4 ms·

Who says the original developers stopped supporting it? Head on over to http://www.kernel.org http://www.kernel.org and you'll see that 3.2 has longterm suppor

• petsos 14y ago
  Right, this may be true for the kernel, but it can't be and it is not true for all of Debian's packages. Case in point Django: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/internals/security/ https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.5/internals/security/ Since the release of Django 1.4, version 1.2 stopped receiving security fixes by the Django development team. What that means is that a Debian maintainer (which probably is not a Django developer) would have to hack any new security fix into the unsupported 1.2. And this is deemed more stable than say, upgrading to 1.3. Note that Django is just an example, obviously there are many more packages with the exact same problem.
  • tshepang 14y ago
    "stable" does not necessarily mean "better"; In the case of Debian, it can mean "unchanging"... that is you can rely on it to not break your software even if you keep it ("stable") updated.
    • petsos 14y ago
      True, but a security update means both better and more stable.
  • claudius 14y ago
    If the Debian maintainer has any idea what he’s doing, then this is likely to be more stable than upgrading to a new release that introduces new features and possibly incompatibilities. Fortunately, most Debian maintainers have a very good idea of what they’re doing.
    • petsos 14y ago
      Likely yes. But if I had to choose between the original developers and someone that has to maintain 20 different packages, I will chose the original developers.
      • claudius 14y ago
        I imagine few maintainers to maintain 20 different packages, and if they do, they are likely related in some way – and then I trust a Debian maintainer more to gauge the impact of a new version on the system than some upstream maintainer, who likely even uses some other distribution. But if that works for you, then great :-)
  • ownagefool 14y ago
    For the record, debian also packages up pip and you can install an up-to-date django using that. You essentially get the best of both worlds here.
    • petsos 14y ago
      Well, it also packages tar and I can untar and install any package from source.
      • ownagefool 14y ago
        I dare say that's not really an apt comparison if you're going for sarcasm. If you're being serious, then um... yeah.
        • petsos 14y ago
          How is it not an apt comparison? What pip would do in this case is bypass apt and install the latest version of Django and its dependencies. If I'm going to do that I might as well build the database and server from source too to have the latest versions. But then why am I using Debian?
          • vacri 14y ago
            Because it provides a stable environment for all packages outside of the special one you're personally managing.
            • petsos 14y ago
              If my server is web site running Django then the special one that I'm manually managing happens to be the most important one.
              • vacri 14y ago
                Isn't that the way it should be? Especially in a production environment - not upgrading unless you're sure your core packages don't break your product?
  • belorn 14y ago
    Security fixes that addresses issues in 1.2 will be back-ported from 1.4 by either A) upstream, or if that fails B) the Debian maintainer, or if that also fails, C) Debian security team. Thats the promise made by The Debian security team which cover the latest stable major release, and for the prior stable release for one year. And it works. Most of all fixes are done by A or B, but the promise is one which the security team takes very serious. For one release, the security team backported security updates for 4 years. A achievement of taking responsibility in a "open source" project if I ever saw one.