09/10/2011 09:57, dE .wrote: > Hi. Hello,
disclaimer: I am no authority regarding Debian Testing, or Debian, or anything else if it matters ;-) . > > I'm using Debian testing for use with Win/Mac migrants, it's good but > has a lot of problems also, one of which I'd like to address. Debian Testing isn't intended for production use, let alone for Linux newcomers. Discussion about a "contently usable Testing" are ongoing, but Testing status didn't change yet: it is a testing ground, expect a steady flow of updates outside of freeze periods, and expect breakages, some of them requiring quite some skills to be fixed. Testing users should read bug reports (apt-listbugs), keep a close eyes on changes (apt-listchanges), and follow closely a couple of diffusion lists, not an average windows/mac switcher profile. > Suppose I serviced a Desktop PC for some friend and he didn't update it > for a week, Bad idea, with Sid and Testing updating often usually results in better results than the opposite in my experience. My rational is "better deal with smaller chunks of packages being updated every day, it's easier to deal with less bugs/breakages at a time and track them through a smaller set of updated packages. in the mean time in the testing tree, packages update and > the old packages are _removed_. If the end user wants to install a > package which pulls this removed package, download fails and the user is > bewildered. The user should have updated it's packages list, then "download" wouldn't fail. When it (rarely) happens it means a packages has been removed from Testing because it was blocking a larger ongoing migration, or was otherwise broken or orphaned (unmaintained). Cherry picking (search for "apt pinning") from Unstable is sometime required to workaround such situations. Older packages can be found at http://snapshot.debian.org/ . > > Updating is not a good idea since it usually results in major dependency > issues with core libraries, thus effectively, one has to upgrade the > system which results in more than 700MB downloads (in a month old > system) which takes a long time, also issues may arise after the upgrade. Again, it's testing, expect many updates, core changes, and such. > > That's what I meant by shelf life; I'd suggest the package should stay > for a longer period before being removed. This will require a lot of > space though, but that's cheep nowadays. As an alternative, I suggest a > separate set of mirrors specifically for this purpose. Debian Stable has a ±3 years "shelf life", plus some additional months of security updates as "oldstable". > > Debian stable is too old (contains FF 3.5 and chromium 6) which miss out > a few enhancements which might be necessary for the user; backports > ain't always available and there're no updates for them. These are > suggestions to make the testing branch appear less dynamic and more > suitable for the Desktop. Google for discussions about "contently usable testing". Use external depots with Stable, like http://mozilla.debian.net/ for Mozilla products. Backports ARE updated, but it's on a "best effort" basis, don't expect zipping fast backports for the latest version of just about any application. This is not what backports are for. > I'm discussing this on both debian-desktop and debian-testing. As an alternate, Linux Mint is offering a "LMDE" edition [1] (Linux Mint Debian Edition), which from what I understand is basically a Debian Testing/Sid "rolling release", plus some "Minty" add-ons and quality control. It seems to be in the experimental phase still, but already more easily usable for reasonably technical users than Sid or Testing. It's targeted toward end user friendliness, which is not Debian Testing or Sid main goal. Have fun. [1] http://www.linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/[email protected]
