My desktop OS: Debian Etch (NewsForge)

My desktop OS: Debian Etch (NewsForge)

Posted Jun 20, 2006 14:30 UTC (Tue) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943)
In reply to: My desktop OS: Debian Etch (NewsForge) by hein.zelle
Parent article: My desktop OS: Debian Etch (NewsForge)

hein.zelle wrote:

Recently it has been much more cutting edge, but I've also had a case where I nearly blew up my installation with a dist-upgrade due to the switch to kernel 2.6.15 and udev which didn't quite go without hickups.

I think you may have missed something important about Debian architecture: Debian never moves changes your system from one kernel.org release to another without your asking it to -- unless you have installed one of the kernel-image metapackages, such as this one:

Package: kernel-image-2.4-686-smp
[...]
Description: Linux kernel image for version 2.4 on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/P4 SMP This package will always depend on the latest 2.4 kernel image available for Pentium Pro/Celeron/Pentium II/Pentium III/Pentium 4 with SMP support. SMP (symmetric multi-processing) is needed if you have multiple processors.

For me testing has been an excellent choice for a relatively stable desktop so far, but I think it's important to realize that it's neither always stable nor does it always have the very latest software.

These are well worth noting, but also predictable if you understand the intent and functioning of the quarantining regime that defines that branch.

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

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