Between Debian Testing and Debian Unstable, which is better and why in your opinion?

I like a more stable environment, I don't need 'cutting edge' anything for the usage I put my machines to nowadays.

@fatmac: So is your vote for Testing?

Well, Testing is a little more stable than Unstable. A lot of the bugs have been killed at that point. Sure, you do occassionally gets a problem. But that's not like getting Unstable, Cutting-edge headaches.

Sometimes I feel like a nut. Sometimes I don't
So I'll keep my machines wading in both.

I do not take this computing stuff as seriously as other linux users do in the world.

So after the coin flip.
Unstable.
Running Unstable keeps me sharp.

KrunchTime wrote:@fatmac: So is your vote for Testing?

Yes.

I don't consider either one to be"better" than the other, just different, and meant for different purposes. According to Debian:

The"testing" distribution contains packages that haven't been accepted into a"stable" release yet, but they are in the queue for that. The main advantage of using this distribution is that it has more recent versions of software.

Please note that security updates for"testing" distribution are not yet managed by the security team. Hence,"testing" does not get security updates in a timely manner. You are encouraged to switch to [the stable release] if you need security support.

The"unstable" distribution is where active development of Debian occurs. Generally, this distribution is run by developers and those who like to live on the edge.

Please note that security updates for"unstable" distribution are not managed by the security team. Hence,"unstable" does not get security updates in a timely manner.

@Neil: That's the official line; I'm more interested in the opinions of people who actually use either one.

I've used Siduction in the past which is based on Unstable. No show stoppers, but I did experience some minor annoyances. I also ran an instance of CrunchBang tracking Unstable and that eventually resulted in booting into a black screen that was not fixable. I wanted to give a distro based on Testing a try, which is one thing that brought me to antiX.

One negative that I came across earlier today researching the difference between the two is that bugs in Testing can take longer to get fixed.

Machine Bacon used to create a lot of distros from Sid, the ones I tried were mostly very stable, I don't know if it was how he put them together or whether it was just that stable.

I'm just not so adventurous any more, that's why I tend to stick with stable/testing; the only thing I would suggest is to avoid testing just after a stable release as it will get flooded with stuff that was held back until release.

KrunchTime wrote:...I'm more interested in the opinions of people who actually use either one.

Yeah, I get it... I've run Aptosid, CrunchBang w/Sid repo and 2 or 3 flavors of LinuxBBQ on the unstable side, and LMDE for the longest, which used to be based on testing, until it stopped getting updates due to their transition to stable (not complete yet). In the past I've run AntiX set to track testing for a while, and then another install tracking unstable. Only had a couple of instances where unstable updates broke something. Also have run Debian stable for a while.

At the present time, on he three machines I use every day, I have Linux Mint 17.1 (Cinnamon on one, and XFCE on the other) on two and Xubunutu on the third. All three LTS, which selects what gets updated for the lazy user like me. Drawing mostly from testing and unstable.

When I next install AntiX (and I will), I'm not sure which repos I'll be tracking, but probably testing just because that's what AntiX is mostly about, and Sid is just a little more difficult to keep up with for me.

KrunchTime wrote:...bugs in Testing can take longer to get fixed.

I've read that too, and it's probably true, but I've never had an experience where I could say"see, it took too long for that to get fixed". Bugs in Sid will catch you by suprise, but bugs still in testing are not that noticable to begin with, so if they take longer to fix, you won't notice anyway (usually).

jdmeaux1952 wrote:Well, Testing is a little more stable than Unstable. A lot of the bugs have been killed at that point. Sure, you do occassionally gets a problem. But that's not like getting Unstable, Cutting-edge headaches.

My laptop has Stable, Testing, Unstable, and Psychotic. { PSYCHOTIC = Pure Debian slightly modified with Testing to attempt 64-bit distro of MX-14.3.} __{{emoticon}}__

Yeah.

Psychotic

I have yet to try Experimental in my sources list.


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianExperimental"
linktext was:"https://wiki.debian.org/DebianExperimental"
====================================


Woosies. __{{emoticon}}__

Introduction

Quoting the Debian FAQ:"project/experimental/: This directory contains packages and tools which are still being developed, and are still in the alpha testing stage. Users shouldn't be using packages from here, because they can be dangerous and harmful even for the most experienced people."

You have been warned

Unlike the Debian Releases unstable and testing, experimental isn't a complete distribution. Experimental is a staging/collaboration/experimental area for development, when it is known that a package has problems or may have problems. Some packages/developers don't use experimental, they just put the new versions in unstable. The migration of packages from experimental to unstable is entirely at discretion of the packagers. Even if there are a lot less consistency requirements for packages in experimental, they are autobuilt on the best effort basis by official Debian Package Auto-Building infrastructure.

rokytnji wrote: I have yet to try Experimental in my sources list.

real debian users prefer experimental and
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://incoming.debian.org/"
linktext was:"incoming"
====================================
, they only use unstable when they want to play it safe...

i use sid with experimental, i had no idea about incoming. i looked in the pool and i didn't found anything that i need, but good to know about it.
i use sid with experimental, because i get fixes and the latest versions of the software quicker. if you know where to look, you will have no problems with sid or experimental.
i find stable a branch of the past. it's needed for servers and companies. and testing, i think that it should be the default rolling release for debian.

I have been using Sid repos with a spice of experimental ever since MEPIS3.4 came out. Since I don't use any desktop environment and only windows managers, any problems were either easy to fix or got fixed quickly. The vast majority of such 'issues' only related to an app or two and it has been extremely rare an upgrade has broken antiX to not get it to boot.

I remember it being a lot worse in the past (or maybe it was because of my own limitations). For example, cups would break almost every week.

On the partners desktop, I keep to Testing. Mainly because it is an old PIII and I don't really want to upgrade a heavy replacement, though that is becoming extremely difficult to do. eg iceweasel/firefox is a RAM beast and so are the alternatives. I can use dillo, elinks ok, but the other half won't.

I also have a very old Dell Latitude cpt with 384MB RAM, celeron 433 processor and I just installed antiX-15-beta1 on it. It boots to 46MB RAM at idle. Again the browser causes the laptop to struggle, but most other things, including playing video from a file on the hard drive or a stick is just fine. F*^k the internet!