[SlugLUG] Help Me Choose

[Sean Kellogg]

On Friday 29 September 2006 12:29, Rohan Sheth wrote:
> So I am in need of some advice...the new Ubuntu Edgy looks promising
> (including the new init system) but what is the point of waiting for
> Ubuntu to release something that Debian is already on top of?  I like
> to run somewhat bleeding-edge on my workstation (thus my gentoo
> experience) so I thought I might jump ship over to Debian.  What I need
> help with is deciding testing vs. unstable.  I realize that many use
> unstable with great success but the "unstable" has me a little scared.
> Any suggestions?  If a decision is made soon I hope to join the person
> installing gentoo on his laptop tomorrow night @ baskin.

This is probably a good a time as any to announce my existence to the group 
and share some of my Linux related thoughts.  First, I'm new to the Santa 
Cruz area, having just moved down from Seattle to follow my GF who is 
attending grad school.  I started running Linux for the first time while in 
the dorms back in 2000.  My friend installed slackware on my aging Pentium 90 
with a dual boot into Windows98.  Ah, good days...

In 2001 I, and several of my friends, made the slow and painful transition 
from various distros (slackware/red hat/mandrake) to debian.  None of us have 
ever looked back.  Since then, I've done system administration and web 
development with the debian distro for various departments at the University 
of Washington.  I've run debian on PPC architecture, three different laptops 
(one Dell, two Toshiba), dozens of servers and desktops, and my plucky media 
server.

I'll leave the Debian bashing to someone else on the list, because there are 
usually plenty of detractors.  What I like about Debian is that it has nearly 
every piece of software I could ever want configured by experts to work with 
every other piece of software on the Debian system.  Whenever I have to hunt 
down a bug fix for a problem I read "make sure you compile X with flag Y."  
And without fail, Debian has done it for me.  Not only that...  but with many 
bugs, if I wait a few days, the deb package will fix it for me.

After completeness comes consistency.  Regardless of how upstream feels 
something should work, the debian packagers ensure the software conforms to 
detailed Debian Policies.  This means that all services have an entry in 
the /etc/init.d/ directory, conf files are properly stored in /etc/, 
documents are in /usr/share/docs/PACKAGE/ and the crontab system is neatly 
organized.  Once you learn how a piece of debian architecture works for 
software X, you've learned how it works for 99% of what remains.

After consistency comes continuous.  I love that every day I run apt-get 
dist-upgrade and everything gets a little better.  A handful of libraries, a 
few base-system pieces, maybe even software I use on a daily basis.  I didn't 
need to know a new version was released upstream, it just comes when it's 
ready.  And, if I don't want to get the upgrades, I can turn them down.

To address the question about unstable/testing/stable and even, yes, 
experimental:  Assume you've got package foo, and the current stable release 
is foo-3.2.  Here's what you are likely to find in the four debian archives:

stable: foo-3.0-9
testing: foo-3.2-2
unstable: foo-3.2-8
experimental: foo-3.3-1

First, note that stable is two releases behind current.  That's thanks to the 
infamous debian release cycle.  I consider Debian releases to be more of a 
political statement than anything else.  Yes, there are folks who only run 
stable, god bless them, but I don't think that's the kind of stability most 
people require.  (Lord only knows when Etch is going to be released...  
debian-vote has three (maybe two) different general resolutions right how 
which are part of a larger political fight.  Blah.  But even with all the 
chaos among the development team, packages continue to get updated.)

Then you've got the differences in testing and unstable.  Note that there is 
no version difference, but there is a difference in the number after the 
dash.  That is the debian package number.  Each deb comes with a myriad of 
stuff beyond the software itself to ensure conformance with the policies I 
mentioned above.  So, in testing you've got 3.2, but it may not have the 
latest wizbang debian feature.  Back in unstable, with -8, they've gone 
through six debian packages in an effort to get wizbang "just right"(TM).  
Once they figure it out, the unstable package will propagate up to testing.  
Could be a week, could be a month.

Now, for 95% of the software, these debian package version differences are 
rarely a problem.  But every now and then some debian developer will be 
asleep at the switch, screw up some dependency, and then the next time you 
apt-get dist-upgrade...  well, let's just say you might have a problem.  The 
nature of that problem could be any number of things.  But over time you 
learn how to fix stuff, revert packages, hold ones you know are "BAD."  I 
think in my five+ years of debian I've only once had an upgrade that required 
a boot disk to repair (some idiot screwed up glibc).

Lastly we've got experimental.  I happen to be a KDE guy and always need the 
latest version.  So once KDE 4.0 is a bit more mature it will appear in the 
experimental repository where I can explicitly grab it.  It might seriously 
break stuff, but that's the price to pay to run ULTRA new software.  There 
has been a debian package of the new cups system in experimental for more 
than a year...  everytime I try it I break everything, so I end up reverting.  
They'll figure it out eventually.

Okay, there is my two cents...  plus an additional buck fifty.  Sorry about 
the verbosity of the post.  You'd never guess, but I'm actually a lawyer by 
training[1].

Looking forward to meeting all of you at a meeting,
Sean

[1] Full disclosure, I haven't heard about my bar results yet...  so I'm not 
yet a lawyer, technically.

-- 
Sean Kellogg
c: 831.818.6940    e: skellogg at gmail.com
w: http://blog.probonogeek.org/

So, let go
 ...Jump in
  ...Oh well, what you waiting for?
   ...it's all right
    ...'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown