[plug] Slink Unstable vs Potato ...

[Christian]

Trevor Phillips wrote:
> Does Potato have its own Stable and Unstable branches? Or is Slink
> Unstable basically Potato?

I'm not sure I'm a Debian guru (given some of the people on this list)
but my understanding is that Slink (now Debian 2.1) is the "stable"
distribution whereas potato is the current "unstable" distribution and
will be given a version number (2.2 I expect) when released.

> I'm currently using Slink, with some "unstable" packages, and, well, my
> PC at work IS unstable (and then there's that Netscape problem...). I'm
> wondering if it would be better to go with a "Potato" install, and stick
> to the "Stable" packages, if there is such a thing...

If you upgrade your machine from the stable (slink/2.1) distribution
then you can expect all the packages to work together with virtually no
real problems.  If you use potato/unstable (which is continually
changing) then you can expect things to break (about as bad as your
average Red Hat upgrade - although that's just _hearsay_ cause I don't
run it myself).

What I generally do is start the machine with the stable distribution on
it and then upgrade the packages I need the most recent versions of from
the unstable distribution.  I don't remember ever having any major
problems with this approach. YMMV. :)

Regards,

Christian.

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