On Sat, May 20, 2006 at 11:10:13AM -0500, Owen Heisler wrote: > On Thu, 2006-05-18 at 23:37 -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote: > > Adam Hardy wrote: > > > > > > You mean 'testing' and 'etch' are interchangeable as far as the > > > sources.list entry goes? > > > > > > > > > > lrwxrwxrwx 1 200 200 4 Jun 06 2005 testing -> etch > > > > The stable/testing/unstable names are just symlinks to the actual > > codenames. So for now, testing and etch are the same. Once etch is > > released, the symlinks will be upadted and testing will no longer be etch. > > > > -Roberto > > I have been following this thread as I am working on switching to > Debian, and have just these questions: > > If I install Debian stable and have "stable" in the sources.list file, > will updates keep happening, even across releases? I think it would be > great it I never had to reinstall, yet could still have a completely > up-to-date system. > > Also, is the same true for unstable and testing? > > Thanks for clarifying.
Look at http://www.debian.org/releases/ Concerning unstable: Sid is unstable is sid is called unstable is 'Still In Development'. Don't use it until you have some experience with stable and testing. New releases happen rarely, much more rarely than anyone involved would like. The transition from one release to another is a bother, but much less of a bother than with any other distribution that I have used. But, IMHO, there can never be an absolutely bother free version transition. In my experience, release transitions in Debian are really, really easy, but they are harder to deal with than the absolutely trouble free day-to-day operation of stable/Sarge. When a new release does, finally, happen, you will have plenty of warning. And plenty of false warnings, because there are always delays. But the transition to a new release will never just happen without warning. When a new release is immanent, the release manager (a person, unlike a window manager ;-), will place a hold on certain packages that are in Sid, and appear to have unresolved issues that are not about to be fixed. Testing will stabilize for this reason alone, but clean-up work will continue on packages in testing that are really important to the function of the new release. When the list of unresolved issues no longer contains items that bother the release manager badly, he will trigger the new release. If you are away on a trip when this happens, nothing will happen to your Debian on your computer. Nothing will happen, in fact, until you decide to download new stuff, and even then you can avoid actually moving to the new release, if you wish. All this is true whether you are running stable, testing, or unstable. If you are running stable, you can move to the new release by running # apt-get dist-upgrade . But before you do this, you should read various documents that will be available at release time about any special considerations. If you are running testing, you can expect a period of instability because testing is no longer frozen and various of the packages that were held back in Sid, get moved into testing. If you are running Etch, and use etch in your sources.list (on the next release ONLY), and you have been updating regularly, you are running the new stable without doing anything. The only thing that has happened is that the status of the release that you're using has been changed. If you are running Sarge and use sarge in your sources.list, you won't need to do anything to keep running sarge after the release of etch. But you will have to do something, some day, about keeping your system up to date. My personal, risk averse choice is to watch and listen and when I hear stuff that sounds like release holds are beginning to happen, I back up my system on one machine and try a transition to Etch, or whatever, is the name of the next release. If all goes well, I keep the transition. As more and more reports indicate Etch is 'real soon now', I transition some other machines to Etch. When Etch is finally released, it is, for me, a non-event. Note, in this strategy I am using the code name Etch, not the status word 'testing'. (Doing my transition before the actual release, is IMHO very risk averse; If during dist-upgrade, I have problems I can complain, and I will be heard, and if my complaint has merit, release will be delayed.) HTH -- Paul E Condon [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
