[Glastonbury] General purpose/must have packages

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Dec 16, 2004 at 08:06:45AM +0000, Greg Browne wrote:
> Thanks Andy,
> sources.list edited as suggested - I think I have downloaded 48
> packages and with the upgrade, 620 upgraded, 17 newly installed, 4 to
> remove and 10 not upgraded getting 481MB of archives!
> If this slides back into vanilla debain then I assume that there will
> come a time when I'll need to reinstall from a KANOTIX disk or am I
> missing the point?
> Greg
> 
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You should never need to install again :)  I suspect that you're now
actually running close to a vanilla Debian.  Check what /etc/issue says

It is possible to slide from unstable to testing to stable, just by
leaving very long gaps in between upgrades :)

KANOTIX is primarily based on Debian unstable anyway - it says as much -
but is a changing target. I notice they've just released another .iso
on 13th December.  This is, actually, why I'm not a fan of Knoppix hard
disk installs (or Morphix/Gnoppix ... whichever various derivatives
there are) because the stuff never stays around for long enough. If you
get a problem, then you find that stuff is moving under you too fast. It
moves fast in Debian unstable too - but you can _gradually_ move back to
stable - leave your Debian unstable box for about a month, change the 
/etc/apt/sources.list to source testing and you'll find that most of the
packages have slid into testing automagically. Martin and I tend to run
testing for a few machines: at the moment, if you run testing Debian are
almost ready to release current testing as stable - so it should be a
matter of waiting 6 - 8 weeks or so and changing to stable as/when it is
released - but that won't always be the case. Stable tends to be
unconditionally stable - but dates quickly.

HTH,

Andy