On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Paul wrote: > Is anyone willing to swap blank CD for the latest version of debian at the > workshop tomorrow. Just one question does debian (latest) come with KDE 3? If > not dont bother with the CDs
The "Latest Debian" is a strange concept. Debian has three current versions: stable, testing, and unstable. The stable Debian probably doesn't come with KDE3. The unstable version comes with the very latest cutting edge version of everything, but it's not guaranteed always to work...for me, over two years of using unstable Debian it's gone weird maybe three times. At the moment KDE is very strange as everything upgrades. It is working, and does look very cool :) Using Debian, you really need a fast Internet connection. I don't recommend it for anyone who just has a dial-up system. The reason for this is that Debian can automatically upgrade your computer when new versions of packages become available. How much upgrades depends on which version you're using. Stable packages only upgrade for security and important bug fixes. Testing packages upgrade once the packages have been in unstable for a while and seem to work. Unstable upgrades whenever a new package is released. This means that sometimes things quite simply don't work. Every once in a while the Debian people rename "testing" to "stable", create a new "testing" version and the process goes on. This is called a Debian release and I think the last time it happened was just after the install-fest last year. It'll probably happen again next year. Now, here's the cool part. Debian is designed to upgrade over the net. So, you can install *whichever* version you want, then tell a wee program called "apt-get" (which you've probably seen mentioned on the list a few times) which version of Debian you actually want, and which server to get it from, and tell apt-get to upgrade your system. It'll go off, download all the appropriate packages, and upgrade your system nicely. Usually with no problems (it's always worrying watching apt-get upgrade itself:) Debian Stable does come on 3 CDs, that you can use instead of going to the net (apt-get lets you get packages from CDs), but using the net is soooo much easier. Tim Wright Assistant Lecturer Department of Computer Science University of Canterbury http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~tnw13
