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FWIW, I've been running Debian "testing" on my machine since 2001-ish and I've never done anything special near releases. Except maybe rejoice at all the old pa

FWIW, I've been running Debian "testing" on my machine since 2001-ish and I've never done anything special near releases. Except maybe rejoice at all the old packages finally getting upgraded. :-)

shared4you 14y ago
Didn't you run into any breakage of packages? I mean there's this mad rush into testing right after a new release. I'm thinking of running wheezy for a couple of months until the storm calms down.
- PommeDeTerre 14y ago
  I've found the Debian package maintainers to be quite careful, even when there's a large amount of rapid change to testing. I think they put a lot of effort and thought into avoiding breakage, even in scenarios like this. Any time I've encountered broken packages, the problem has been resolved quite quickly, especially if more important and widely-used packages are involved.
  - psionski 14y ago
    I'm using a mix between unstable and Mint for a Steam box (games, music, movies, web) and found out the label must be mistaken. It's a minimal installation, but everything from ATI drivers to multi-arch support worked perfectly out of the box. It already went through several dist-upgrades without any manual intervention (except maybe a couple of "yes/no" questions).
    - claudius 14y ago
      When did you install? Testing/Unstable are relatively quiet during a freeze, so just wait till everybody realises that Wheezy is out and you should get plenty of breakage :)
      - psionski 14y ago
        Several months ago... what you say makes sense, should I expect generally less breakage than Ubuntu or more? I wouldn't like having to install Ubuntu, mostly because it's too difficult to manage and troubleshoot...
- e12e 14y ago
  For those running testing (or sid/experimental) I highly recommend apt-listbugs -- it will list (critical) bugs related to packages you're about to upgrade/install -- and allow you to back out. Often you can just hold off a few days, and some hardworking Debian volunteer will have made the problem go away -- before you need to experience it.
- eikenberry 14y ago
  A couple weeks is probably long enough. Time for the flood of new packages to come in and anything broken to get reported and fixed. It doesn't take that long as lots of people use testing.
- hexonexxon 14y ago
  i had to install a testing snapshot May 4 because wasn't sure when they were releasing stable wheezy, and needed it immediately. only package that broke the next day after full dist-update was "less" which for some reason will not co-exist with man-db. that was it though everything else updated fine
  - emillon 14y ago
    FYI, the less/man-db issue is tracked here: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=695361 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=695361

FWIW, I've been running Debian "testing" on my machine since 2001-ish and I've never done anything special near releases. Except maybe rejoice at all the old packages finally getting upgraded. :-)

shared4you 14y ago

Didn't you run into any breakage of packages? I mean there's this mad rush into testing right after a new release. I'm thinking of running wheezy for a couple of months until the storm calms down.

PommeDeTerre 14y ago
I've found the Debian package maintainers to be quite careful, even when there's a large amount of rapid change to testing. I think they put a lot of effort and thought into avoiding breakage, even in scenarios like this. Any time I've encountered broken packages, the problem has been resolved quite quickly, especially if more important and widely-used packages are involved.
- psionski 14y ago
  I'm using a mix between unstable and Mint for a Steam box (games, music, movies, web) and found out the label must be mistaken. It's a minimal installation, but everything from ATI drivers to multi-arch support worked perfectly out of the box. It already went through several dist-upgrades without any manual intervention (except maybe a couple of "yes/no" questions).
  - claudius 14y ago
    When did you install? Testing/Unstable are relatively quiet during a freeze, so just wait till everybody realises that Wheezy is out and you should get plenty of breakage :)
    - psionski 14y ago
      Several months ago... what you say makes sense, should I expect generally less breakage than Ubuntu or more? I wouldn't like having to install Ubuntu, mostly because it's too difficult to manage and troubleshoot...
e12e 14y ago
For those running testing (or sid/experimental) I highly recommend apt-listbugs -- it will list (critical) bugs related to packages you're about to upgrade/install -- and allow you to back out. Often you can just hold off a few days, and some hardworking Debian volunteer will have made the problem go away -- before you need to experience it.
eikenberry 14y ago
A couple weeks is probably long enough. Time for the flood of new packages to come in and anything broken to get reported and fixed. It doesn't take that long as lots of people use testing.
hexonexxon 14y ago
i had to install a testing snapshot May 4 because wasn't sure when they were releasing stable wheezy, and needed it immediately. only package that broke the next day after full dist-update was "less" which for some reason will not co-exist with man-db. that was it though everything else updated fine
- emillon 14y ago
  FYI, the less/man-db issue is tracked here: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=695361 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=695361