Re: Linux distros for servers that matter

On 3 Feb 2005, at 14:42, Andy Smith wrote:
> The problem I have with debian purely from an observer's point of
> view is that it moves so slowly.  You're saying now to wait for
> sarge to become stable and then use that, but the current stable has
> remained unchanged for how many years in debian?  Doesn't it still
> come with kernel 2.2.x for example?

Your view is correct. But this is a trade-off. The original poster 
spoke about servers ``that matter''. You get all security updates in 
time for stable and the target does not move. Some people like this 
stability for production servers.

> So if I were to wait for sarge to go into stable then yes I would
> have access to a reasonably up to date Linux distro and packages
> *now*, but it isn't going to change for 2+ years is it?

This is correct. I would also be in favour of shorter release cycles. 
But it's the point if you need to be up-to-date. For normal desktop 
usage you need to. And I got your idea with MySQL, I'll talk about it 
below. However, you do not need to compile the sources but get stable 
binaries and you get support through the BTS (stable /is/ getting 
supported there).
If you are ok with the 3-day propagation time for security updates you 
could use testing like I do on my servers. But I don't know how the 
situation will change when sarge is released (currently it is 
semi-frozen). Many changes will then be pushed into testing.
Remember that you will also get clean upgrade paths from older 
distributions. At least on i386, an upgrade from woody to sarge should 
be seamless.

> Using stable right now, I would get say mysql 3.x.

You get MySQL 4.0 but I got your point. You are correct, if you want to 
depend on all those nifty features you get in later releases. And yes, 
you could use backports as a last resort. But nobody could look into 
the future and know if the next release cycle of Debian is faster than 
the previous ones. However, sarge is also semi-frozen since quite a 
long time, so this has been the point where many woody users were 
switching to testing. It is not that you are locked to stable until the 
next stable release comes out.

> So then I think "OK this is just silly, I have to use unstable".
> Which is fine but then if I had any kind of problem whatsoever then
> the debianites all raise their hands, make a sucking noise through
> their teeth and go "well, that's unstable for you..."

In fact I never noticed such behaviour by myself. Usually you could 
write to the mailing list or file a bug in the BTS and somebody will 
handle it. However response times -- as always when volunteer work in 
involved -- depends very much on the package maintainer. I personally 
wouldn't use unstable anymore, as testing is always self-consistent due 
to some scripts checking the distribution. So it is always somewhat 
more stable, the only trade-off being the security updates.

I cannot tell if this helped you in any way. ;)

Regards,
Philipp Kern

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