Jerry put forth on 9/25/2010 6:37 AM: > On Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:30:40 -0500 > cajun <ca...@cajuninc.com> articulated: > >> Only reason is it is a production machine and using Debian Lenny. Not >> that I would have any question at all about whether Postfix was >> stable at all. > > Sorry, I am not familiar with Debian. I am assuming, and I might be > wrong, that the Debian people are not too interested in keeping their > stock offerings up-to-date. Too bad; I question what else they lag > behind.
If you're not familiar with something, should you be making assumptions about it? Debian has 3 distributions: Stable, Testing, and Unstable. The names alone should convey quite a bit. Debian Lenny (current Stable) was released Feb 2009 and ships with Postfix 2.5.5. Stable distributions don't get new versions of packages until the next Stable release, but only security patches. Debian Testing offers Postfix 2.7.1. Debian Unstable offers Postfix 2.7.1. Testing will have Postfix 2.8 once Wietse officially releases it as "stable". Picture an assembly line process from upstream author's package through the Debian process to a Stable release. It takes quite a while. Debian Stable is Enterprise quality WRT stability, same as RHEL and other "stable" focused distributions. Keep in mind that Debian is a totally volunteer organization unlike SuSE, Redhat, etc, _and_ the fact Debian supports 10 different CPU architectures in Lenny. Projects this large can't easily release a distribution, say, every 6 months, especially given the volunteer nature of the project team. For those who desire living a little on the edge, they may choose Testing and get newer packages. More headaches accompany these, some mild, some not so mild. Many Debian SAs choose to run Testing in a production environment. Many consider Debian's Testing distribution to be as stable as many other distributions' production releases. -- Stan
