Debian Sid

[bryansmith]

Hey everyone,

If I choose to try Debian Sid (which is likely when I get back to school), how do you go about installing it? Since there are no ISO's for it, I assume you change your apt sources to unstable and do a dist-upgrade. Is this correct?

Also, how bleeding edge is Sid?

Bryan

[Dapper Dan]

That's prtetty much it.

Download Debian Sarge ftp install. After it is installed, go into your /etc/apt/sources.list and change "stable" to "unstable" or "testing." That's what I did, and am running Debian Etch.

[sether]

Also, how bleeding edge is Sid?

This sort of depends on the package, or more specifically, the Debian package maintainer. Some applications are very much up-to-date, but surprisingly, sid is still behind on a number of popular packages. I'd say it's "bleeding edge" enough, but there may be some distributions with more current versions of applications. I'd imagine it's sort of hard keeping up-to-date with over 15,000 packages in the apt repositories.

[bryansmith]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I look forward to trying Sid in the near future.

Bryan

[alain_]

I would recommend you to stay a while with testing/etch,
unstable/sid can (and does) brake your system.
(dependencies problems, for the moment it is libaspell15 what gives some trouble)
Mostly it is not a big problem, but if you don't have any clue it can be a pita.

[Dapper Dan]

I'll testify that Etch runs very well. That's about as far as I want to push the outside of the envelope with Debian. If you want bleeding edge Debian, have a look at Mepis or Kanotix.

[Vergil83]

I would recommend you to stay a while with testing/etch,
unstable/sid can (and does) brake your system.
(dependencies problems, for the moment it is libaspell15 what gives some trouble)
Mostly it is not a big problem, but if you don't have any clue it can be a pita.

It is making me mad though

[ToastedToad]

Sid has been kicking my a$$ lately. Lots of broken packages. I haven't updated my sid box for a few weeks now, and don't plan to until things settle down.

Runnin sid id like palying poker. You gotta know when to hold em, and know when to fold em.

[alain_]

what is life without problems?
it keep you busy, you don't hang out on the streets and you learn something

[Dapper Dan]

what is life without problems?
it keep you busy, you don't hang out on the streets and you learn something

I can appreciate that line of thinking to a certain extent, however, I use my Etch Box for work so it becomes a little irritating trying to get things done if you're constantly having to figure out problems with your box. If it's just an experimental box for fun however, bring on he problems!