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Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by LeoPanthera on Sunday June 18, 2017 @01:24AM (#14579104)
Testing is usually a bad distribution to use for anything in production. If something breaks, it will stay broken for quite a long time until the fix makes it out of Unstable.

Unstable is almost always a better choice. Things may occasionally break, but fixes will arrive very quickly.

Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by shmerl on Sunday June 18, 2017 @01:31AM (#14579124)
I'm talking about regular desktop usage, not about servers. And things break in testing only if maintainers messed up transition. Related packages should come in consistently otherwise.
Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by lfam on Sunday June 18, 2017 @12:27PM (#14581387)
'Testing' is also usually the last branch to get security updates, sometimes weeks later.
Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by shmerl on Sunday June 18, 2017 @12:55PM (#14581560)
I think that's something they tried to fix, with testing security repo.
Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by lfam on Sunday June 25, 2017 @08:03PM (#14632958)
Perhaps they are trying to improve the situation, but I read Debian security advisories regularly, and they are almost always published without a fix on the testing branch.

Unstable is the Debian branch to use if stable is too slow for one's tastes. The testing branch is just for testing and it's really not safe to use on the internet.

Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by LeoPanthera on Sunday June 18, 2017 @01:34AM (#14579132)
I am also talking about regular desktop usage, not servers.
Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by TomatoTomato on Sunday June 18, 2017 @01:43AM (#14579154)
Serious question...

Can't you make the same argument against using stable for the same reason?

> If something breaks, it will stay broken for quite a long time until the fix makes it out of unstable [and testing].

Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by shmerl on Sunday June 18, 2017 @02:06AM (#14579226)
Stable usually doesn't get such issues. They are related to transitions. Sometimes it happens, that some packages are stuck in unstable for example, because they don't build on some arch, while their related packages go through. In result, testing gets an inconsistent combination, while unstable is OK. It happens when someone didn't take care to specify that these packages should only move to testing together.

This won't happen with stable, since it will get the consistent result in the end.

Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by gcb0 on Sunday June 18, 2017 @05:34AM (#14579829)
that's sysadm 101.

on stable you don't get data corruption bugs, and you shutdown or filter security holes until they are confirmed fixed.

on testing/unstable you can have data corruption bugs and everything else. but you may bet that security fixes are done faster. emphasis on bet.

Re:Debian 9 Stretch released by vacri on Sunday June 18, 2017 @08:26AM (#14580358)
Stable moves much slower (if at all), so breakages are much less likely, and packages are battle-tested. A cutting-edge or rolling distro, like Unstable, gets a lot more changes, and you get to do the battle-testing yourself.

Basically you install the Stable system to get a stable system, and then 'bring forward' just those packages you need.