Debian User Forums

I'm new to Debian (and linux in general), and am currently using Etch. I'm trying to understand the release cycles; that is, just how frozen is the Stable release? If I find a bug in Etch, should I report it? or is bug reporting only for Testing/Unstable users because bugs (except for security issues) are no longer fixed once a release is declared Stable?

I'm thinking I should upgrade to Lenny, see if the bug still exists, and then report it if it does. Is that the recommended way to do things?

Thanks for any explanations and bug-reporting etiquette tips.

- Chris Burkhardt

I would urge newbies to be very cautious about reporting bugs. Certainly, you might want to first describe your problem here, and see if anyone else can reproduce it ... If they can't, it's probably not a bug. If it is a bug, somebody has probably already reported it.

Here is an excellent Howto for using the Debian "reportbug" tool.

Thanks for the reply, rickh. I've actually read that guide on reportbug already

Good advice about making sure what I'm experiencing is really a bug and that it hasn't already been reported. I have searched the web and found several other people who are experiencing it, as well as a Ubuntu bug report which included a fix. There is no report of it at bugs.debian.org; but that doesn't mean it isn't already fixed in the Lenny repositories (right?).

I guess my question is: should a Stable user ever bother with reporting [minor] bugs? And if the bug is fixed, what are the chances it will make it back to Etch/Stable?

- Chris Burkhardt

Only very serious bugs will be fixed through the stable point release process.

In general if you plan to report bugs you should keep a lenny or sid system arround so you can check if they still apply and avoid wasting the maintainers time with bugs that have already been fixed.

Okay. That makes sense. Thanks. Upgrading to Lenny now...