[Gnumed-devel] Re: Today's lessons

[Andreas Tille]

On Fri, 29 Aug 2008, Geordie wrote:

> My Linux adventure started two years ago when I tried to get etch gnome
> running on an old toshiba laptop. XP had worked fine on it, a little tweaking
> here and there, and the odd crash but nothing extrordinary. The laptop was a
> spare so time to play. Well gnome just did not repond slow and an awful
> experience. So off to Etch XFCE.

Xfce is nice regarding performance and simplicity - I'm using it myself.

> Well to make it work correctly I needed programs from testing. Trying to make
> Debian work in a split environment(stable and testing)

Fine.  That works perfectly.  You can either use stable + backports.org
or just run testing.  I'm running testing on nearly all my machines with
the exception of servers.

> is not a fun
> experience I finally got XFCE to work after ISO CD came out. It was a long
> road over many months, but I succeeded.

Huh, why?  If you had a running Etch upgrading to testing should have
been very simple and smooth.  There is no need for an installation from
CD.  Just upgrade via Internet (if possible).

> This is the fourth operating system (I started on a mac) I have played in and
> I find LInux a challenge and not for the faint of heart. It seems to take a
> long time to make things work.

I have not used a Mac myself but had several positive reports.

> When I did the next laptop I decided on sidux after a lot of reading. I think
> what convinced me was the rolling upgrades. I liked the idea so why not give
> it a try.

I have no idea what they mean by "rolling upgrades".  I update my boxes
to recent testing in different intervalls: My laptop is more or less
dayly updated.  For my desktop which is running some development system
and test environment for servers about one or twice a month.

> Actual I am quite impress with the way sidux team has packaged the
> product and it works 99.9% of the time which is far better my xp boxes. Also
> at the beginning of my Etch experience, people were upgrading from Sarge to
> Etch it might be painless

Well upgrading Debian should be painless.

> but it reminded me to much of ME to XP experience.

Why?

> Also in the windows world I upgrade the software whenever a new version came
> out, so software upgrades here are not uncommon.

Well, it is not about common or uncommon upgrades.  It is about the
term UNSTABLE which was choosen for a reason.  If you an WANT unstable
you should be aware of problems, because you asked for it.

> So here I am
> and lovin every minute of it

You are free to do so - but I can not help in case of serious trouble with
GNUmed on Sidux because I do not know this system enough.

Kind regards

        Andreas.

--
http://fam-tille.de