On Thu, 2007-03-29 at 13:45 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote: > It can take a while for a newish Debian user to get used to the Debian way. > My preference is to stay somewhat 'behind the curve', but yours appears to > be to stay somewhat 'ahead of the curve'.
Yes, somewhat, though I tend to think of it more like "in the middle of the curve." Testing, up until it gets frozen, is actually pretty up-to-date for most desktop-type packages. Once in a while, something or other will lag a bit, but usually for very good reason. I thought it sufficiently up-to-date without being bleeding edge, which was fine by me. > For me, I run stable until I hear rumblings that testing is about to > be frozen in preparation for becoming the new stable. Then, when I > know that I have some free time to deal with computer glitches, I > change my sources.list to mention the testing version by its code > name, and do a dist-upgrade, and enjoy all the stuff that is > new-to-me. With etch mentioned by name in sources.list the coming > release of etch will be a non-event for me. > > You can use a different strategy: If you are not already running > testing, dist-upgrade to it now, and use the word 'testing' in your > sources.list. When etch is released, do nothing to your sources.list. > There will be a hiatus in testing as all the packages that have been > held back because of the freeze are released from Sid. Live thru that > as best you can. It will, in effect, bring your system into reasonable > sync with Sid. Then when you start hearing about a freeze of the next > testing (Lenny?), do a dist-upgrade to Sid, and stay there. If you > were to stay with testing, you would experience the same unhappiness > that you express now, when Lenny gets frozen for many months. Actually, my plan is to stick with Etch until after it is released, then install a second instance of it and upgrade that to Lenny, and migrate my data over. I would like to have Etch as my "back-up," in case something goes wrong with Lenny. It's unnecessarily cautious perhaps, but I'd rather set aside a few gigs for an OS I know will boot and function properly than be stuck with odds & ends that aren't working. It's just that lately I've been thinking maybe I should try another distro, instead of using Lenny. I would still keep Etch no matter what. But I expected to be doing this by the new year, and here it is almost April, and still no Lenny. And you're right, it doesn't look like Debian is ever going to speed up the lag between freeze and release, so that just means another long freeze down the road. All the more reason to look about for an acceptable alternative, if there's one out there. Sid is too unstable and fast-moving for me. I tried it for a while before I settled on Etch. -- Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream." --S. Jackson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
