On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 09:59, Nick Rout wrote: > debian does have lovely updating, but in stable the packages are > somewhat older. I have never had much luck with unstable/testing, but > your mileage will vary.
Stable (woody) is pretty darn icky, unless you're installing for a business situation where you want the most bug-free and secure code possible. At which point you'd install up to date versions of particular packages (I'd suggest the woody backport of gnome2 along with updated versions of mozilla or epiphany, evolution, and openoffice.org) Testing is pretty reliable, and gnome2 is now in testing (I think). Unstable is fickle, 12 months ago it was a real annoyance to use unstable because it was unstable, however I'm running 100% unstable debian and its fine. The only issues I've had recently is with the web browsers. Firebird was a bit too unstable, then galeon stopped submitting forms properly. Now I'm using evolution - it lacks the some of the cool features of galeon but its pretty stable and works well for me. (I dont like using plain old mozilla) I'd suggest using testing, with the odd unstable package where needed (say new versions of openoffice and mozilla) Once you get the hang of debian, its configuration and package management scheme, then its worth trying out unstable if you're after the latest and most updated software. Or simply if you've got a good backup and dont mind possibly breaking your system. Its hard to break if you can RTFM and dont mind text based configuration interfaces. Also for those who dont know much about debian, the "unstable" packages might be considered stable by other distros, its just that they haven't been extensively tested within the debian enviroment. Testing packages are ones that have been in unstable for I think 2 weeks without any major bugs reported against them, and stable packages usually have only minor, or no bugs reported. Stable packages are also at a guess 6-12 months out of date unless there have been critical security bugs found, and updates applied. -- Sascha Beaumont <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
