For Debian users

[Mingthefirst]

Before I try Debian, I want to know that if you install it once, is it installed for life? What this means is do I have to come back every 6 months to re-download a new copy, if I wanted to stay updated, or can I always get upgrades? For example, after FC2 comes out, I will probably have to download that, but I don't want to, so I thought Debian might be the soloution.

BTW, if anyone understood what I said, please translate what I had jst said because I can't find the right word to explain my point

[big_k105]

i believe you can upgrade using apt-get but dont take my word for it as i dont use debian but im pretty sure that is correct. and another distro that once its installed you dont have to reinstall to update is gentoo jst type emerge world i believe and your upto date. i would wait and see what someone else has to say about updateing debian

[Giro]

Yes APT has a couple of ways of upgrading you can use apt-get upgrade to upgrade specific packages (Security updates) or use apt-get dist-upgrade which will upgrade the whole system if there is a new version of Debian avalible. Here is a link to some info on APT.

[Mingthefirst]

Ok, that's very good to know.

BTW, go I have to manually do this or does it automatically check for updates?

And, is Debian user-friendly? I'm still a noob trying to escape Windows, FC1 was pretty good, but I didn't learn anything......., I got lost during the Gentoo instation , and Slackware, for some weird reason, would not work.

[Giro]

No but you can add a cronjob like so, As root edit or create a file called cjobs.sh and add the following

#!/bin/bash
echo date > /var/log/system-upgrades.log
apt-get update >> /var/log/system-upgrades.log
apt-get -y upgrade >> /var/log/system-upgrades.log

Now save it and chmod 755 cjobs.sh and then crontab -e and add the following to run the update at 12pm

00 00 * * * /root/cjobs.sh

I always use this method you can just add all the jobs you want run when people are normally sleeping to cjobs.sh but if you want you can just add the commands to your crontab.