Mike Grover <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: MG> What is the diff between Woody, Sid, and Hurd?
Backing up a little: POTATO: The current Debian "stable" release; aside from security fixes, this will never change WOODY: The current Debian "testing" release; will eventually become "stable"; updates continuously, getting new packages on a rolling basis that have been in unstable for typically a week and a half with no release-critical bugs SID: Debian "unstable"; will never release, though will fork a new "testing" branch when Woody release. Gets new packages continuously, with ~no guarantees that they'll actually work. LINUX: (or GNU/Linux) Operating system based on Linus Torvalds' free Unix-like kernel HURD: (or GNU/Hurd) Operating system based on the FSF's work and the Mach microkernel I'm not terribly clear on what the functional differences between Linux and the Hurd are, only that they're Not The Same (TM). The FSF wants you to call Linux GNU/Linux since it's the GNU userspace on top of the Linux kernel, as distinguished from GNU, which is the GNU userspace on top of the GNU Hurd kernel. So, what release should you use? I'd recommend Linux over the Hurd, given that, from what I can tell, Linux is far more stable and has people actually using it. As far as Debian releases go: people have been tossing around the phrase "production system"; if you need something rock-solid, I'd recommend Debian stable. Stable is also good if you're very new to Unix/Linux/Debian and don't want to deal with things breaking. Testing is a good pick if you're quite familiar with Linux already and want to be close to the bleeding edge but not run into every single bug. You should run unstable if and only if you're willing to track down and report bugs and put up with occasional bits of brokenness (most recently, for example, there was a bug in the unstable X packages such that logging in failed if you were using ssh-agent; a fix went out the next day, so woody users never saw this bug). If you are running unstable, you should probably be subscribed to debian-devel and definitely to debian-devel-announce, since announcements of "I just broke this package in unstable" tend to go there. -- David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/ "Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal." -- Abra Mitchell
