On Sat, 7 Oct 2017 19:55:22 +0330 Mostafa Shahverdy <most...@mostafa.info> wrote:
> Few while ago I tried upgrading to unstable and I could update all my > packages successfully. Now I'm going to use stable version. I am > following only stable repository and each time I hit `apt-get > dist-upgrade` it successfully upgrades few packages. > > Is this a safe way to stick with stable? > Yes. I am assuming you made a new stable installation, you have not just changed the repository from unstable to stable. That will most definitely not work. Are you asking why only a few packages are upgraded, compared to unstable? Stable should not need many upgrades. In unstable, package versions are frequently upgraded, most of the software has bugs, and sometimes the entire architecture of a linked group of programs is changed. In general, software versions in stable do not change, except for web browsers and anti-virus software. Security bugs are fixed, though not normally functional bugs. Debian stable is often used in servers, where a change of behaviour due to a bug being fixed may cause worse problems than the bug did. The whole purpose of stable is to be an unchanging platform, as far as is possible. That means that the software versions are largely frozen months before release, and will never change. If you need fairly up-to-date software all the time, then stable is not the correct distribution to use, either testing or unstable are more appropriate. -- Joe
