Can't help ya with sound. Sorry...
But! I can say a bit about their distro system. Of course, the real
documentation is at http://www.debian.org/, but this will get you up to speed
since some of the docs aren't in obvious places.
Stable, testing, and unstable.
Stable is only security updates and maybe a bug-fix or two. The versions of
most or all of the software stays the same. For example, since I run kde 2.2,
as long as I've got stable, it will always remain at version 2.2. The idea
here is that the software was tested thoroughly, found to be working well,
and we-aren't-going-to-change-what-works. Debian's stable has been criticized
for using "old" software. Really, that means just not the "latest and
greatest." It's certainly not the most recent versions of software, but
software that works for sure.
Testing is actually newer versions of things, have been tested, but won't go
into stable, because, well, stable is stable. With the kde example, we're
still dealing with version 2.2, but in this situation it's not the best
example, since kde is such a big "meta-piece" of software. I don't know of a
good example, unfortunately, since I'm not running testing. Testing is going
to be the next stable, at some point in the future. People are checking it
out, finding problems, writing bug reports, etc. It's more current than
stable, but can still not be the most current.
Unstable is bleeding edge. Things will break. One day you'll find out that X
doesn't work, since version 4.3 was just put into the archive. Actually, kde
3.1 was recently put into unstable, and it was news! Unstable is where new
software is put in for the first time. When this happens, it usually breaks
something. At some point, when broken things are fixed for new software, it
goes into testing.
Each of the three (stable, testing, and unstable), has a code name. For
stable it's woody, for testing it's sarge, and for unstable it's always sid.
The names come from Toy Story. The names for stable and testing stay with
those releases. The old (most recent before woody) stable was potato. When
sarge becomes the new stable (at some point in the future), testing will get
a new name, and the process will repeat.
If you want to stay with a release from testing to stable, you change your
/etc/apt/sources.list to include the name of the release you want. In my
case, my /etc/apt/sources.list includes this line:
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ woody main non-free contrib
This is exactly what happened. After you change the word woody to sarge, you
then issue this pair of commands:
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
Then you'll have a period of time (no telling how long) to update everything.
Be Careful! Testing isn't quite stable, so some things may break. If you're
really good at trouble shooting (or want practice), this is a good route to
go.
Enjoy!
Russell
> Also. I've read where Debian has a stable, testing and unstable. How
> does one go from stable to testing? I'm sure there is a web site you
> need to configure in dselect, does anyone know what it is? Or can you
> just use apt-get to go from stable to testing? Like maybe apt-get
> testing?
>
> Thanks
> Mike M .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 16:36:05 EDT