On Mon, 14 Feb 2011 10:32:20 -0800 (PST) Erin Brinkley <erinbrink...@ymail.com> wrote:
>> > Is something like this doable / desirable or do we have to just wait > every year or so and then do a major upgrade? Like I said I would SO > prefer to just upgrade software incrementally all the time. It would > reduce user headaches plus it would keep Debian much more up to date. > Then use unstable, which would seem to be exactly what you want. Never do a large upgrade, just cope with a never-ending stream of minor issues. But while packages are as autonomous as they can possibly be, there are interactions, and some large ones. Some packages do need to be upgraded in groups. A new version of a desktop environment may well need many new libraries, which may have implications for hundreds of other packages. Sometimes it doesn't go smoothly, and a few things are unusable for a few days. There's always Ubuntu... It's mostly a matter of application, horses for courses. I run a Debian workstation and server. There's nothing of value stored on the workstation, just applications, nearly all with Debian default configurations. No real problem if there's an unresolvable issue (at least at my level), just rip it out and reinstall. It's not even the end of the world if it needs complete reinstallation, as on the occasion of the upgrade to grub2, when I ended up with a non-booting system that I was completely unable to fix. [...grumble...never used to happen with lilo... ten minutes and tomsrtbt would fix anything...and nine minutes of that was remembering how to drive vi...] There's hardly any custom configuration involved. So I run unstable on my workstation, and I don't even bother backing it up, apart from the package list and /etc. On the other hand, my server runs some heavy stuff with serious custom configurations, such as freeradius and an Internet-facing exim4. I don't want to have to muck about with that kind of software every month or so when something breaks. It must be five years since I last tangled with openLDAP, and it would take me a week to learn how to configure it again. Yes, it's a bit traumatic at upgrade time, but things have had up to two years to settle in testing, to the point where upgrade issues are fairly well-known. Server software *doesn't* change dramatically from year to year. LDAP is still LDAP, SMTP is still SMTP, neither very much different from a decade ago. We don't need frequent updates to server software, so it doesn't happen. And after the two-yearly trauma is over, we can forget about it until next time. Just the security updates, which are pretty well tested. So while you may want a more up-to-date desktop, spare a thought for people running servers. Stable, under the current policies, is exactly what's needed there. -- Joe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20110214210129.1610e...@jresid.jretrading.com
