On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 01:51:45PM -0800, Joe Rhett wrote: > > > If testing is what is supposed to be the next release, then it seems > > > pointless to even bother. "Testing" still has Mozilla 1.0. That's what, > > > 2 years old? > > > > We're working on it, but the mozilla package is buggy, which makes it > > difficult to make the testing management scripts happy with it. > > So buggy that it runs 2 years behind? > > > > > Well, that's basically exactly how it works. There's quite a few extra > > > > details but that's the "meat and potatoes" of it so to speak. :) > > > > > > Then why is there really zero updates in testing? > > > > That's just rubbish, sorry. (I help manage testing; I watch what it's > > doing almost every day.) > > Let me rephrase. Either the US mirrors are screwed, or there is less than > a dozen packages in testing. Because adding testing to the sources list > and doing an apt-get update (which was successful) and then trying to > upgrade packages gets me next to nothing. I found hundreds more packages > in 'security' than I did in testing, which actually baffles me since they > should have much of the same content according to the debian guidelines.
You seem to have a fairly big misconception here: Adding testing to the
sources.list and doing an apt-get update and upgrade will _not_ reflect
how many packages are in testing. Not by any stretch.
First off, apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade are very different:
upgrade will install new versions of existing packages, but only as
long as it doesn't have to add/remove other packages to satisfy
depencencies.
dist-upgrade will install or remove other things as needed to meet
deps.
HOWEVER, both of these commands are starting from the goal of upgrading
to newer versions of packages you _already_ have installed. It gives
you no idea what _else_ might be included in sarge.
> Perhaps my product selections are biased: I really could care less about
> the latest and greatest desktop. They are pretty. But a browser that
> actually works is required to do my job, for example.
Fist off, you've already had the suggestion offered of using a backport
for this. Before you get too carried away with complaining that the
entire Debian process is useless, why don't you try the solution that
works for so many people.
Apt-get.org is your friend.
Searching it for Mozilla tells me that Adrian Bunk (among others) is
maintaining a backport. No, this is not an "official" part of Debian,
but between Adrian's reputation and my own experiences, I'd say it might
as well be.
Oh, and on browsers: I've personally been extremely happy with Firebird
(from the Mozilla folks). It isn't packaged as a deb anywhere I've
seen, but just unpacking the tarball in /usr/local/bin and running it
has worked fine for me.
> Updates to the
> wireless drivers to improve device support would be useful. Stuff that has
> been safe and stable within Sid for over a year now (according to the
> package pages) still isn't appearing in testing.
Aren't drivers generally part of the kernel, or kernel modules?
Which in turn are pretty much independant of which branch you're
running. You can compile whatever version kernel you want under
woody/sarge/sid... and make-kpkg makes it almost shockingly easy.
> In short, it appears that if one actually wants to use Debian as a desktop,
> one has no choice but to throw the debian guidelines out the window and run
> with unstable. This means you lose commonality with any server
> 'stable' systems you might need to run.
Nonsense. This is a very popular way of doing things, but by no means
an unavoidable necessity.
If you want a 'stable' system with later versions of just a few things,
you can use backports or failing that, compile your own.
If you want an in-between system, run testing with the caveat that just
before a release, there's not a whole lot of new stuff going into
testing. (Seem counter-intuitive? I believe the reason is that just
before a release, the emphasis is on debugging the hell out of all the
stuff that's already in testing so that it meets Debian's (very high)
standards to qualify for the name 'stable' in time for release.)
If you want more newer stuff than that, go ahead and run unstable. It
seems to only get significantly broken very rarely, but things do go
wrong sometimes when you run lots of really new versions of stuff.
Cheers!
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