[lug] Help installing debian at the install fest?

[David L. Anselmi]

David Morris wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 12:52:47AM -0600, Nate Duehr wrote:
>> On Jul 12, 2007, at 9:19 PM, David L. Anselmi wrote:
[...]
>>> So I think "lots" is an overstatement.
> 
> I'm guessing you don't spend much time on anything other
> than an x86 or AMD64 architecture?  I've used Debian on
> several sparc systems over the years and 'testing' is, in
> my experience, constantly riddled with bugs in sparc
> packages.  I tried 'unstable' once and the system was barely
> usable.

True, I don't use sparc.  But I noticed no difference between x86 and 
alpha when I used to run that.

[...]
> As for large updates in a 6 month old package (or 2 *year*
> old package, for that matter) I've done many dist upgrades
> between stable releases since the days of 'slink' (Debian
> 2.1).  Major upgrades were indeed a minor nightmare for some
> of the earlier dist upgrades (e.g. slink to potato), but
> they have gotten steadily easier over the years.  I upgraded
> three systems to 'etch' when it became the stable release
> and they all went nearly flawlessly, including a laptop
> which started out running 'woody'.  YMMV, of course, but
> I've had no problems lately.

I've never done a dist-upgrade but I can't say I've heard much about 
problems in Debian.  The problems in large upgrades I hear about are in 
Windows, Solaris, and Red Hat (not recently in Red Hat, but still in 
FC).  Seriously, does anyone suggest taking XP, putting in the Vista 
disk, and running upgrade?

We'll do an upgrade at work from Solaris 8 to 10 someday.  I expect 
various sundry problems with our custom software, especially due to not 
being able to build a complete system to test the upgrade process or do 
the testing.  And I get no say in how each machine is updated, but it 
will be interesting to see what process they come up with.

Dave