Re: How to pick a distro?

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

At 02:50 PM 4/7/2005 +0800, Yawar Amin wrote:
[...]
  Here's what I think: Debian is excellent, but ... outdated. And
>if you want to be cautious and not try to do full upgrades from the
>'net for fear of breaking something, then you're stuck with older
>stuff. (Sorry, Ray! I had to get that out. I myself use MEPIS, which
>is Debian-based. And I `broke' it by doing a dist-upgrade before first
>installing all the stuff I like.)

You should not feel the need to apologize for an honest opinion, at least 
not one that you express politely (as you do in this instance). That said, 
I do feel the need to respond with a bit of a clarification.

Most Debian users agree, I think, that the "stable" Debian distro 
(currently Woody) tends to be extremely out of date (except for 
security-related fixes, where the maintanance team is very good). Some 
would go so far as to say that it is so outdated that it is a joke, and I 
can't really disagree with that.

But Debian also maintains a "testing" distro (Sarge) and an "unstable" 
distro (Sid), both of which are considerably closer to current. Here, on 
any system that requires really up to date stuff ... in practice, 
everything except my router ... I always use Sid. I occasionally experience 
transient problems, as package updatings get out of sync ... especially a 
problem with major moves by shared libraries ... but that is probably an 
inevitable price of staying close to current. I've never "broken" a Debian 
system for more than a day or two, until the packages got back in sync.

I haven't used any distro other than Debian in so long that I no longer 
know how they compare in the balance of currency and stability with Sid.

I don't know what "Debian-based" distros use, since I've not used any of 
them ... I've never even heard of MEPIS ... so I can neither encourage nor 
discourage their use. I just note that "Debian-based" != "Debian".

Finally, due to the detection and correction of security-related problems, 
I'd suggest that nobody ... at least nobody running a system that has any 
sort of Internet connection ... can escape the need to do regular updates 
of his or her system. In practice, I find "full upgrades" easier to do than 
security upgrades of specific packages ... but the need, and the attendant 
risks of compatibility problems, is present in EVERY distro.


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