Quake 1 (was [Preston] Are we ubergeeks?)

[Matthew T. Atkinson]

'ellow,

On Thu, 2003-06-05 at 00:44, Andrew King wrote:
> I moved to Debian from Red Hat, so obviously it seems a huge step
> forward.  Apt's very reliable for me - it always seems to deal with
> complex/obscure cases that most software would screw up on (and that rpm
> did screw up on).  What makes emerge even better?  (How can it be?!?)
> 
> The only thing that's slightly annoying about Debian, as ppl have
> previously said, I think, is that stable could do to be renamed
> outofdate, but I've stuck with it (KDE 2.something, GNOME 1.something,
> etc) just to be able to use apt-get.  Trying out FreeBSD, but I'm still
> figuring out the basics...
> 

I know this is resurrecting a very old thread but I thought you should
know that you can get very up-to-date software in Debian and still use
apt.  I will try to explain briefly why they don't really advertise
that:

There are three main distributions of Debian at any one time -
``stable'' (currently Woody), ``testing'' (currently Sarge) and
``unstable'' (always known as Sid, I'm told).  As you go from stable to
unstable, the software is newer but the guarantee of reliability
diminishes.  The newer distributions are used as testbeds for new or
updated software entering Debian.

When a package proves itself fairly stable and bug-free in ``unstable''
(the usual entry point into Debian) it filters down through ``testing''
and ultimately gets to ``stable'' when all the (known) bugs are ironed
out and it has stood the test of time.  Of course this is great news for
servers but if you want OOo 1.1, kernel 2.6.0-test7, Mozilla 1.4/1.5a
and all the other latest versions of your favourite software then
``stable'' isn't going to be your cup of tea.

Once you've installed stable, you can ``upgrade'' to testing or unstable
but please be careful.  There is no going back.  Also, the namesake of
``unstable'' is a bit misleading... the software is reliable but the
distribution itself is in a constant state of flux.  This can sometimes
result in broken packages that may stop your e-mail client from working
or, very unlikely but can theoretically happen, stop your system from
booting up properly until the bugs have been fixed and the packages
updated.

I use unstable as my main desktop and have had only a few problems with
it in over 6 months.  Most are fixed within hours and a simple update to
the latest software is all that is required to fix them.  Testing may be
a better place to try first as if it is as up-to-date as you require, it
should be a smoother ride.

I won't post here (as this is long enough already :D) about how to
upgrade but if you are still interested, please e-mail me and I will
send you much more detailed info/instructions (thought I am on holiday
for the next 2 weeks).

Well, I'll be off now, hope this info helps.  How is BSD?  I have always
wondered about giving it a go...  Well, BSD or maybe even The Hurd... :)

bye just now,


-- 
Matthew T. Atkinson <matthew at agrip.org.uk>