On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 01:14:05PM -0500, slushpupie at gmail.com wrote:
> On 8/15/05, Mike Miller <mbmiller at taxa.epi.umn.edu> wrote:
> > On Mon, 15 Aug 2005 slushpupie at gmail.com wrote:
> > 
> > > Ubuntu is a faster moving Debian. Same basic idea, but more modern
> > > software, faster release cycles, etc.  The tradeoff is often newer
> > > software breaking because it is new. So there are more updates, and you
> > > will spend more time maintaining the system.
> > 
> > Is it possible to just update certain packages when new versions become
> > available and save the major updates for later?  Seems like it would be
> > possible, but I'm not familiar with the details of package updating.
> 
> Of course, its a much more manual process if you want to pick and
> choose.  By default updates do not happen automaticly, but there are
> packages to assist in automaticlly keeping your system up to date. You
> can often configure them to update everything, or just specific
> things, or just notify you when updates are availible.
>  
> > I like the idea of a low-maintenance solution with up-to-date versions of
> > the most widely-used packages.
> 
> Ive not done much of this, but you can mix different versions of
> Debian. You can install Debian Stable as a base, and install certain
> packagaes from Testing or Unstable.  The dependancies of the packages
> sometimes end up installing more than you want, but this method works
> fairly well.  And if you are not affraid of the extra work, you can
> often "backport" a newer package to an older version of Debian.

Yes, as new testing distribution develops testing diverges enough
from unstable that it becomes more difficult to maintain a mix 
stable/testing or stable/unstable mixture.  A current example of
this divergence is the change-over to a new C++ api. 

As for backports, there are also lots of private sites out there
that backport new versions of software to stable.  It is very
easy to add those repository to your apt-get config and track
their versions of software.  Of course, they are likely to be
less well tested than the Debian versions, but everything has a
trade-off.

Anyway, there is lot of flexibility to run.  You can try running
stable and only update every year or so.  You can run testing and
update weekly or monthly.  Or you can run unstable and update
daily.  Or some something in betwen.

-- 
Jim Crumley                  |Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List (TCLUG)
Ruthless Debian Zealot       |http://www.mn-linux.org/ 
Never laugh at live dragons  |