[kwlug-disc] definition of debian's "stable"?

[Chris Frey]

On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 10:10:15PM -0400, L.D. Paniak wrote:
> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> >   aha!  he said, happily drinking wine.  i just learned something else
> > significant.  the debian FAQ points out a fairly basic fact of which i
> > was unaware -- that 3.0 was a totally different *release* from 3.1
> > (3.0 being woody and 3.1 being sarge).

I wouldn't worry much about the numbers... it's the names that have
weight in Debian.  Both technically and logically.


> I thought that weekly updates also included small bug fixes, but this
> may be because of the fact I run mixed systems stable/testing/unstable.
>  The packages from testing and unstable see continuous updates.  Another
> reason to run a testing system!

Just keep in mind that testing is, by virtue of the way Debian works,
generally the last to get security updates.  The reason is that stable
gets its updates from security.debian.org, while testing waits for fixes
to be uploaded to unstable and trickle down.

There appears to be work to keep testing secure in spite of this fluke
in the system though:

	http://secure-testing-master.debian.net/

I don't use testing enough to see the delay.  Do you notice much of a
delay Lori?

- Chris