Re: Best Linux distro for GNUstep?

[Ivan Vučica]

On 24. ožu. 2011., at 19:12, David Chisnall wrote:
> 
> I think Fedora still has a similar model, where packages are made available 
> as soon as they are ready upstream, but Debian (and, by extension, Ubuntu) 
> ships a huge raft of third-party programs as a single snapshot of the state 
> of the software world, and you then use those versions until a new version of 
> the core OS is released.  Of you install packages from a source other than 
> the official repositories.


I think you misunderstand :-)

From my experience as a multiyear Debian user, with Debian, packages are also 
released as soon as they are ready. Person switches to "unstable" and that's 
it. One can also use "experimental" for individual bleeding edge packages. But, 
"unstable" is just that -- unstable. 

Then there's "testing": after a package lives in unstable for a week without 
serious bug reports, that package switches to testing. 

Every year or two, there is a release-oriented freeze: new upstream releases 
are not let through into testing except to fix serious bugs. Packages are 
refined to iron out the bugs in current versions. Then, "stable" is produced, 
which seems to be what you're referring to.

Dated packages in unstable and testing, as is the current state with GNUstep 
packages, is a result of maintainer's lack of commitment to updating the 
package, as opposed to some policy. So, at least Debian is not dated for 
political or technical reasons. Adding non-distribution-sanctioned repositories 
is also possible; it is of course discouraged primarily since it may cause 
invalid bug reports (problems caused due to conflict between 
distribution-packaged package and third party package).

Ubuntu is much more explicit about this, since most users use a stable release. 
On Debian, if you use it for a workstation, with availability of testing, you 
don't have a reason to stick to stable. 

--
Regards,
Ivan Vučica
ivan@vucica.net - http://ivan.vucica.net/

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