On 10/9/2011 3:57 AM, dE . wrote:
Hi.
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.
Suppose I serviced a Desktop PC for some friend and he didn't update
it for a week, 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.
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.
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 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.
I'm discussing this on both debian-desktop and debian-testing.
Well if you are using this in a production environment, it's kinda crazy
to use the testing version. Also, if you aren't happy with what's
available prepackaged, you could always download the source code to what
you want and build your own package. As far as updating, if you are
using the testing build, then updating often is, IMO, a good idea. If
anything to keep up with all the latest bug fixes and feature
enhancements/additions.
Debian stable too old? That's a matter of opinion. I'd rather run
stable on a production box than testing (although I do have two
production boxes running each -- stable for day to day stuff that people
use for reliability and a production testing box for those that like to
use bleeding edge -- both of which have mirrored/replicated data using
GlusterFS).
