I have experienced roughly the same things. I really don't have details but this is what I did or attempted per se.
I did a small Potato install from CD. changed my sources to woody. apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade Complete failure. As a new user to Debian I can't say who's at fault where. I am still learning apt-get, dselect and dpkg. While going through this process I scoured the mailing lists including Google's archive of debian-user looking for information. Many people were having problems with X and Gnome moving from Potato to Woody. After several attempts and understanding certain things in broken in Woody were fixed in Sid, I simply changed my sources to sid. Did a complete new (reinstall) of Potato (basic) and did a network install of Sid. It went reasonably well, I just have some configuration issues to work through. In my limited and brief experience Unstable has been more stable than Testing. Anthony may have a working Testing install, but that does not invalidate these issues. I'll agree that they could have been brought up in a friendlier manner. At this time I do not (but will) have an understanding on how "holding" packages affects things on an install or upgrade such as what I did. It would still seem to be broken as I still would not have any of the required packages on my system. Anthony could possibly do a "hold" because he still has older versions? I personally was hoping to dist-upgrade to sid. Get a working system. Downgrade to Woody. Woody would over time become newer than the Sid I have. I also agree that there should be a distribution based on testing/unstable which provides a reasonably current system but the all of the packages have all of their dependencies met. If that distribution isn't testing then maybe a new one between stable and testing should be created. This one would have it's own set of criteria between what stable requires and testing provides. Just a thought. I am not trying to bash anyone here. I knew when I attempted testing and then unstable that there may be issues. But I figure once I get my system working it's got to be more stable than any windows or mac I've used. :) I'm already accustomed to restarts and crashes. :) My biggest learning so far is the difference between the RedHat 6.2 I was running and the Debian I have know. It's taking awhile but I think I'll be better off for it. One thing I'll say I do love. I do love the apt cache. I have reinstalled numerous times trying to get it right and get it working. Nothing new I did the same with RedHat. The apt cache is a tremendous blessing when doing the dist-upgrade as there are few changes and I have most of the packages in my cache. I just leave my /var and /home partitions alone and reinstall. Makes mistakes and learning a whole lot easier. Overall I praise the Debian community and developers for providing a great system. It will only get better. Jimmie Houchin "Thomas Bushnell, BSG" wrote: > > Woo hoo! Testing is once again thoroughly hosed. > > This time it's a partial and corrupt installation of gnome. Some > packages are just missing entirely, like gnome-applets, all the > task-gnome* packages, and who knows how much more. > > What on earth gives? > > Frankly, it seems to me that the release engineering for unstable > (that is, none at all) is working betting than whatever the process is > for testing. > > Thomas > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
