[svlug] Red Hat and the ISVs?

[J C Lawrence]

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 15:47:51 -0800 
Craig Oda <craigoda at communitybuilders.info> wrote:

> When I used to use Debian, I remember there were clearly defined
> releases and the releases were spaced far apart.  

This is still partially true.  Debian now effectively has multiple
tracks.  /stable is changes fairly glacially, mostly via security fixes,
with infrequent but mass updates.  /testing changes fairly constantly,
very infrequently breaks (and never seriously in my experience) but
almost never has the mass package update madness of stable.  /unstable
is churn city, breaks occasionally but is right on the bleeding edge.
/experimental is pretty much /unstable but worse.

You get to pick.  Depending on application and need I usually pick
/stable or /testing.  Sometimes I go up as far as /experimental for
specific packages and their dependencies.

> So, if I was using something like woody...

To a large extent the Toy Story names just don't matter any more.
They're just the names of /stable as of a particular time.  In the
general case you'll want to track one of /stable, /testing, or
/unstable.

> This doesn't seem to be the description of something I would want to
> use as a "productive" workstation.  

Which is why I usually track /testing: Its essentially /unstable with
just enough testing to be generally trustworthy.  Essentially the tags
just form dynamic levels of trust.

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.