[NBLUG/talk] Debian unstable, was: NTP troubles

[Troy Arnold]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 08:06:02PM -0800, Dean A. Roman wrote:
> It'a good idea to run no higher than testing unless your doing
> development...the packages in unstable change very frequently and often
> with little testing.

Bah! :-)  I run unstable on my desktop and laptop and have done so for a
couple of years now.  And I'm by no means a developer, I just like to
play with the latest and greatest, and occasionally help out by filing
bug reports.  Some things that help:

1) Don't feel like you need to update every single day.  Let some other
   poor sucker get bit first.

2) Install apt-listbugs (this applies to testing as well) this package
   will check bugs.debian.org for any bugs filed on a given package
   *before* installing it.

3) Don't do any major upgrades (like a new libc, or kdelibs) just before
   you have a major project due. ;-)

4) Keep the last version of a package around.  If you have issues, just
   install the old one until the newest one is corrected.
   
In truth my current 'unstable' desktop is the best I've ever used.  I
think I've mentioned this on-list before, but the reality is that most
Debian Unstable bugs stem from dependency problems.  I.e. package A
should depend on package B but does not, or package C needs a newer
version of package B but that would conflict with package D.  In
general, the apps themselves are stable.

So to sum up, if you're an experienced Linux user, don't be scared away
by the 'Unstable' tag.  Instead, call it Sid, and have some fun!

-troy