My 2 cents on this: I've been using unstable branches/testing for the last couple of years now, and only once did I see broken packages that stuck me there badly (you know, some combination of libc+perl+dpkg, or something that lethal). Even then, with some fancy pussyfooting I managed to repair everything without a fresh install.
One thing I still don't like about Debian is the time it takes to get new versions of major packages, even on "unstable" or "testing" (think: Gnome 2.8). The other side of that coin is that the package maintainers DO keep their eyes on the target. Boy do they work efficiently ! Jeff On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 19:26 -0500, Brian Pack wrote: > On Tuesday 04 January 2005 06:26 pm, Kent West wrote: > > > My personal opinion? Skip Testing and go straight to Sid. You have more > > chance of breakage (although it's been very rare in my experience (about > > 3 years now)), but said breakage also tends to get fixed within hours > > instead of 10 days. Same for vulnerabilities. As soon as a vulnerability > > is found, if the developer/maintainer of that package is on the ball, > > the fix will be in Sid very quickly, perhaps even before it makes it > > into Stable. You also get newer toys to play with. > > I like toys. :) > > I may not have the hands-on experience with Sid that you have (replaced SuSE > 9.1 with Sid in July... 99:1 linux:xp usage since), but I also have only seen > very rare breakages. I've even seen 'breakages' that weren't breakages at > all, but new packages that weren't as forgiving of existing errors as older > versions. > > Case in point: The new Fluxbox 0.9.11. When I replaced my 0.9.9, the desktops > would now jump two at a time when I used the scroll wheel. I thought it was a > bug in fluxbox. Then I noticed that openbox was doing the same thing. > Judicious googling got me to a page that said to check my XF86Config. > Sometimes there are 2 separate listings for the mouse, and could be sending > double inputs. I edited out the redundancy, and bingo! No more double jumps. > > I also make it a point to subscribe to debian-security. The reports almost > always list fixes for both Woody and Sid. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
