On Wednesday 12 December 2001 11:08 pm, Matt Greer wrote: > If I did decide on woody, how exactly would I install it? I know that > question has been asked many times, but I'm confused about the optimal way > to do it. Most seem to suggest installing a very minimal potato (although > what "minimal" means I'm not exactly sure, kernel, modules, bash, apt?), > then do "apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade". This would require unstable > sources in my source.list file, right?
No -- you'd need testing sources in your sources.list file. Debian has three different versions: stable, testing and unstable. "Minimal" generally means a base install, with things like a kernel, MTA, basic libs, etc. but nothing like apache, X, Perl, etc. Then, you apt-get your way to Woody (or Sid -- see below) and start installing all the extras that you want. > Does this upgrade the kernel and/or lilo? Just reboot and there's woody? It upgrades everything except the kernel. That you have to do manually, though you can still use the debian package management tools to help you. > Sorry if I'm being too vague. I no longer have Debian installed. My > computer is the gateway/NAT for my LAN, and people weren't willing to have > their net connection go up and down so I could play :) (I'm looking into > getting a dedicated server for that). Honestly, I'd recommend skipping testing and going straight to unstable. Despite the name, unstable is quite acceptable as a desktop machine. I wouldn't run it as a server, but I wouldn't run testing on a server, either. Testing has too many dependency conflicts that don't get resolved in a timely fashion because of the way testing works. Testing really isn't meant for human consumption, IMO. When unstable has problems, they're generally resolved within a day or two. I had more problems running testing than I've had since I've moved to Sid. YMMV, however. hth --kurt
