Paul M Foster said: > So I guess my question is: what do you other Debian users do to > resolve the long lead times for Debian releases?
i've been usin debian since just after 2.0 was released ... before that i was a slackware 3.x user. i did tons of manual kernel and libc and other upgrades ... all of my servers are running 2.2r3. some of my workstations are running 3.0(woody). if something i REALLY need is not in 2.2 (like the newest mysql) then i compile from source and install in a dedicated directory. e.g. i dont install mysql to /usr/local i install to /usr/local/mysql to keep it contained. i also had to install perl5.6.1 for a network monitoring app i use. i installed that to /usr/local/perl. i just compiled sendmail 8.12.1 from woody on potato, took a little bit of work to get it working, it spits out tons of warnings when it runs but it seems to work(sofar). i personally really like the slow updating. the one thing that really shocked me was how fast debian 2.1 support(security) was disconinued after 2.2 came out. that would be the one thing that could turn me off to debian sometime in the future. i understood(and still do) why, but it was still too bad to see security support go so quickly. i was equally shocked to be browsing sun's updates page and see updates released this year for solaris 2.3 !! that OS has gotta be 8 or 9 years old ..maybe older.. anyways, when it comes to it i compile from source rather then upgrade to testing. only 1 server of mine runs testing(now that i think about it). and it only runs 2 apps, both required so much new stuff that i couldn't get it working on potato.(ezPublish - http://developer.ez.no and webrt - http://www.fsck.com) i tried for weeks but couldn't do it onpotato. none of my systems run unstable. the testing systems do not get upgraded often, last thing i want is a broken system :) linux 2.2 is becomming like debian 2.2 ..stable enough that it only warrants a upgrade once every 6-8 months. nate
