming someone else for the damage. Like the LFS people say: my distro, my rules, but also my responsibility. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Saturday 09 September 2006 04:54, Marc Wilson wrote: On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 01:20:35PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? If you have to ask, the answer is definately no. Thanks for saying that again. I sometimes seriously wonder if the people who claim to have no breakage in unstable use their systems for anything other than a console log in. My personal experience has been that important things like printing and usb-device access (in kde) *do* break regularly in testing/unstable. If you really need to use your computer to work on, then testing/unstable is IMHO a very bad idea. The way I cover my butt to keep my system usable it that I: 1) have /home installed on a seperate partation than the system, data are safe. 2) I use partimage to make an image of my working system to a second HD regularly, every couple of months. I can restore this image from a LiveCD in less than 15 minutes if I don't have the time or motivation to figure out what went wrong with a dist-upgrade, or to search for the workaround. There is no need to install from scratch (ugh)! 3) I use pinning to keep the system primarily at testing and only run stuff from unstable or even experimental if it doesn't work in testing - but I usually limit this to the gui packages (such as libgl1-mesa-dri to get google-earth working, for k3b which was once stuck in unstable for a long time). Chris -- C. Hurschler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Testing cannot get very unstable as it wouldn't follow Debian rules. Everything that's in testing must be tested in unstable for some time. So, I don't think being in testing will be such a mess in two months. On 9/9/06, Curt Howland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-Hash: SHA1On Friday 08 September 2006 17:32, Jordi Carrillo was heard to say: You say you reinstalled from zero twice. What's the best way to get into unstable? Personally, I use the ~180MB CD version or CD#1 of whatever is Stable.I keep it to an absolute minimum, not downloading any packages offthe net if I can help it. I've done it with the ~30MB net install image CD, which means you start off with a REALLY minimalist system.Don't plug in the network cable until the system works, just to besure.Then edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file to point to the unstable archives, connect the network cable and do whatever it takes to getthat working, and # apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade. When Ican I use the sources.list that I had before, which includes such non-Debian archives as Debian Multimedia for mplayer, etc. Anothergood reason to make sure to back up your /etc directory whenever youdo a backup.This will bring the system into unstable with an absolute minimum of prior baggage. Once it's working as Unstable, then I run dselect(don't scream, folks, I've used it since 1995 and am comfortable withit) to add those meta-packages and applications I know I want. Then,when it's ready to download and install 800 or so packages, I let it go ahead and go to sleep, wake up the next morning and startanswering debconf questions. :^) Another question. When testing becomes stable, I suppose that after this transition if you have sth like deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free your debian will go on with the next testing debian Os, right?Right. Testing means testing, no matter what the version name is. However, soon after releasing a stable, testing can get very,very unstable (in the bad way) for months. I would change the pointerfrom testing to etch now, so that you don't go through that massive mess until you are ready to do so.Unstable doesn't have that massive upheaval, because it's always at alow level of instability.Curt-- --September 11th, 2001The proudest day for gun control and central planning advocates in American history-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)iQEVAwUBRQHvOy9Y35yItIgBAQIj1gf/VKPTKgKAQOPvX2vPPY5JDPDgCMvGPQhqFSKhlEY67dy+P5Y9H89CI6n6HrKnF+9ByWc7HLpTfcGfdojIGRzF2drgeFu2YOuZ mnMsAF1t+JE5rMTtT2FXzCYrAKU2W71/Egphpj3r/q5awLxqqzHr0kxPvk1/PPWxmgmJFXE5/0xQbcj+q01pSzzxzKYUU4Ns/E3XKxby5qK9mYyFhiEBE8pJpY2RSq4tsv6bV2kHQ6exn6/R7bfOUFBP+J2CKWHPccRskq2SrJwAWgthxPwnUZZ1/sRW96Pfa3dvtYnrVJW+Gb1Zu8S68ca9ZSLxKAyneAkSuwQ7jOb1fJ5HdGEzAQ== =cwGK-END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Chris writes: I sometimes seriously wonder if the people who claim to have no breakage in unstable use their systems for anything other than a console log in. I run Unstable on my workstation and have not had breakage for years. However, I do not blindly upgrade every day. I follow debian-devel, selectively upgrade individual packages, and occasionally do a general upgrade when everything seems ok. I also use neither Gnome nor KDE. -- John Hasler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Chris [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thanks for saying that again. I sometimes seriously wonder if the people who claim to have no breakage in unstable use their systems for anything other than a console log in. I certainly do. I suppose it does depend on which packages you have installed, but I've run unstable on multiple machines for about 6-7 years (and even various things from experimental), using a typical desktop workstation install with lots of various whizzy graphical packages (mostly Gnome/GTK-based though, not KDE). I update my packages daily. I've found that real problems are _extremely_ rare -- the recent xorg upgrade is the only one that's bit me in ages and ages. Mostly the only thing that goes wrong is packages that won't install because of dependency problems, and the occasional package that fails during install because of missing dependencies or something. Typically the solution is to put the package on hold, wait a few days, and try again. -Miles -- Suburbia: where they tear out the trees and then name streets after them. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday 09 September 2006 05:12, Jordi Carrillo was heard to say: Testing cannot get very unstable as it wouldn't follow Debian rules. Everything that's in testing must be tested in unstable for some time. So, I don't think being in testing will be such a mess in two months. Think what you want. Experience, mine and others, says otherwise. Curt- - -- September 11th, 2001 The proudest day for gun control and central planning advocates in American history -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iQEVAwUBRQK4mC9Y35yItIgBAQKV1gf8CAxHTYW/bEFElsv+MmF7Mx5H+k068AUK 647QruxwBmH0qkqCr+CjIpViNnT9CDgj/rJsYNSJqzmFRDbTZb/jPXkARV/SF/EJ 6ueW68wsf3zFdQ1tRnwJC402dJVTbLp/Kv4UNzqdH6BqSPdpD0L8EfkWQZJGJk/S j7wSrX5ofLWAqNFwRPrs+fg2zwwnzeBQBMtFArNC0WT6qOM3R9KRsmlCe9xKgqHI XHYHU8g8xZFTdauXIvFTCC3HrA/JoUPLFc2yCNcFcf1CyNisXVHNQrCbO841lFye 9I74mDppEer98FEEhP9E1RDiwseYeCNFdAZFwohP/L5ct/CPpxX4Ww== =EYpQ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Miles Bader wrote: Chris [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: [snip] I've found that real problems are _extremely_ rare -- the recent xorg upgrade is the only one that's bit me in ages and ages. Mostly the only thing that goes wrong is packages that won't install because of dependency problems, and the occasional package that fails during install because of missing dependencies or something. Typically the solution is to put the package on hold, wait a few days, and try again. Agreed, although with complicated package systems, it can get messy. An openoffice.org-draw dependency issue bit me a few weeks ago. I had to manually (using dpkg -r remove all of the openoffice.org* packages before I could finish the in-progress apt-get upgrade. Was able to reinstall them a few days later. But, it didn't munge Tbird, FF or xnethack, and I still had gnumeric and AbiWord, so I wasn't too aggravated. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Is common sense really valid? For example, it is common sense to white-power racists that whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins are mud people. However, that common sense is obviously wrong. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFAryrS9HxQb37XmcRAtReAJ9FNOerRgm358N7Mc+nKcgTQtZoqACg2FcJ QYS0K9v4FwQkpv1xS/l+UZI= =oVKk -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Saturday 09 September 2006 14:23, John Hasler wrote: Chris writes: I sometimes seriously wonder if the people who claim to have no breakage in unstable use their systems for anything other than a console log in. I run Unstable on my workstation and have not had breakage for years. However, I do not blindly upgrade every day. I follow debian-devel, selectively upgrade individual packages, and occasionally do a general upgrade when everything seems ok. I also use neither Gnome nor KDE. -- John Hasler Well, ok. Do you print, do you burn CDs, do you transfer photos from your camera? If you do, and on top of that in KDE (gasp!), you will have had breakage in the last six months on several occasions. I think what you are saying is that if your are very carefull (read lots of lists), and if you don't use a desktop manager, *then* you won't have breakage for years. Ok. I can accept that. Chris -- Bodenstedtstr. 13 D-30173 Hannover -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 PD Dr.-Ing. C. Hurschler wrote: On Saturday 09 September 2006 14:23, John Hasler wrote: Chris writes: I sometimes seriously wonder if the people who claim to have no breakage in unstable use their systems for anything other than a console log in. I run Unstable on my workstation and have not had breakage for years. However, I do not blindly upgrade every day. I follow debian-devel, selectively upgrade individual packages, and occasionally do a general upgrade when everything seems ok. I also use neither Gnome nor KDE. -- John Hasler Well, ok. Do you print, do you burn CDs, do you transfer photos from your camera? If you do, and on top of that in KDE (gasp!), you will have had breakage in the last six months on several occasions. Windows users get bots, worms and viruses and regularly have to reinstall, Debian Unstable (desktop) users get occasional *partial* breakage that is (usually) quickly resolved. And never have to descend into RPM Hell. On the whole, I'll stick with Sid. BTW, since I started with Debian back in the KDE 2.2.1 days, KDE has always been a bit behind in Debian. IIMU that it is because of packaging complexity. I think what you are saying is that if your are very carefull (read lots of lists), and if you don't use a desktop manager, *then* you won't have breakage for years. Ok. I can accept that. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Is common sense really valid? For example, it is common sense to white-power racists that whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins are mud people. However, that common sense is obviously wrong. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFAtFLS9HxQb37XmcRAovRAKCgt+xr8K+rzavpH+3TPlz4SyJ+gQCfXKS/ eV1D7mKZFhYSgAixyv/ieQ0= =4REn -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Chris writes: Do you print, do you burn CDs, do you transfer photos from your camera? Yes. If you do, and on top of that in KDE I said that I use neither KDE or Gnome. If you do, and on top of that in KDE (gasp!), you will have had breakage in the last six months on several occasions. No, because I would not have installed the broken packages, just as I did not install xorg when it was broken. I think what you are saying is that if your are very carefull (read lots of lists)... The only list I find it necessary to read for this purpose is -devel, but yes, you do have be careful. I should think that would be obvious. -- John Hasler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Saturday 09 September 2006 16:35, Ron Johnson wrote: PD Dr.-Ing. C. Hurschler wrote: On Saturday 09 September 2006 14:23, John Hasler wrote: Chris writes: I sometimes seriously wonder if the people who claim to have no breakage in unstable use their systems for anything other than a console log in. I run Unstable on my workstation and have not had breakage for years. However, I do not blindly upgrade every day. I follow debian-devel, selectively upgrade individual packages, and occasionally do a general upgrade when everything seems ok. I also use neither Gnome nor KDE. -- John Hasler Well, ok. Do you print, do you burn CDs, do you transfer photos from your camera? If you do, and on top of that in KDE (gasp!), you will have had breakage in the last six months on several occasions. Windows users get bots, worms and viruses and regularly have to reinstall, Debian Unstable (desktop) users get occasional *partial* breakage that is (usually) quickly resolved. And never have to descend into RPM Hell. On the whole, I'll stick with Sid. Yeah, right. Windows users have to regularly reinstall. Whatever, it doesn't interest me in this context. I also never said not to use debian unstable, in fact I gave some suggestions of how I deal with the breakage that I have observed. I don't think the unstable/testing system is bad either, in fact I sometimes feel a bit guilty about never having submitted a bug report myself. But I'm realtively new to Linux and Debian and often can't tell which package is the problem. However, I can just say from my own experiences that if you want to run the latest software, and you *need* your computer to work, you should be prepared to deal with occasional breakage. Chris -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 03:39:24PM -0400, Curt Howland wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 08 September 2006 15:09, Andrei Popescu [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: If we are talking about unstable breakages I always remember the yaird issue (about one year ago), which made my system unbootable. This is how I learned to fix it with a chroot from Knoppix. While I have reinstalled from zero twice in the last couple of years, once for a new HD and once because Circuit City decided to reinstall Windows XP on my machine that was in to get the CDROM serviced (and the fan cleaned! never buy a laptop where you cannot clean the fan, it is a NIGHTMARE), I've been using Unstable on my desktop/laptop machines exclusively. Hi Curt, how can a company overwrite your HD for any reason? Maybe they say that in the service form before you submit it but even so... They possibly lost any data on you system regardless of what OS you had on there, which is priceless. And secondly, they put an OS on your computer which you do not have a license for which is illegal, no? Maybe you had XP installed and they installed win2k, what would you do? And you'd then have to reinstall the OS and any apps. INSANE! I know there exists a company that makes a live-cd based on windows which could be modified to provide a diagnostic cd, which is what I assume they were doing. cheers Kev ps. what if anything did you do as a result? sue does not seem out of the question, in not some kind of monetary or similar compensations. -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 11:32:44PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: You say you reinstalled from zero twice. What's the best way to get into unstable? Installing the stable version and then doing a dist-upgrade or installing unstable right-away, I mean when debian installation asks you which sources to choose you manually edit sources.list and put the unstable sentence ;-) Another question. When testing becomes stable, I suppose that after this transition if you have sth like deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free your debian will go on with the next testing debian Os, right? just doing a apt-get upgrade will do the trick, won't it? Hi Jordi, as you said, if you keep 'testing' in you sources.list, you will continue to track testing. the only un-changing and un-upgrading version is 'stable' modulo the few security updates. Thus if you change your 'testing' to 'etch' (in the current time frame), you will be running the pre-stable version of etch, now and will eventually run stable when it is release and will thus have a fixed point in time when you will not get anymore updates. Also, dist-upgrade is not usually needed if you are 'upgrading' within a version whereas 'dist-upgrade' is usally needed if you are moving to a differnt version (cf. stable-testing,stable-unstable, testing-unstable). cheers, Kev -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Sat, Sep 09, 2006 at 11:12:23AM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: Testing cannot get very unstable as it wouldn't follow Debian rules. Everything that's in testing must be tested in unstable for some time. So, I don't think being in testing will be such a mess in two months. Hi Jordi, yes its true that the packages are well tested before they go into testing but that does not mean that all the required dependencies are available, so you can 'upgrade' and have things missing which means that some thing may not work. cheers, Kev -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
debian unstable, stable enough?
I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable?Thanks
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 01:20:35PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? There might not be today but there may be tomorrow. I think there's an attempt to keep it usable but, well, it IS unstable... -- To the extent that we overreact, we proffer the terrorists the greatest tribute. - High Court Judge Michael Kirby -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 01:20:35PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? Well...most often not but there can be... and of course the problem with unstable (and testing for that matter) is that it can happen that with an update a default behavior changes (happend to me for example one when they introduces the feature of expireing passwords in samba and had it activated by default) that said...i use unstable on nearly all me desktop machines for some years now and i hardly ever have any problems... yours Albert - -- Albert Dengg [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFAVSXhrtSwvbWj0kRAp+LAJsETioauvPTdQ9Ub0RYq3leG4KAdACeKnaD AtT1s87GiruIOX+Mwu0xj0o= =Sp7N -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Jordi Carrillo: I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? No, if you rely on your system to be available 100% (time and function wise). No, if you don't (know how to) use the BTS, dpkg, apt, package documentation. If you don't know how to upgrade (and cannot find out except by asking here), take that as a sign that unstable is not stable enough for you. Yes if you have fun living on the edge. Yes, if you have enough time on your hands to fix a breakage now and then. Yes, if you take regular backups of your important data. Are there broken dependencies in unstable? Yes, sometimes. But that usually just means that you have to wait upgrading or installing a particular package. Most of the time you can still install an earlier version from testing or stable. J. -- There is no justice in road accidents. [Agree] [Disagree] http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 01:36:26PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: Well, I'll dist-upgrade to unstable as it seems there are no problems despite its name . Is gnome 2.16 there? it seems not (i haven't used gnome for a while). and please, reply to list, not pm yours Albert - -- Albert Dengg [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFAVr7hrtSwvbWj0kRAo9KAJ0b4hW4XXcWoE67aU9y91yM77kOeACdHVpn qevcLqzQDrHz8tZLTeN3bas= =bgEZ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Le vendredi 08 septembre 2006 à 13:20 +0200, Jordi Carrillo a écrit : I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? Thanks I can't really see a rationale for this. As far as I know, packages normally migrate from unstable to testing in _10 days_ (unless testing is frozen). Packages that don't are broken in some way or break something else in some way. Now I know people do this, I guess they must have a reason (a good reason for an unstable chroot is developing packages for Debian). T. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
If packages go from unstable to testing in just 10 days then it's not worth going to unstable, is it? I mean, you can live in the bleeding edge as well being in testing.On 9/8/06, Thibaut Paumard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le vendredi 08 septembre 2006 à 13:20 +0200, Jordi Carrillo a écrit : I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? ThanksI can't really see a rationale for this. As far as I know, packagesnormally migrate from unstable to testing in _10 days_ (unless testingis frozen). Packages that don't are broken in some way or break something else in some way. Now I know people do this, I guess they musthave a reason (a good reason for an unstable chroot is developingpackages for Debian).T.--To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Jochen Schulz wrote: Jordi Carrillo: I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? No, if you rely on your system to be available 100% (time and function wise). No, if you don't (know how to) use the BTS, dpkg, apt, package documentation. If you don't know how to upgrade (and cannot find out except by asking here), take that as a sign that unstable is not stable enough for you. Yes if you have fun living on the edge. Yes, if you have enough time on your hands to fix a breakage now and then. But isn't Windows like that? I *know* that Mandrake stable is like that. IOW, how much do you know about managing a Debian system, since *something* (big, small, middle) will break every month. Yes, if you take regular backups of your important data. Really? Nothing that bad has ever happened to me. Are there broken dependencies in unstable? Yes, sometimes. But that usually just means that you have to wait upgrading or installing a particular package. Most of the time you can still install an earlier version from testing or stable. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Is common sense really valid? For example, it is common sense to white-power racists that whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins are mud people. However, that common sense is obviously wrong. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFAWHjS9HxQb37XmcRAru6AKCg7GPFHkHJz0yMcKpP4QjhnzJlawCbBLVQ obOpUc5wuLZtsKGxt6RLl8M= =pokY -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 02:15:59PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: If packages go from unstable to testing in just 10 days then it's not worth going to unstable, is it? I mean, you can live in the bleeding edge as well being in testing. On 9/8/06, TThhiibbaauutt PPaauummaarrdd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le vendredi 08 septembre 2006 à 13:20 +0200, Jordi Carrillo a écrit : I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? Thanks I can't really see a rationale for this. As far as I know, packages normally migrate from unstable to testing in _10 days_ (unless testing is frozen). Packages that don't are broken in some way or break something else in some way. Now I know people do this, I guess they must have a reason (a good reason for an unstable chroot is developing packages for Debian). T. Hi Jordi, all new bugfixes enter unstable. Packages migrate to testing not exactly in 10 days. There are factors that make it less and there are factors that make it longer--even taking months. The important thing is to try unstable on a second machine, not your main one. Some folks create 2 partitions: one for testing and one for unstable, some create 3 from all versions. This allows one of them to break while the other will still work. All you need to do is just keep a seperate partition for your data files. for a REALLY big picture check out my diagram at http://debian.home.pipeline.com cheers, Kev -- | .''`. == Debian GNU/Linux == | my web site: | | : :' : The Universal | debian.home.pipeline.com | | `. `' Operating System| go to counter.li.org and | | `-http://www.debian.org/ |be counted! #238656 | | my keysever: pgp.mit.edu | my NPO: cfsg.org | signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 07:28:19AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: ... Yes if you have fun living on the edge. Yes, if you have enough time on your hands to fix a breakage now and then. But isn't Windows like that? I *know* that Mandrake stable is like that. IOW, how much do you know about managing a Debian system, since *something* (big, small, middle) will break every month. a well...that can happen everywhere, though it is not that common with debian stable... one of the two machines running sarge at home does have some problems (keeps muting the soundcard for some unknown reason)... and last week a (security) update broke my system completly (seems that the compute for some reason resartet right in the middle of the libc6 upgrage...) Yes, if you take regular backups of your important data. Really? Nothing that bad has ever happened to me. you have been luky... even though i hardly have data loses (sometimes program bugs, sometimes files deleted by accident, once a kernel bug, and two or three times hw failure so backups are _always_ a good idea and not a great problem nowadays... harddisks are cheap and a simple cron script can easyly create backups with several statets fully accessible for you while only really storing the diffs using cp --link and rsync (ok i don't keep backups for some data but that is because it is data i don't really care about if it is lost...) yours Albert - -- Albert Dengg [EMAIL PROTECTED] -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFFAWSGhrtSwvbWj0kRApBUAJ9GePEE0HpcwOSukY/Lvdfoafl33gCfd3/f RSuGrhFo5GeOTMHy9SmxgEM= =mSqT -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Albert Dengg wrote: On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 07:28:19AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote: ... [snip] so backups are _always_ a good idea and not a great problem nowadays... harddisks are cheap and a simple cron script can easyly create backups with several statets fully accessible for you while only really storing the diffs using cp --link and rsync Well yes, but the point is that doing backups is not related to doing system upgrades. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Is common sense really valid? For example, it is common sense to white-power racists that whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins are mud people. However, that common sense is obviously wrong. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFAWehS9HxQb37XmcRAh1WAKCJPn7kKdkjsD7ujqU7VaKmcYlVHQCgo98/ Y5cgA9lC+y32IbURcK1W4FI= =F1IZ -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Ron Johnson: Jochen Schulz wrote: Jordi Carrillo: No, if you rely on your system to be available 100% (time and function wise). No, if you don't (know how to) use the BTS, dpkg, apt, package documentation. If you don't know how to upgrade (and cannot find out except by asking here), take that as a sign that unstable is not stable enough for you. Yes if you have fun living on the edge. Yes, if you have enough time on your hands to fix a breakage now and then. But isn't Windows like that? I *know* that Mandrake stable is like that. IMO Windows is completely different. My box at work is surprisingly stable, but that's because I almost exclusively use it to get some work done. I seldomly install software and never hardware. My experience from more than five years ago (when I didn't use Debian yet, but mostly Win9x, a little bit 2k and then XP)) was that you don't actually administer much, but just use it until it is time to reinstall. I have never used a different distribution but Debian (tried Gentoo, Suse and Ubuntu on spare machines, though). IOW, how much do you know about managing a Debian system, since *something* (big, small, middle) will break every month. I am not sure what your question is. Yes, if you take regular backups of your important data. Really? Nothing that bad has ever happened to me. I didn't experience major breakage or data loss either. But the probability of this happening is much higher than with stable. A few weeks ago, some people's XFS filesystems got corrupted because of a kernel bug. You most probably won't get hit by such bugs when using stable and a Debian kernel from stable. Another example of with quite annoying problems was the transition from Xfree86 X.org. My keyboard layout had been changed from German to US and X didn't start at all because it didn't find some fonts. J. -- I wish I could do more to put the sparkle back into my marriage. [Agree] [Disagree] http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
There can be broken dependencies in unstable and testing. At least I've seen that in the past. But it's kind of strange to ask if Unstable is stable. I guess it depends on how much time you want to spend trying to get the latest and greatest software to work or to just get some work done. On 9/8/2006, CaT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 01:20:35PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? There might not be today but there may be tomorrow. I think there's an attempt to keep it usable but, well, it IS unstable... -- To the extent that we overreact, we proffer the terrorists the greatest tribute. - High Court Judge Michael Kirby -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Jordi Carrillo: If packages go from unstable to testing in just 10 days then it's not worth going to unstable, is it? I mean, you can live in the bleeding edge as well being in testing. You are forgetting the complicated dependency structure of Debian's packages. When a new version of one of the big system components, like Gnome, KDE or X enters unstable, it can take a few months for the complete upgrade to propagate to testing. On 9/8/06, Thibaut Paumard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please don't top-post. J. -- I eat meat and am concerned about bugs which are resistant to antibiotics. [Agree] [Disagree] http://www.slowlydownward.com/NODATA/data_enter2.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Jochen Schulz wrote: Ron Johnson: Jochen Schulz wrote: Jordi Carrillo: [snip] Another example of with quite annoying problems was the transition from Xfree86 X.org. My keyboard layout had been changed from German to US and X didn't start at all because it didn't find some fonts. Yeah, the xorg 7.0 transition was rough. Got me to need to learn Mutt, though. No data was lost, though. That may be because I store my email in IMAP, which gets loaded by daemons, whether X works or not. - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Is common sense really valid? For example, it is common sense to white-power racists that whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins are mud people. However, that common sense is obviously wrong. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFAYB1S9HxQb37XmcRAlcCAKCZlwchWK0cGis+nOrdQU699avGkACfQznF SHzwoQgqyD3ogP2B9Gtl6ec= =PC0f -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Fri, 08 Sep 2006 21:31:35 +1000, Albert Dengg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 01:20:35PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? Well...most often not but there can be... and of course the problem with unstable (and testing for that matter) is that it can happen that with an update a default behavior changes (happend to me for example one when they introduces the feature of expireing passwords in samba and had it activated by default) that said...i use unstable on nearly all me desktop machines for some years now and i hardly ever have any problems... As a rule, I tend to prefer Stable to Testing, and Testing to Ubuntu, and Ubuntu to Unstable. Yes, I realise that Ubuntu is not a Debian distro, but I feel that nearly anything is better than Unstable, I got tired of fixing it all the time! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Le vendredi 08 septembre 2006 à 15:57 +0200, Jochen Schulz a écrit : Jordi Carrillo: If packages go from unstable to testing in just 10 days then it's not worth going to unstable, is it? I mean, you can live in the bleeding edge as well being in testing. You are forgetting the complicated dependency structure of Debian's packages. When a new version of one of the big system components, like Gnome, KDE or X enters unstable, it can take a few months for the complete upgrade to propagate to testing. And is it not broken is some way in the meantime? I mean, are the few months just to move things manually, or to get everything in order before it's propagated? Regards, T. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Jordi Carrillo writes: If packages go from unstable to testing in just 10 days then it's not worth going to unstable, is it? I mean, you can live in the bleeding edge as well being in testing. They only go across in ten days when all dependencies are satisfied, there are no serious bugs, and the maintainer thinks it's ok. Complex packages with many dependencies can take quite a while. -- John Hasler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Thibaut Paumard wrote: Le vendredi 08 septembre 2006 à 15:57 +0200, Jochen Schulz a écrit : Jordi Carrillo: If packages go from unstable to testing in just 10 days then it's not worth going to unstable, is it? I mean, you can live in the bleeding edge as well being in testing. You are forgetting the complicated dependency structure of Debian's packages. When a new version of one of the big system components, like Gnome, KDE or X enters unstable, it can take a few months for the complete upgrade to propagate to testing. And is it not broken is some way in the meantime? I mean, are the few months just to move things manually, or to get everything in order before it's propagated? I don't know about Testing, but subsystems in Unstable never stay broken for more than a few days. Too many bug reports... - -- Ron Johnson, Jr. Jefferson LA USA Is common sense really valid? For example, it is common sense to white-power racists that whites are superior to blacks, and that those with brown skins are mud people. However, that common sense is obviously wrong. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFAZ/FS9HxQb37XmcRAkxDAJ0ZKubO0/4VQqU3N3eXieHYcI2EYQCfWfnD q0q0e4Jq9YqGDe/nJcPJURA= =TAZq -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On 2006-09-08 13:58:15 +0200, Jochen Schulz wrote: Jordi Carrillo: I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? No, if you rely on your system to be available 100% (time and function wise). No, if you don't (know how to) use the BTS, dpkg, apt, package documentation. If you don't know how to upgrade (and cannot find out except by asking here), take that as a sign that unstable is not stable enough for you. Yes if you have fun living on the edge. Yes, if you have enough time on your hands to fix a breakage now and then. Yes, if you take regular backups of your important data. I've been using unstable for a few years, and haven't had any real breakage. It may happen that some package no longer works for a few days and it may be difficult to revert to the previous version, but at least, one has up-to-date software (compared to Debian stable), hence less buggy in general. Concerning testing vs unstable, I've a PowerPC machine under testing (+ some unstable packages when need be) and an x86 machine under unstable. And there's not much difference. Both of them have some transitory problems. Are there broken dependencies in unstable? Yes, sometimes. But that usually just means that you have to wait upgrading or installing a particular package. Most of the time you can still install an earlier version from testing or stable. I'd say fewer broken dependencies than in testing. -- Vincent Lefèvre [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Web: http://www.vinc17.org/ 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: http://www.vinc17.org/blog/ Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Jochen Schulz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Another example of with quite annoying problems was the transition from Xfree86 X.org. My keyboard layout had been changed from German to US and X didn't start at all because it didn't find some fonts. If we are talking about unstable breakages I always remember the yaird issue (about one year ago), which made my system unbootable. This is how I learned to fix it with a chroot from Knoppix. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On 2006-09-08 14:39:34 +0200, Albert Dengg wrote: one of the two machines running sarge at home does have some problems (keeps muting the soundcard for some unknown reason)... and last week a (security) update broke my system completly (seems that the compute for some reason resartet right in the middle of the libc6 upgrage...) Perhaps a hardware problem, that could also happen with Debian stable? Yes, if you take regular backups of your important data. Really? Nothing that bad has ever happened to me. you have been luky... even though i hardly have data loses (sometimes program bugs, sometimes files deleted by accident, once a kernel bug, and two or three times hw failure so backups are _always_ a good idea Yes, the only time I had data loss was after harddisk failures, not because of problems with the software. Fortunately, most of the time, backups are readable. -- Vincent Lefèvre [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Web: http://www.vinc17.org/ 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: http://www.vinc17.org/blog/ Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Thibaut Paumard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Le vendredi 08 septembre 2006 à 13:20 +0200, Jordi Carrillo a écrit : I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? Thanks I can't really see a rationale for this. As far as I know, packages normally migrate from unstable to testing in _10 days_ (unless testing is frozen). Packages that don't are broken in some way or break something else in some way. Now I know people do this, I guess they must have a reason (a good reason for an unstable chroot is developing packages for Debian). T. Maybe it's not rational, but it's fun :) My home laptop is not mission critical and I find breakages just another (maybe the best) opportunity to learn something more about Debian. Of course, I enjoy learning and experimenting with different software and I'm trying to contribute as much as possible by reporting bugs, ... Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein)
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Jordi Carrillo writes: You are forgetting the complicated dependency structure of Debian's packages. When a new version of one of the big system components, like Gnome, KDE or X enters unstable, it can take a few months for the complete upgrade to propagate to testing. Thibaut Paumard writes: And is it not broken is some way in the meantime? No. No package enters Testing until all its dependencies are satisfied. That's the largest difference between Unstable and Testing. -- John Hasler -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Albert Dengg wrote: On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 01:20:35PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: I'm using Debian testing and I was thinking about switching to unstable. Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? Are there broken dependencies in unstable? Well...most often not but there can be... and of course the problem with unstable (and testing for that matter) is that it can happen that with an update a default behavior changes (happend to me for example one when they introduces the feature of expireing passwords in samba and had it activated by default) that said...i use unstable on nearly all me desktop machines for some years now So do I. and i hardly ever have any problems... I consider apt-listbugs an essential part of (usually) keeping out of trouble. There are quite a few packages I'm holding back now. Paul Scott -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
I'll stay in testing. I've tried to move up to unstable and couldn't initiate the X server after the upgrade. Fortunately I had a backup of the whole system and got back to testing in a moment. As I see in http://packages.debian.org/testing and http://packages.debian.org/unstable there are no major differences. Both have Gnome 2.14.3 and when Gnome 2.16 enters unstable I don't think it's gonna take long to be in testing. Perhaps being in testing is the best for a production Desktop as all dependencies are satisfied and you don't have the old packages residing in stable. What's more the chances to break the system seem to be less than being in unstable. On 9/8/06, John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jordi Carrillo writes: You are forgetting the complicated dependency structure of Debian's packages. When a new version of one of the big system components, like Gnome, KDE or X enters unstable, it can take a few months for the complete upgrade to propagate to testing.Thibaut Paumard writes: And is it not broken is some way in the meantime?No.No package enters Testing until all its dependencies are satisfied. That's the largest difference between Unstable and Testing.--John Hasler--To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 08 September 2006 15:09, Andrei Popescu [EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: If we are talking about unstable breakages I always remember the yaird issue (about one year ago), which made my system unbootable. This is how I learned to fix it with a chroot from Knoppix. While I have reinstalled from zero twice in the last couple of years, once for a new HD and once because Circuit City decided to reinstall Windows XP on my machine that was in to get the CDROM serviced (and the fan cleaned! never buy a laptop where you cannot clean the fan, it is a NIGHTMARE), I've been using Unstable on my desktop/laptop machines exclusively. The yaird upgrade, as well as xfree to xorg transition, were the times when Unstable really lived up to its name. I didn't have as much trouble as some with yaird, because I chanced to have a back-rev kernel on the machine to boot into when I had the same problem you did. In fact, I have yet to ever use chroot, so I'm hoping the HowTo will be up to teaching me when the time comes. My experience with Unstable has been that big things going wrong are rare. Very rare. As long as I allow the un-met dependencies to keep packages back, problems tend not to happen. Real bugs, like the inability to automount USB keys and such from a few weeks ago, are quickly fixed. Fixing little problems have helped me learn more about the system than I ever learned about Windows, but the modularity of Debian and Linux in general means that so long as I keep a KNOPPIX disk handy there is no problem that is insurmountable. Like some others here, I've never had data loss due to software failure. At worst, once, I used Knoppix to boot the machine, copied my home directory and a .zip of /etc (always back up your /etc!) to a server and took the opportunity to upgrade to GRUB from LILO. Contrast that to the endless battle trying to figure out why _this_ reinstall of Win2K isn't working, and reinstalling again, and even Unstable Debian is head and shoulders over what other software distributors call stable. Curt- - -- September 11th, 2001 The proudest day for gun control and central planning advocates in American history -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iQEVAwUBRQHG7C9Y35yItIgBAQJ2NQf+PItWLg9RKdg56JEcq+mhe2JAchZRg46O 7lQSBDuJ/otIw7k99RZYCqMvawBIBc56awThUg+hfNqv05rGsNp5HCbKd3Ik7Ncr kJUOE8qksJ9P/dgmT78RrbmwRwIOvv8iKSXMH5cSYpqYSav7QD7gTEblQgdfTda9 mdmMvFOwK+dL/iMUGkLj30U7bwLFzJl/s0iUuA+krZpQxoG/zLltsBjgYm4BM1Zj mUTNB47PcDH2ATj+H4FZHQe7q5BpCxBbYS+4cJO+1K7H8PYrMYjv3PWTF2wYchNe 4oLNxu14M3GguZ40T/XpARGqfZjWwmpd7VPQ17Fy16e/xEoify9/Jw== =g4Yr -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
You say you reinstalled from zero twice. What's the best way to get into unstable? Installing the stable version and then doing a dist-upgrade or installing unstable right-away, I mean when debian installation asks you which sources to choose you manually edit sources.list and put the unstable sentence ;-) Another question. When testing becomes stable, I suppose that after this transition if you have sth likedeb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-freeyour debian will go on with the next testing debian Os, right? just doing a apt-get upgrade will do the trick, won't it?On 9/8/06, Curt Howland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-Hash: SHA1On Friday 08 September 2006 15:09, Andrei Popescu[EMAIL PROTECTED] was heard to say: If we are talking about unstable breakages I always remember the yaird issue (about one year ago), which made my system unbootable. This is how I learned to fix it with a chroot from Knoppix.While I have reinstalled from zero twice in the last couple of years, once for a new HD and once because Circuit City decided to reinstallWindows XP on my machine that was in to get the CDROM serviced (andthe fan cleaned! never buy a laptop where you cannot clean the fan,it is a NIGHTMARE), I've been using Unstable on my desktop/laptop machines exclusively.The yaird upgrade, as well as xfree to xorg transition, were the timeswhen Unstable really lived up to its name. I didn't have as muchtrouble as some with yaird, because I chanced to have a back-rev kernel on the machine to boot into when I had the same problem youdid. In fact, I have yet to ever use chroot, so I'm hoping the HowTowill be up to teaching me when the time comes.My experience with Unstable has been that big things going wrong are rare. Very rare. As long as I allow the un-met dependencies to keeppackages back, problems tend not to happen. Real bugs, like theinability to automount USB keys and such from a few weeks ago, arequickly fixed. Fixing little problems have helped me learn more about the system than I ever learned about Windows, but the modularity ofDebian and Linux in general means that so long as I keep a KNOPPIXdisk handy there is no problem that is insurmountable.Like some others here, I've never had data loss due to software failure. At worst, once, I used Knoppix to boot the machine, copiedmy home directory and a .zip of /etc (always back up your /etc!) to aserver and took the opportunity to upgrade to GRUB from LILO.Contrast that to the endless battle trying to figure out why _this_ reinstall of Win2K isn't working, and reinstalling again, and evenUnstable Debian is head and shoulders over what other softwaredistributors call stable.Curt-- --September 11th, 2001 The proudest day for gun control and centralplanning advocates in American history-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)iQEVAwUBRQHG7C9Y35yItIgBAQJ2NQf+PItWLg9RKdg56JEcq+mhe2JAchZRg46O 7lQSBDuJ/otIw7k99RZYCqMvawBIBc56awThUg+hfNqv05rGsNp5HCbKd3Ik7NcrkJUOE8qksJ9P/dgmT78RrbmwRwIOvv8iKSXMH5cSYpqYSav7QD7gTEblQgdfTda9mdmMvFOwK+dL/iMUGkLj30U7bwLFzJl/s0iUuA+krZpQxoG/zLltsBjgYm4BM1ZjmUTNB47PcDH2ATj+H4FZHQe7q5BpCxBbYS+4cJO+1K7H8PYrMYjv3PWTF2wYchNe 4oLNxu14M3GguZ40T/XpARGqfZjWwmpd7VPQ17Fy16e/xEoify9/Jw===g4Yr-END PGP SIGNATURE---To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Friday 08 September 2006 17:32, Jordi Carrillo wrote: You say you reinstalled from zero twice. What's the best way to get into unstable? Installing the stable version and then doing a dist-upgrade or installing unstable right-away, I mean when debian installation asks you which sources to choose you manually edit sources.list and put the unstable sentence ;-) Install testing and then upgrade to unstable. You cannot directly install unstable. Another question. When testing becomes stable, I suppose that after this transition if you have sth like deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free your debian will go on with the next testing debian Os, right? just doing a apt-get upgrade will do the trick, won't it? Right. If the new testing distribution is in working condition, then yes apt-get upgrade will suffice. But keep in mind that 'apt-get upgrade' might fail (ie it does not do what you want it to do) sometimes when using testing or unstable. You can also find more info regarding these type of questions at http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/kk288/debian_choosing_distribution.html raju -- http://kamaraju.googlepages.com/cornell-bazaar http://groups.google.com/group/cornell-bazaar/about -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Curt Howland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I didn't have as much trouble as some with yaird, because I chanced to have a back-rev kernel on the machine to boot into when I had the same problem you did. I learned that the hard way :) Now I always have at least two kernel versions installed. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Jordi Carrillo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You say you reinstalled from zero twice. What's the best way to get into unstable? Installing the stable version and then doing a dist-upgrade or installing unstable right-away, I mean when debian installation asks you which sources to choose you manually edit sources.list and put the unstable sentence ;-) Another question. When testing becomes stable, I suppose that after this transition if you have sth like deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free your debian will go on with the next testing debian Os, right? just doing a apt-get upgrade will do the trick, won't it? Immediately after etch is released, testing will be just a copy of stale, but will start to change as packages propagate from unstable. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
Kamaraju Kusumanchi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Friday 08 September 2006 17:32, Jordi Carrillo wrote: You say you reinstalled from zero twice. What's the best way to get into unstable? Installing the stable version and then doing a dist-upgrade or installing unstable right-away, I mean when debian installation asks you which sources to choose you manually edit sources.list and put the unstable sentence ;-) Install testing and then upgrade to unstable. You cannot directly install unstable. From: www.d.o/CD/ (Snapshots of the testing and unstable distributions are created weekly.) But I don't seem to be able to find them anywhere. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Friday 08 September 2006 17:32, Jordi Carrillo was heard to say: You say you reinstalled from zero twice. What's the best way to get into unstable? Personally, I use the ~180MB CD version or CD#1 of whatever is Stable. I keep it to an absolute minimum, not downloading any packages off the net if I can help it. I've done it with the ~30MB net install image CD, which means you start off with a REALLY minimalist system. Don't plug in the network cable until the system works, just to be sure. Then edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file to point to the unstable archives, connect the network cable and do whatever it takes to get that working, and # apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade. When I can I use the sources.list that I had before, which includes such non-Debian archives as Debian Multimedia for mplayer, etc. Another good reason to make sure to back up your /etc directory whenever you do a backup. This will bring the system into unstable with an absolute minimum of prior baggage. Once it's working as Unstable, then I run dselect (don't scream, folks, I've used it since 1995 and am comfortable with it) to add those meta-packages and applications I know I want. Then, when it's ready to download and install 800 or so packages, I let it go ahead and go to sleep, wake up the next morning and start answering debconf questions. :^) Another question. When testing becomes stable, I suppose that after this transition if you have sth like deb ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free your debian will go on with the next testing debian Os, right? Right. Testing means testing, no matter what the version name is. However, soon after releasing a stable, testing can get very, very unstable (in the bad way) for months. I would change the pointer from testing to etch now, so that you don't go through that massive mess until you are ready to do so. Unstable doesn't have that massive upheaval, because it's always at a low level of instability. Curt- - -- September 11th, 2001 The proudest day for gun control and central planning advocates in American history -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) iQEVAwUBRQHvOy9Y35yItIgBAQIj1gf/VKPTKgKAQOPvX2vPPY5JDPDgCMvGPQhq FSKhlEY67dy+P5Y9H89CI6n6HrKnF+9ByWc7HLpTfcGfdojIGRzF2drgeFu2YOuZ mnMsAF1t+JE5rMTtT2FXzCYrAKU2W71/Egphpj3r/q5awLxqqzHr0kxPvk1/PPWx mgmJFXE5/0xQbcj+q01pSzzxzKYUU4Ns/E3XKxby5qK9mYyFhiEBE8pJpY2RSq4t sv6bV2kHQ6exn6/R7bfOUFBP+J2CKWHPccRskq2SrJwAWgthxPwnUZZ1/sRW96Pf a3dvtYnrVJW+Gb1Zu8S68ca9ZSLxKAyneAkSuwQ7jOb1fJ5HdGEzAQ== =cwGK -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 01:20:35PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? If you have to ask, the answer is definately no. -- Marc Wilson | Do not dry clean. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: debian unstable, stable enough?
On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 07:54:53PM -0700, Marc Wilson wrote: On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 01:20:35PM +0200, Jordi Carrillo wrote: Is Debian unstable, stable enough for a Desktop system? If you have to ask, the answer is definately no. Agreed. However, IIRC, the OP mention already being on testing. If that is the case, then unstable might be better. Unstable gets b0rked occasionally. However, when testing gets b0rked it tends to stay b0rked longer, as packages are always first uploaded to unstable and then must propogate to testing. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sanchez http://familiasanchez.net/~roberto signature.asc Description: Digital signature
