I agree, I would like to see a system where major releases and minor releases exist. (No, we really do not have this as I envision it). The major releases would be the base system and libraries (libc, X, kernel, compilers, etc) and the minor releases would be much more frequent and only be non critical stuff (window managers, apps). This would alow work on the next major systrem with the latest copies of everything, but still allow users sticking with stable to have the (almost) latest versions of things. Right now, it seems a new freeze allows just about anything to be upgraded (glibc 2.1, X, kernel). These are bing complicated things, and take a lot more work to make stable than say window maker. This type of statagy is similar to what is used in the kernel (unstable branch with new fetures and stable branch with just updates).
Andrew Lenharth On Fri, 14 May 1999, David Bristel wrote: > My own reasons for wanting these updates in there is that we go frozen, and > then > a major release comes out. Suddenly, Debian may be more stable, but MAJOR > packages are out of date. If we have the "updated" section available on the > ftp > site, we can have these packages there for people to install, without ruining > the integrity of the stable release. It also gives people a feeling of not > needing to wait for the next major release for new software. Sure, once the > new > version comes out, it wouldn't make sense to build for the OLD versions, but > potato isn't out. Because of that, we shouldn't abandon those who run slink. > Note that if linus did that, the 2.2.7 and 2.2.8 would never have come out > because work had already begun on the 2.3 kernels. > > Dave Bristel
