On 28/04/2008, Micha <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Actually i recommend sid to everyone except for servers where stable is more > suitable.
You must enjoy debugging a lot, then. Sid really *is* unstable, like its name sounds, and like we can witness with Mond and with me. Newer software is hardly ever necessary. For the fabled "desktop use", stable is pretty good (websurfing, MSFT office documents, chatting, multimedia), and there is no way I'm installing anything but stable on grandma's machine. Stable doesn't crash, it does what it's supposed to do, and it gives free software a good name. Backports are rarely necessary, and if there is a user savvy enough to know that they want something newer than what's in stable, I recommend them to try a backport, and if that doesn't work, then to compile from source. Otherwise, I really question why do they need newer software. Hardware compatibility is a different issue. If they have hardware that's too new for the etch kernels, then I will recommend testing, with many reservations. But I don't recommend unstable to anyone unless they're willing to tolerate the occasional crash and possible data loss. This is Debian's official position too regarding the three distributions. "The unstable distribution is where active development of Debian occurs. Generally, this distribution is run by developers and those who like to live on the edge." Debian newbies presumably don't want to live on the edge. Debian also recommends that you run stable, and they don't make a distinction between running stable on servers or on "desktops". I run testing most of the time, with the occasional non-critical unstable package, but that's because I like bugs. :-) When I can, I will poke around the source code to see if I can find why a particular piece of software is segfaulting. - Jordi G. H. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
