Distribution upgrade

[Derek Broughton]

Donn wrote:

> I don't know about server software, but I had to move to Gutsy a few days
> ago because I am coding stuff and need the "latest" libraries.
>  I think it's a real pity that any given distro will become an "island"
>  within
> 6 months and you have no chance of keeping up to date via repos -- short
> of dist-upgrading (which is hard on crappy net connections).
>  I gather it's the fluid and ever-improving nature of the FLOSS world, but
>  I
> always have an uneasy feeling that I'm slipping backwards and out of date
> as soon as I install a new version of Kubuntu!*
> 
> * Not that this is *buntu's fault. It was the same for me under Fedora. I
> hear that Debian has an "unstable" state named Sid, that is supposed to
> stay contemporary, but I don't know enough about it.

It's called _unstable_ for a reason.  Not a very smart way to "stay
current". :-) And note that on a crappy net connection, it will still
routinely want to update 10s of megabytes of files, and almost as routinely
want to upload replacements for those same files a couple of days later
when it's realized there was a bug in the previous update...

The way to have a 'current' system with minimal updates is to continually
push the tested packages from the "unstable" system to the "stable"
system - but getting that cycle down to less than 6 months seems
unrealistic (if anyone had asked me, I'd have said 6 month cycles were
unrealistic!).  The one thing I'd really like to see from Ubuntu is
a "current" repo - like Debian's "stable" - that always points to the
current stable release.
-- 
derek