[Techtalk] Debian versus GenToo

[Wim De Smet]

Hi,
On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 23:44:27 -0400, Beth Skwarecki
<beth-linuxchix at loxosceles.org> wrote:
> 
> > What I don't understand is why people seem to assume that Debian/testing
> > doesn't exist -- the comparisons always seem to be between stable and
> > unstable...
> 
> well, each of them has something going for it:
> 
> - stable is stable, and a good choice for servers and for people who can't
> handle unstable yet (newbies)
> 
> - unstable has all the newest latest greatest stuff, and is good for the
> desktop boxes of people who know what they're doing
> 
> - testing is ... um ... the one that doesn't get security updates. :)
> 
> Testing is a sort of special beast. It doesn't have the newest stuff, it
> isn't the stablest, and in fact it's more of a security risk than the
> others. I only recommend it to people who (a) are behind a good firewall,
> and (b) want to be able to use the testing installer but don't feel ready
> for unstable.
> 

Most security updates are for local exploits that you're not going to
have problems with usually. So if you run testing on a personal
desktop box that doesn't run any servers (or maybe only ssh but then
you need to read the DSA's off course) it's quite fine. I run it
because it allows me to run quite an up to date system without having
to go through the process of digesting a huge package update list
every day and finding out which packages I want to update (in
unstable). Tracking sid is harder than testing.

Another difference is that packages in sid break easier, while in
testing it's package dependencies. For instance when half of gnome is
in testing and the other half is not. In any case a lot more care and
hinting is taken to this than it used to, so testing is quite stable.
Hope that clarifies some things.

greets,
Wim