On 2011-08-29 19:23 +0200, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 29 2011, SZERVÁC Attila wrote:
>
>> R U a Debian Developer?
>
>> If not, DON'T upgrade to *UNSTABLE* ('sid') distribution. 'sid' is the
>> *UNSTABLE*, *very buggy*, *INCONSISTENT* distribution for *Debian
>> developers only* - if U want new packages, use Debian Backports or
>> *testing* (wheezy).
>
> I think this might be overdoing the fear, uncertainty, and
> doubt a trifle. Yes, unstable can be unstable at times. Packages are
> pushed to Sid after testing on the developer box, but little
> integration testing is done, so it is certainly possible that Sid might
> be broken. In 16 years of running unstable, the number of times when I
> have encountered major breakage can be counted on my fingers (and no
> need to take off my socks).
While I've been using sid for not nearly as long (only about five
years), major breakage is indeed quite rare but it does happen. The
biggest issue this year was the suddenly lost path to the ELF
interpreter¹ on amd64.
But even normal breakage can be quite annoying, be it segfaults in your
RSS reader² or your video player³, or your MTA suddenly being unable to
authenticate⁴ to its relay host. Such disruptions probably occur much
less often in testing.
> However, if you are comfortable with Linux, running Sid is an
> option. I have been doing it forever (I do have a laptop, and I only
> upgrade the laptop _after_ a successful upgrade of my devel box, so I
> have at least one working machine)
Having a second machine is an important safety net, especially if the
breakage is so bad that you can't access the Internet any more to look
for solutions.
Sven
¹ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=626450
² http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=616711
³ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=635324
⁴ http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=638045
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