This doesn't matter to me, an actual Debian user. [LWN.net]

This doesn't matter to me, an actual Debian user.

Posted Apr 30, 2004 11:54 UTC (Fri) by wookey (subscriber, #5501)
In reply to: This doesn't matter to me, an actual Debian user. by zooko
Parent article: Debian: too free?

Zooko said: I expect approximately 0% of Debian desktops, and less than 10% of Debian servers, use stable. I just made those numbers up, of course, in order to make a point.

I think you'll find the stable server numbers are a lot higher than that. I run 7 Debian machines, 3 servers, 3 desktops and a laptop. Both the servers that are exposed to the net, and one of the desktops, run stable. One server and one desktop are used to compile new debian packages so need to run unstable. The laptop runs testing. The last desktop runs old-stable because it doesn't get used much.

I'd expect most productions servers out there to be using stable. I do run a backported spamassassin on them, as that is something that needs to be up-to-date to be useful. I'd guess the above pattern is fairly typical (apart from the old-stable box :-)

You might be able to get some better numbers from netcraft, but I couldn't actually find any.

I do agree that after about 2 years the pressures to upgrade start to increase in many environments, which is why a new release would be good sometime soonish. I actually think Debian is right to be strict about its vision of Freedom, but I'm also prepared to accept a bit of pragmatism in order to release sarge with GFDL and firmware that doesn't really make the cut.

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