On Sun, Aug 14, 2005 at 06:16:23PM -0500, Mike Miller wrote: > On Sun, 14 Aug 2005, Andrew Zbikowski wrote: > > >If you're thinking Debian, I would go with Ubuntu myself. Ubuntu has a 6 > >month release cycle, where Debian has...well it's Debian so... :) > > I think I've read before about long waits for new Debian releases, but > this is something I don't quite understand: What do I need to do when a > new release comes out? What is new in a new release? > > I would guess this means that new versions of many programs are made > available in the new release. If there is no kernel update, then can I > just install the new software without a reboot? Is there any downtime > with a new release? What am I missing if I skip new releases? Yes, a new release is when the collection of software is officially put out. Debian has 3 main distribution at a given time: unstable, testing, and stable. Unstable has the newest versions of software packages, while stables are a bit older but better tested. Debian developers release new packages into unstable as new versions of software become available upstream. After a time in unstable if no serious bugs have been filed against a newly uploaded package it gets copied into the testing. Once in a blue moon, the testing release is frozen and then eventually released as a new stable version. Users with different needs get the best results from different distributions. Many people running servers are happy running stable releases because they don't need the latest and greatest software. Gaps of a year or two three between stable releases don't bother them. Many people (such as myself) with workstations, desktops or small servers are happy running unstable or testing. With these distributions you can easily track the latest software. When you upgrade things will break from time to time, but I rarely run into problems. Keeping up to date is easy with apt-get and its wrapper programs such as aptitude. You shouldn't have to reboot other kernel upgrades. Depending on which way you use Debian, new releases may not be that relevant to you at all. The one place where a new release is always relevant is new installs. New releases bring new versions of the installation programs. This is important for hardware support, since the drivers for relatively new devices might not be available if its been a year since the last release. This usually isn't a big problem, though, because you can install the release and just upgrade to a new kernel to get support for a new device. It is also not a big problem at the moment since Debian just had a release a couple of months ago. If you are running an unstable or testing system, a new release won't affect you very much. If you are running a stable system, then you will have the option to upgrade to the new version of stable, though you wouldn't have to. If you are happy of where your machine is at, then you might not have any reason to upgrade. The main drawback to not upgrading is that the old version of stable will no longer get security updates. By the way, if you get to the point where you need very heavy-duty computing power, then you should take a look at applying for time at the Minnesota Supercomputer Institute - http://www.msi.umn.edu/. Using their resources is much easier than building your own cluster, though I am not sure how their programs would fit with your needs. -- Jim Crumley |Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List (TCLUG) Ruthless Debian Zealot |http://www.mn-linux.org/ Never laugh at live dragons |