Debian turns ten

Posted Aug 18, 2003 19:16 UTC (Mon) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

That's all theoretically true, and makes a good case for why
it would benefit users to have Debian Stable and Testing more
uptodate. In practice, I haven't experienced any major problems
with using the unstable repository over the last 2 years
(note: my apt configuration files direct the program to use the
more stable versions as the first resort). But or course
I wouldn't run unstable on a server or production system.

Posted Aug 19, 2003 12:07 UTC (Tue) by hazelsct (subscriber, #3659) [Link]

Agreed completely. Take GNOME 2 for example, its first release was before the Debian Woody release. So why didn't Debian Woody use GNOME 2? Because it was not stable, and is still not stable!

Gnumeric and Abiword are not ready for GNOME 2, with Galeon and Epiphany not ready there's no stable web browser, gnome-pilot has broken conduits and crashes frequently, the new Glib is messing everybody up... It's all getting there, but XD2 notwithstanding, not ready for prime time the way GNOME 1.4 is now and has been since not long before Woody's release.

And this is just GNOME; I could name a bunch of related packages with similar issues but the post would be too long -- stuff is just out of sync way too often (upgrading A breaks B in a subtle way, then upgrading B makes A and C's colors screwy, etc.). For this reason, I run all of my user workstations at work on Debian stable, and have home machines on unstable and testing -- and file bugs every day on the home machines!

Debian's focus on making infrequent high-quality releases of stuff that works well together is making my users happy and productive people (and me too!), more productive than if the ground shifted unpredictably under their feet every four months as with some other distros. And when Sarge is ready (probably during the testing cycle), I will upgrade the work machines and users too.