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Moving to Stretch - too early?

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Lysander
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Moving to Stretch - too early?

#1 Post by 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
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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#2 Post by 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 been using 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.
Last edited by ruffwoof on 2017-08-19 18:10, edited 1 time in total.

aplistir
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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#3 Post by 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..
Last edited by aplistir on 2017-04-27 09:18, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#4 Post by 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.
ruffwoof wrote: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.
ASRock H77 Pro4-M i7 3770K - 32GB RAM - Pioneer BDR-209D

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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#5 Post by Lysander »

aplistir wrote:
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?

phenest wrote: 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!

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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#6 Post by 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.

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Understanding the Debian Release Cycle

#7 Post by 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.

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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#8 Post by PeterB »


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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#9 Post by 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.

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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#10 Post by 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

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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#11 Post by pylkko »

PeterB wrote: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...

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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#12 Post by pylkko »

By the way:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2017/04/msg00013.html wrote: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.

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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#13 Post by Lysander »

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

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Re: Understanding the Debian Release Cycle

#14 Post by Ardouos »

dasein wrote: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. :D
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Re: Understanding the Debian Release Cycle

#15 Post by Lysander »

Ardouos wrote:
dasein wrote: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. :D
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".

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Re: Understanding the Debian Release Cycle

#16 Post by Ardouos »

Lysander wrote: 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".
Sure, the original entry was mainly a placeholder until I got home, but that seems to have a nice ring to it. The idea is to help people who need the info, so any feedback is great.
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Re: Understanding the Debian Release Cycle

#17 Post by ruffwoof »

dasein wrote: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
Abusive ... and simply wrong.

Once Stable has been released it in effect enters a phase of widespread live/operational testing by the general public and from that additional bugs will be identified by such broad real-world usage. Fixes for those bugs are either released asap when a security-issue/major bug, released as part of the next point release https://www.debian.org/News/2017/20170114 if a significant bug, or left as-is if a minor bug. Clearly my quoted 'live testing' description was in reference to that post release period.

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Re: Moving to Stretch - too early?

#18 Post by dasein »

Wow.

Don't you ever get tired of being wrong?

It's tragic when someone is incapable of recognizing that the "evidence" they cite actually supports the contrary position.

Take for example the point-release announcement for Debian 8.7, cited in the previous post (https://www.debian.org/News/2017/20170114)...

The vast majority of the 87 entries identified as "miscellaneous bugfixes" in that announcement were deployed in response to 94 distinct security issues, identifiable by the acronym CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures). Among the specific vulnerabilities addressed by these "miscellaneous" fixes: overflow conditions, memory leaks, and arbitrary code execution.

No one disputes that Stable gets security fixes. But Stable does not receive routine bugfixes, which helps to explain why the current Stable has over 200 RC bugs open against it.

As seen at a recent "Science March":
Image
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Re: Understanding the Debian Release Cycle

#19 Post by dasein »

Since I was in the neighborhood anyway...
Ardouos wrote:The idea is to help people who need the info, so any feedback is great.
I'm deeply flattered that you thought my post was worthy of a siglink, even for just the next few months.

My only suggestion regarding link text might be to frame it as the question it's meant to answer. Something like "Switch to Stretch now or wait until release?"

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Re: Understanding the Debian Release Cycle

#20 Post by Lysander »

dasein wrote:Since I was in the neighborhood anyway...
Ardouos wrote:The idea is to help people who need the info, so any feedback is great.
I'm deeply flattered that you thought my post was worthy of a siglink, even for just the next few months.

My only suggestion regarding link text might be to frame it as the question it's meant to answer. Something like "Switch to Stretch now or wait until release?"
I've framed this in a different way as you can see from my sig, since it relates, and will relate, to releases other than just Stretch.

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