On Tuesday 05 January 2016 23:02:20 Himanshu Shekhar wrote: > I want to use Debian Testing (not Backports, as I had a bad experience), to > try the latest version of software available. > However, I am a bit confused regarding whether testing would provide the > same level of stability as Stable does! > Any recommendations. > Thanks for help. > > Regards > Himanshu Shekhar
Hi: Francesco already gave a good hint to a good read. You are right: "backports work fine until they break your system thoroughly". There is sometimes confusion about the term "stable". Stable may refer to *your* computer - how stable does it work? The term "stable" and "unstable" concerning the Debian branches is another thing. "Stable" means that the distribution does not change, except for security fixes = a status quo. "Unstable" means that the distribution does constantly change according to development and packages included or removed = no status quo. Even a certain "stable" distribution might work flakily or unstable on *your* computer - due to hardware pecularities, unsupported hardware, or bugs, which have not been discovered before the release of the stable distribution. Then you may want to try the testing distribution or even sid (unstable) to check out if newer updates now support your hardware etc. "stable" does not mean that there are no bugs. There can be well known bugs and known workarounds or unknown bugs which you have the honour to discover all by yourself. Remember Debian 8.0? Then came 8.1 ;-) On the other hand a certain installation at a certain time of the testing or the unstable branch might work rock-solid on *your* computer. But that can change with any update/upgrade. Then sometimes you might lose packages for some time, which you would need to do your job (example: digikam). You might want to have a computer with the stable version of Debian and another with the testing version or even unstable. An alternative is to install both branches (stable and testing) or even three versions with multiboot capability. Some of us use virtual machines to test the various versions, but that may not be sufficient if you encounter hardware/firmware/driver problems. If you decide to install testing on your work-horse computer than look out for mayor transitions - it is good advice to wait with upgrades until those are completed. Never blindly upgrade! Look here: https://release.debian.org/transitions/ https://www.debian.org/News/weekly/ Debian is a very workable distribution - no matter if you use the stable, the testing or the unstable branch but the following truth is true for Debian too: "What's new in the new software?" "New bugs..." Cheers Eike
