Moving to Stretch - too early?

[Lysander]

I see a lot of people on this and other forums have moved to Stretch. I am currently on 8.7 and will probably have to move at some point in the new few months. I will be starting my PhD in Autumn and probably won't want to bother with upgrading at some point. I think it would be better to get used to it beforehand.

Now that Stretch has entered full freeze this may be the time to upgrade, however, is now the best time to do so since apparently this is the point where there will be the most amount of critical bugs? Or would it be better to wait a bit longer?

[ruffwoof]

Hardware permitting, I intend to stay with Jessie for another year or so ... most stable/few updates. Then when the rest of the world have 'live tested' Stretch for a year or so and made lots of notes (google searches produce fixes/workarounds), then I'll upgrade and stay with that until Buster has been out for a year.

[aplistir]

I moved to stretch on January.

For me Stretch has been working better than Jessie. There are some minor "bugs" in Caja (Mates file explorer) But I have not noticed anything else.

So, take the leap

PS. What do you mean by "getting used to it"? At least for me everything works the same (or better) as in Jessie. So nothing to get used to..

[phenest]

If you're not going to have time to upgrade when it's released, then stay with Jessie. It'll have support until 2020.

Then when the rest of the world have 'live tested' Stretch for a year or so

I've been using Stretch for over a year and only seen minor breakage. It's quite solid already.

[Lysander]

PS. What do you mean by "getting used to it"? At least for me everything works the same (or better) as in Jessie. So nothing to get used to..

I suppose I just mean ironing out any errors I get. I have heard that Stretch is easier to use than Jessie. Don't know if you can corroborate that?

I've been using Stretch for over a year and only seen minor breakage. It's quite solid already.

I saw someone on another forum yesterday with a Stretch uptime of 273 days. Made me think it must be quite hardy already!

[MALsPa]

Kinda depends on the user and the situation. I switched from Jessie to Stretch on a couple of my computers, and I'm happy that I did. On my primary/business computer, I'm keeping Jessie at least until Stretch becomes the next Debian Stable.

[dasein]

This question gets asked with every new freeze, and the answer is always the same, because the Debian release cycle never changes. Unfortunately, that answer gets buried in two years of intervening posts.

So, for the benefit of other folks pondering this question, in no particular order:

- When Testing, under whatever codename, is about to freeze, it's true that maintainers often dump minimally tested code in to try to beat the deadline. So yes, right around the freeze date, Testing is at its worst in terms of bugs (including RC bugs).

- The whole point of the freeze itself is so that no new bugs can come in, because no new code can come in. That's what makes the freeze the freeze. (Catchy name, huh?)

- For the next several months, the devs then focus their efforts on eliminating RC bugs from Testing. This extended, concerted bug fix effort is what makes Debian Stable what it is.

- During the freeze, the only new bugs in Testing are those that occur when the fix for an existing bug triggers a different bug. By implication, Testing only gets better once the freeze has taken place. Once "better" becomes "good enough," that's when what used to be Testing is released as the new Stable.

- So the only remaining question is whether an existing-but-still-unfixed bug affects a particular user. And only that one user can answer that question, and even then only by trying it (or through an extensive review of the buglist).

- As of the date of this posting, we are almost two months past Stretch's "hard freeze" date. Over the last four releases, the average length of a freeze is ~7.5 months. Simple arithmetic suggests that the current freeze is roughly ~40% complete. So a switch now is certainly a legit option.

- If practical, the safest course is to do a parallel run, installing "Testing" on some unused hard drive space, and giving it a whirl. If a show-stopper issue arises, switch back to Stable. Repeat as necessary.

That's the answer. And like I said, it never, ever changes. Additional information available on the pertinent Wiki page: https://wiki.debian.org/DebianReleases

One last tangential point: talk of "live testing" post-release is utter nonsense and betrays a complete ignorance of Debian's release cycle. The "live testing" phase of Testing's existence occurs between releases, not after a release. Once a new Stable is released, it does not get routine bug fixes--that's why it's called Stable (once again, catchy name). The only changes routinely applied to a Stable release are fixes for security bugs. The only time a bug fix is applied retroactively to a Stable release is in response to really, really critical/high profile bugs, and those are extremely rare.

[PeterB]

Concerned users could check the bug lists.

https://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/other/testing.html
https://udd.debian.org/bugs/


Pete

[Lysander]

dasein - that was an excellent answer, thank you. Great information to know going forward. I've checked the bug list too. I think I''ll give it a little longer before moving. Currently it looks like Stretch may become the new stable around September, so I'll probably move closer to that time.

[PeterB]

Interesting graph here
https://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/

Currently showing;-

RC bugs in Jessie 685
RC bugs in Stretch 143

Take your pick! Stretch is a pretty solid desktop system now IMHO.

Pete

[pylkko]

Interesting graph here
https://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/

Currently showing;-

RC bugs in Jessie 685
RC bugs in Stretch 143

Take your pick! Stretch is a pretty solid desktop system now IMHO.

Pete

It is usually hard to find old sofware that has less bug reports than newer software. Finding bugs and geting the reports in takes time. Take that same graph and look at it whe Jessie was released. Just before the release there were nearly no bugs, now there are 685...in a year after Stretch comes out there will be 500+ bug reports for it...

[pylkko]

By the way:

RC bug status
=============

At the time of writing, 143 RC bugs affected stretch. Just one of
them is marked as a blocker and unfixed in sid:
#861175 in cairocffi.

[Lysander]

Excellent, so we're edging towards a release date announcement. Will surely be able to upgrade before the Autumn.

[Ardouos]

This question gets asked with every new freeze, and the answer is always the same, because the Debian release cycle never changes. Unfortunately, that answer gets buried in two years of intervening posts.

Allow me to try and prevent that with a new sig entry.

[Lysander]

This question gets asked with every new freeze, and the answer is always the same, because the Debian release cycle never changes. Unfortunately, that answer gets buried in two years of intervening posts.

Allow me to try and prevent that with a new sig entry.

It was a very good post - I think a better link title [esp for new users like me] would be something like "[help on] deciding whether to upgrade after a full freeze".