On Tue, 6 Oct 2009 22:47:27 +0100
Samuel Penn <sam@???> wrote:
> On Monday 05 October 2009 22:57:55 john lewis wrote:
> > On Mon, 5 Oct 2009 19:56:15 +0100
> >
> > Samuel Penn <sam@???> wrote:
> > > On Monday 05 October 2009 18:21:56 john lewis wrote:
> > > > However I would like to say that one of the reasons I use
> > > > Debian is that I haven't needed to reinstall* it since I put
> > > > that first system on a PC ten years or so ago. I have just
> > > > moved seamlessly from one year to the next with daily apt-get
> > > > update (nowadays the update bit is taken care by cron-apt) and
> > > > apt-get upgrade (nowadays aptitude safe-upgrade)
> > >
> > > Gentoo is similar, except that the 'apt-get upgrade' bit is seen
> > > as an unnecessary step, and they've managed to pretty much remove
> > > the concept of versioning above the level of individual packages.
> >
> > I didn't really make it clear that "aptitude update" only updates
> > the available package listing held on the local computer.
>
> Ah, I assumed 'update' updated packages, and 'upgrade' upgraded from
> one version of Debian to another. It's that latter (wrong!)
> interpretation of upgrade that Gentoo skips.
There is quite a good explanation of what these commands do in the wiki
http://www.hants.lug.org.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ManagingPackages/Apt
> What does dist-upgrade do? Is that upgrading to a new version of
> Debian?
>
> Or what happens when Debian 3.2 becomes Debian 4.0 (random version
> numbers chosen, since I don't know what version Debian is currently
> at)?
nothing happens unless the user decides to upgrade to the next version,
then dist-upgrade is used, but confusingly dist-upgrade can also be
used to fix 'held back' packages but in my experience doing this often
causes more problems than it solves. I normally wait until the packages
get updated and will install correctly
<snipped>
> > If I ever need to install Debian on a spare box I would normally
> > install only a very basic system, one that it is capable of booting
> > to a command line.
>
> Gentoo's philosophy is that this is all you get after the initial
> install. Everything else is then installed by hand.
if you allow the Debian installer to do automated install everything
including the kitchen sink will get installed. I long ago decided I
didn't want that, partly because I wanted to use windowmaker rather
than gnome for example
> > I then do a dist-upgrade on that basic setup to convert it to a sid
> > system before installing the bulk of the packages needed for a
> > working system. I have gone from stable to sid in one step but it
> > isn't a good idea.
>
> Not sure what sid stands for...
sid aka unstable
squeeze aka testing
lenny aka stable
sid will always stand for unstable whereas squeeze will become the next
stable sometime next year - maybe, it will be released when ready! Lots
of controversy been going on among developers recently about this.
I don't think the name for the next testing version has been chosen
yet, names are taken from Toy Story characters. see this link
http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-ftparchives
I suppose I should really use lowercase for sid
--
John Lewis
using Debian sid
