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On Fri, 12 Aug 2011 10:41:07 +0100 Philip Hudson wrote: > On 12 Aug, 2011, at 10:25 am, Gordon Henderson wrote: > > > On Thu, 11 Aug 2011, Neil Stone wrote: > > > >> Sometimes bleeding edge == bleeding frustrating > > > > Well - indeed... > > > > And I've just had a look at Linux Mint - noticed it's got a Debian > > base as well as an Ubuntu base - and the Debian is based on Debian > > Testing... I'm somewhat surprised that they are doing this, and > > expecting people to actually use it (and surprised that people are > > using it for day to day businessy critical things - like running > > an accountancy package!) > > > > If you want stability and support for day to day (and business) > > stuff, then get Debian stable! And you can get a minimal CD > > (180MB) which installs the rest off the net. > > > > http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst > > > > Really - what are you going to gain by going to some of the more > > bleeding edge distributions? (unless you're a total control geek > > like me and want a different kernel, but even I stuck to Debian > > stable for everything else!) > > > > Stable is stable, and sometimes it's good enough for a long, long > > time.. > > Well, yes, except that debian testing is almost as stable as some > other "stable" releases. "Testing" here means integration testing, I > think; in other words, each package has already gone through fairly > rigorous testing before being allowed into "testing", and the only > bugs expected are integration/interdependency-type things. > Crucially, packages in "testing" are "known good" and 90%+ expected > to be in the next stable release in the same form (unless they're > updated again in the interim -- debian releases are infrequent). > Packages in debian testing are fairly current -- much more so than > the generally intolerably out-of-date stuff in debian stable, at > least for my uses -- but the true bleeding-edge stuff is in debian > unstable, which only guarantees that a package will compile, more or > less. > > I always use "testing" and I've *never* been bitten. YMMV I've been bitten by the "things not updating properly because of dependency problems" bug with Testing, but it generally gets resolved within a few days. I've never been bitten by any substantial problems with it. Grant. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq