On 05/06/2017 06:46 PM, Michael Milliman wrote:
beta testing. Usually, by the time Stretch reaches the 'frozen' stage,
most of the major issues have been worked out, and it is reasonably
ready for production. However, they may still be a few problems to be
worked out...it is a beta after all.
I have come to know over the years nothing is 100% perfect, even if it's
out of beta. :) I've used beta software in the past that was very
stable, and used stable software in the past that was buggier than
you-know-what. (I must say the majority of the buggy software was back
when I used to use Windows as my main OS). Since I use Debian as my main
OS, I have had quite reliable and rock-solid results.
I use out of distribution packages on occasion as well. However, there
is no guarantee that such packages will work or continue to work under
the new distribution, even after it is released as Debian Stable.
The ones I use are Google Chrome (because I need to have things like
bookmarks, etc. available across several devices), JEdit (I use this for
development), TLP Power Management (because otherwise my laptop's fan
would be on all the time and it would get quite hot for some reason),
Thunderbird from Ubuntuzilla, and VirtualBox (because I like to have the
latest). Also videolan is in there for the stuff needed for playing DVDs
on my laptops. I don't use CiaroDock right now but I do have it
commented out in case I want to go back to it. Also I added the
backports repo. That's the crazy setup I have. I'm thinking of doing
this for GIMP and Blender as well. Not sure yet. I like having new
features. :) I'm considering going back to KDE and having the latest KDE
updates, too (right now I'm doing quite well with XFCE from the Jessie
repo). Sometimes I like to try different things (and do so usually first
in a virtual machine for awhile).
Having said that, if they worked under Debian 8, they may well work
under Debian 9. Keep in mind, however, the libraries available with
Debian 9 will in many cases be new and updated versions, and may not be
the same as the ones used by the out of distribution packages. So there
may be some compatibility issues. (Issues I did have with one of the
out-of-distribution packages I use.)
I've had that happen a long time ago with something (I forgot what now).
Very much a PITA.
Give it a try. If it works for you great.
Going to do that in a VM first.
If you have problems,
especially with packages/libraries within the distribution, report them
so that they can be addressed and fixed. That kind of input is
important in getting the Stretch distribution through the process to the
Stable distribution.
I'll earn the "dumb question of the century" award for this but...
What list do I report bugs to and is there something online that tells
someone (who doesn't normally report bugs) the proper way to do bug reports?
Thank you for the detailed information you gave. It's very much
appreciated. :)
