On Wednesday 14 September 2005 09:51, Patrick Dreker wrote: > Am Mittwoch, 14. September 2005 08.10 schrieb Christof Hurschler: > > Thanks, > > > > I guess I'd like to know more concreteley what types of problems could > > occur. Will apt install libraries on an otherwise Sarge system, during > > a KDE upgrade for instance, that could break the system? > > The first and most obvious problem will simply be dependency conflicts. > Some package depends on a central library whose version is only available > in SID. If that library is not compatible with the apps in Sarge which > depend on the older version, you will have to use the SID Version of all > these application, which tends to pull in more and more libraries which > then aggravate the problem instead of actually solving it. > > The main problem with that is that the system tends towards SID, i.e. in > the long run it will have more and more SID packages installed, which > usually isn't the point of running Sarge with SID "addons" in the first > place. > > The next "stage" of this problem is, when the dependencies don't catch the > problem, because of differences in Sarge/SID, and you end up with > incompatible libraries installed, which then usually causes random programs > not to work, which cannot be the point of actually running "stable"... > > When Woody really started to "grow old" we found on www.debianforum.de that > more and more people started to "mix and match" and ran Woody+Sarge. We > actually partially encouraged people to do so, if they needed more > up-to-date software. But as it turned out after some time we found that > about 30-40% of all new threads in the forum revolved around problems which > directly resulted from the Woody+Sarge mix. usually doing a little cleanup > and lifting the system completely to sarge (which was in testing at that > time) solved the problems... > > In my opinion, if you really need more up-to-date software, either run > sarge+backports (and choose those backports wisely, as diferent backports > can conflict with each other) or directly run Etch (Security Support for > Etch/testing has just been announced...) > > > I have a partition image of my system at Sarge state, so that I can go > > back in a matter of minutes if things get screwed up. > > Which *always* is a sane thing to have... > > Patrick
Hi Patrick, Thank you very much for your message. I've only been running Linux for about a year and a half. I started with Woody and Backports fpr LDE, and even tried compiling some KDE applications. In the end I did what you suggested and ran a mixed testing/unstable system. I did at one point have some samba problems (my desktop computer is also a file and printer server here at home) in testing that seemed to be resolved in time. Basically, my priorites are an up-to-date gui and everything else (sambe, cups etc.) at a stable level. Right now it seems to be working, and I have KDE and some other gui stuff at the Sid level. I'll just have to see how long and may then move up to a testing/unstable system again.. Chris -- Dr.-Ing. C. Hurschler Bodenstedtstr. 13 30173 Hannover 0172-5940909
