Still debating between stable and testing branches

[Elias4444]

I'm getting ready to take the plunge and go full-on Debian only. I'd love to run Stable, as most of what I need-want is there and I like the idea of being rock solid for my day to day use. However, stable is missing two things: Steam, and an up to date Nvidia driver.

If I choose to go testing for the sake of being able to play the games I love, will it be too unstable for my day to day work (which is mostly web development)?

[confuseling]

Dual booting is always an option...

You can create a partition to use for data, mount it in fstab, then symlink all your users' data directories (Documents, Downloads etc.) to directories on it, so both installs share data.

I don't find mixed Testing / Sid much work at all, but I'm not depending on it not breaking for income, and it does break...

[dasein]

If I choose to go testing... will it be too unstable for my day to day work...?
(emphasis added)

For obvious reasons highlighted above, no one on the planet can answer this question except you.

However, I'd like to suggest that you are asking the wrong question. The question is not "how stable is testing today?" or "is testing 'stable enough'?"

The question is: can you live with the breakage that will inevitably happen? (simply by virtue of the fact Testing is, well, for testing, not for production use.)

Then too, my strong hunch is that you won't find Testing nearly trendy enough in the long run; you might consider going directly to Sid, where breakage is more frequent, but where it also tends to be shorter-lived.

Of course, you could put Testing (or Sid) into a VM or dual-boot, which would give you the best of both worlds.

Edit: I see confuseling beat me to it. Still, no point in wasting the electrons.

[Elias4444]

Wow, that was fast. Thanks!

I should probably also mention that I run a pretty minimal configuration. XFCE with Docky (cairo dock is too bloated for my taste), VLC for my video watching, Chrome and Firefox for browsing and testing, and then Steam for the few games I play (but really enjoy).

Not sure if that would prove to be a more stable situation with sid or jessie as opposed to running a lot more stuff on the box.

As for running a VM, I don't have much experience with that (other than using VMWare back in my Mac days to test things on Windows), but I'm not sure I'd want to waste the extra space on my SSD.

[Elias4444]

I also just found https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debi ... ng.en.html

Looks like it really is between stable or unstable.

[mor]

Testing and unstable cannot be evaluated for stability in comparison to the stable release. They work under a different paradigm.

There is a widely spread misconception about what "stable" means when referred to the debian release: stable does not mean solid and reliable per se, it means unchanging, invariable, in the sense that its components are almost "set in stone", only receiving minor and very attentively selected updates/upgrades, mostly just security ones. As a consequence of that and the fact that before being released is thoroughly tested, debian stable is also stable as in solid, reliable.

To ask if testing or unstable are "stable enough" is to completely miss the point of what stable means for debian.

Testing and unstable, although in slightly different ways, are not at all stable for the simple reason that they change regularly, daily actually.
They are both stable as in "solid" if you ask me or all those who like me successfully run either one or a mixed version of all, but in the end most will not find them reliable enough because by design they are supposed to break in order to find fixes for the next stable.

Anyone running testing/unstable should either have another system on the side for real production, or has to be able to afford not to be productive when a problem arises, and it will arise, maybe not often in the form of a cataclysm but often enough in the form of something that needs attention and time and research now!

If you think that turning your computer on tomorrow and finding that -from the top of my mind- vlc has stopped functioning, and you can live with it and devote time to research what caused the problem, then maybe yes, you are fine running testing/unstable.
If finding yourself with docky suddenly being removed overnight for a bug or a simple policy violation, a removal that may last a day or two or maybe ten or even weeks or months, then yes, you are gonna be fine with testing or unstable.
If you are fine with daily updates/upgrades, with reading all bug reports that come with them in order to avoid the biggest traps, with devoting occasional workdays to -say- restoring your ability to connect to a wi-fi network, then yeah, testing/unstable is gonna be A-OK.

If, on the other hand, you want a system that you can be sure tomorrow will work exactly as it worked today, then go stable, backport and/or compile from source and for the love of all that is good never mix stable with testing or unstable.

Bye.

[sunrat]

You can run Steam using Ghost57 Installer for Wheezy. It's been mentioned plenty of times in the forum already. Wheezy Nvidia driver should work fine with it.

[milomak]

Anyone running testing/unstable should either have another system on the side for real production, or has to be able to afford not to be productive when a problem arises, and it will arise, maybe not often in the form of a cataclysm but often enough in the form of something that needs attention and time and research now!

If you think that turning your computer on tomorrow and finding that -from the top of my mind- vlc has stopped functioning, and you can live with it and devote time to research what caused the problem, then maybe yes, you are fine running testing/unstable.
If finding yourself with docky suddenly being removed overnight for a bug or a simple policy violation, a removal that may last a day or two or maybe ten or even weeks or months, then yes, you are gonna be fine with testing or unstable.
If you are fine with daily updates/upgrades, with reading all bug reports that come with them in order to avoid the biggest traps, with devoting occasional workdays to -say- restoring your ability to connect to a wi-fi network, then yeah, testing/unstable is gonna be A-OK.

while i can see where you are coming from, you are doing testing and sid a great disservice here.

while i have multiple distros because i like to play on different distros, sid has been my main production os since round about 2005. and i daresay that i am not even close to having lost a working week having to deal with issues.

as long as you have apt-listbugs installed, you should never really lose any time due to system upgrades. because as it turns out, you don't have to upgrade every day.

[mor]

@milomak
I have lived for decades in malaria and dengue fever stricken territories without any prophylactic treatment or vaccine and I haven't had the slightest symptom.
Clearly the hundreds of millions of people that die each year are all a myth.

See what I mean?

Personal success in running development branches is not, cannot, and should not be taken into account to advocate for an indiscriminate use of development systems by anyone who feels adventurous enough.
And the same goes for saying that is wrong to advocate against such misguided practice.

You, and yours truly, are among the many who successfully run development systems as their main or even only system, but for each one of us there are dozens, if not hundreds and more, clueless users who read somewhere things like "Testing is like Stable only with newer packages" or "sid has been my main production os since round about 2005. and i daresay that i am not even close to having lost a working week having to deal with issues" and do the upgrade only to find themselves dealing with a system that, unlike you and me and a few other, they can't properly handle.

If you think that me warning people against using development systems willy-nilly is detrimental to -say- the amount of bugs reported or something like that, I think you are overestimating both the power of my persuasiveness and the effectiveness of most people's ability to contribute by filing proper bug reports.

Bottom line is not only I don't think I'm hindering Sid and Testing, I think that it is really users like you that are detrimental to Debian as a whole (and that in turn contribute to me feeling the need to warn people off against what you suggest or imply).
In fact by depicting a scenario of bliss and tranquility in running Debian's development systems, users like you actually lure many into running systems that work under a completely different paradigm from that of Stable (which is what Debian is all about) under the glaring misunderstanding that they can have the same reliability, just with newer or fancier software.
What happens is they mostly end up borking their systems and having a woeful experience with Debian, but without the understanding that what they have tried is not what Debian is and is supposed to be.

Detrimental to Debian as a whole indeed.

Bye

P.S.
Also read "the concept of stability in Debian" from my signature.

[milomak]

i am refuting what you state about sid/testing systems. they are very viable as standalone production systems.which they are on 3 of my laptops.

of course there are caveats about running such systems as i have alluded to by saying you need apt-listbugs and don't need to upgrade every day.

i didn't at all say that you can run them happy days with no care in the world.

rant away if that helps you.

[mor]

rant away if that helps you.

You bumped an eight months old thread, not me.

Take care.

[milomak]

rant away if that helps you.

You bumped an eight months old thread, not me.

Take care.

i think it is you who highlighted it in a recent thread

[mor]

i think it is you who highlighted it in a recent thread

For what is worth I highlighted this matter in many threads, more than I care to count.

But it was you who chose to bump this particular one up by addressing me specifically and saying that I am doing a great (nonetheless!) disservice.
I took the trouble to reply to you with more than just a smirk, and argued about my reasons to say what I said in this thread and elsewhere.

Then you called it a rant.

You are doing all the fuss.

I don't know what where you expecting, maybe me just acknowledging you to be right "because you say so".
If you want that then argue for it, maybe you'll make up my mind.

Cheers

[milomak]

may i ask why you chose to exclude this

as long as you have apt-listbugs installed, you should never really lose any time due to system upgrades. because as it turns out, you don't have to upgrade every day.

[Ardouos]

The bottom line is, the person is unsure about using a development branch. So this really brings back the point from Dasein.

However, I'd like to suggest that you are asking the wrong question. The question is not "how stable is testing today?" or "is testing 'stable enough'?"

The question is: can you live with the breakage that will inevitably happen? (simply by virtue of the fact Testing is, well, for testing, not for production use.)

and Mors point of

To ask if testing or unstable are "stable enough" is to completely miss the point of what stable means for debian.

This person may not be ready to use and sustain a development branch (this is without knowing anything about their background). The user would need to be able to know whenever an application is working as intended, or if there is a bug. There are also packages that can just get removed from your computer randomly or just stop working all together. The running and upgrading the machine does require much more user intervention, this means that the user would need to understand how Debian works before actually moving to testing/ unstable. Personally I would recommend the stick with stable.

If the user really wants Steam then they should probably look at what Sunrat advised:

You can run Steam using Ghost57 Installer for Wheezy. It's been mentioned plenty of times in the forum already. Wheezy Nvidia driver should work fine with it.

The user could also just use Kwheezy or LMDE if they really want Steam already pre-packaged...

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... am#p555103

Another decent option pointed out was:

Dual booting is always an option...

You can create a partition to use for data, mount it in fstab, then symlink all your users' data directories (Documents, Downloads etc.) to directories on it, so both installs share data.

[mor]

may i ask why you chose to exclude this

as long as you have apt-listbugs installed, you should never really lose any time due to system upgrades. because as it turns out, you don't have to upgrade every day.

I suppose you mean that I disregarded this particular caveat in judging your case.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

If I'm not, then you are wrong because I haven't.
Do you really think that reading apt-listbugs reports is all you need to successfully run a development system?
Do you really think that ALL those who venture in development territory, maybe exactly because they thought they could manage just "as long as you have apt-listbugs installed" as you suggest, are capable of actually understanding (if they even read them through at all) what bug reports are telling them?

You are quite naive to think so, to think that because you have been successful, then anyone can.

See, I don't advocate against the use of Testing/Unstable to all and in any case. Actually if you run through my posts about this matter (many indeed) you'll find that my comments about who should use development systems are more about the attitude of the user.
In fact I don't think that Testing or Unstable require any extraordinary level of expertise or knowledge to be used.
I am in fact convinced that development systems can be used even by perfect newbies, exactly because of the learning opportunities offered by the trickiness of their unstable nature, provided that the user has the right attitude, the right mindset.

But if a newbie or anyone else wants to run a development system as his main and only system, thinking that is just like Stable, only newer, then I object.
At least I do unless his attitude is, like mine and probably like yours, that of a person who is open to the possibility to have to interrupt production to fix stuff, to live with a constantly changing system (which is why Testing and Unstable are not like Stable and therefore not representative of what Debian is as a distro).

Ever since I landed on "linux" I have been interested in seeing development, from the excitement of newer versions to the thrill of fixing whatever broke and learning new things, becoming self sufficient. This brought me to Testing and Unstable after just a few months of Stable.
But I never expected them to be reliable (like most users usually do with their systems), and even if I have been successfully using them since Sarge, I don't automatically assume that anyone with any mindset or level of expertise is willing to have the same expectations.
That's the difference.

Many users have one machine and no fall-back whatsoever, have absolutely no interest in fixing stuff and do care if their productivity is interrupted by a faulty package that trickled in.
They are the vast majority and, since they usually have an appetite for "the newer version", will therefore always be inclined to upgrade for the wrong reasons if they are tricked into believing that they just need to have apt-listbugs installed or something like that.

Bye

[llivv]

Form my perspective apt-listbugs is almost a complete waste of time. I haven't read many bug reports lately but in previous years most bug reports I've read, including my own are pure user error. PBCAK! to the tune of 99.99% of the time.
apt-listchanges on the other hand can be useful for steering clear of potential user errors, IF the messages provided make any sense to the user, because most packaging and new config details are above the pay grade of a very high percentage of users.

[kedaha]

I'd just like to comment (not rant ).

....about sid/testing systems. they are very viable as standalone production systems.

On a self-administered desktop system, provided they're administered by users with some experience. But stable is the best choice for either home use or office work by non-technical users with minimal administrative input. But developmental branches are not to be recommended either on a production server except for testing purposes. As advised in The Debian Reference here:

The newbie Debian system administrator should stay with the stable release of Debian while applying only security updates.

...which they are on 3 of my laptops.

Might be very viable on some laptops but not so viable on all laptops; I remember, for example; long before "wheezy" was released as stable, there was an important bug affecting the then testing reported by edbarx: Upgrading Squeeze to Wheezy: a nightmare!. I had a laptop with the same graphics card but didn't "upgrade" into that nightmare. But - caveats apart - I agree, in general, that sid/testing systems, to quote the Debian Reference:

...work very well, are updated frequently, and offer the latest features

Conclusion:
Advice to a beginner in the Beginners' Section: Install stable.
Advice to someone with some experience: Consider installing testing or even sid after reading Choosing a Debian distribution and the Debian Reference.

[mor]

i think it is you who highlighted it in a recent thread

You know, I just realized that the link in my signature points to this very thread, so now I understand what you meant with the above.
My bad for not connecting the dots immediately.

Still, I stand by what I said (if you care, maybe not).

Bye

[milomak]

it points to the post to be specific. which you specifically highlighted.

if i had seen your post was in this forum, i wouldn't have bothered replying.to it.