To quote "Dr. Aldo Medina" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
# For example, Why are so many packages from older version of programs.
# For example X-chat, wwwoffle ,ncftp and even XFree's packages are from
# very old versions of the actual programs.
# I believe dpkg is the absolute best in terms of packaging system (I
come
# from RedHat's rpm). That's why I think twice to install a new non-deb
# version of some program, even when I need some of the new features
(like
# XFree 4). So what do you recommend?
Debian is split up into three distributions: Potato/stable,
Woody/testing, Sid/unstable. Potato is the stable distribution, and is
generally meant for servers. When you install Potato, you can be sure
that nothing will be changed out from underneath you. You can run
'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' without worry.
Woody/testing and Sid/unstable are generally what people run on their
desktops. Woody is "safer" than Sid, in that new/updated packages are
uploaded to the Sid repositories before they're automatically added to
Woody(a few conditions have to be met; the package in Sid can't have
been updated for at least two weeks, the package in Sid has to have a
lesser or equal number of bugs, and a few other things). Woody is
actually fairly up-to-date. glibc 2.2, GNOME 1.2, KDE2, lots of goodies.
XFree86 4.0.x hasn't made it in, and the Linux kernel 2.4.0 hasn't been
packaged yet. Sid has XFree86 4.0.2, but the kernel is still 2.2.x.
However, you can upgrade to 2.4.0 easily(if you run Sid).
So, if you want more recent packages, you should change all references
to "stable" or "potato" in your /etc/apt/sources.list to either
"testing" or "unstable".
You can also add a deb-src line in your /etc/apt/sources.list pointing
to unstable. Then, whenever you 'apt-get source <package>', you'll be
getting the unstable version of that package. You can then use
'dpkg-buildpackage -uc -b' (as root, in the directory(ies) created by
the 'apt-get source') to get binary .debs for your system. This isn't a
guaranteed solution, but it has always worked for me.
David Barclay Harris, Clan Barclay
Aut agere, aut mori. (Either action, or death.)
