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Debian 2.2r5 Released

Debian potato has been updated to 2.2r5. See the press release for info on what has changed - mostly bugfixes, of course, since this is the stable distribution.

2 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. stable vs. unstable by dboyles · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I run Debian "unstable" on 3 out of the 5 boxes that I admin (personal use, not corporate). For the most part I prefer unstable because of the newer software that it allows access to. Some software isn't available in .deb form in the stable distribution ("gallery", for example, an online photo gallery system). Other software varies a lot between the stable and unstable distributions ("unstable" software being more advanced, usually). For the most part "unstable" is a misnomer.

    But... there are those times when something breaks. This is the reason you shouldn't use unstable on a production box. Earlier this week I worked out a KSpread spreadsheet that I needed for a meeting with an advisor. The day for my meeting came and KSpread wouldn't open up because of a conflict with the libpng version. To the best of my knowledge this hasn't been fixed yet. Others report similar problems. Needless to say I wasn't pleased, and I had to go to my meeting without the spreadsheet.

    Does that mean I'll stop using "unstable"? Nah. Should everybody use it? No way.

    --
    -- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
    1. Re:stable vs. unstable by FlyingDragon · · Score: 5, Informative
      If you find stable a bit stoic and unstable a little wild, Debian has another distribution you may find just right: testing.

      Testing consists of packages from unstable that have gone a couple weeks without incident. The result is a very current system with the bleeding edge problems smoothed over. Most of our production boxes are now on it.