Anyone using Debian Testing?
Would there be any truth in that statement? Is anyone using Debian testing on their linode? Any linode-specific issues?
7 Replies
As for Linode-specific issues, I've never had any. (I've always been on UML though, so maybe take that with a grain of salt.)
In a couple of weeks (well, hopefully) you'll get the official release, and more importantly the official release notes, which list all the possible gotchas and guide you through the entire process of upgrading. Yes, you could fire off dist-upgrade and hope for the best, but especially in the server environment you want to know where the speedbumps are.
If you can really be patient, you may want to wait a couple more weeks after that, since software's best test is the one that happens right after release. But I wouldn't expect you to go that far.
So I'd say this is a safer bet.
@JDM:
The only nervousness that I've had about it is that testing isn't officially security supported so sometimes security updates have been made available later than they were for stable.
Actually, that hasn't been true for a couple of years. These sources work fine and are updated frequently:
deb
deb-src
Just to add another vote, I've been running lenny without issue for a while now, and it's been extremely stable. Most of the changes from etch are incremental (other than new versions of packages), but the overall feel is much more polished. Also, not to rag on Ubuntu, but most of their "features" such as dash, etc. are just pulled from Debian testing/unstable.
On my Linode account, I took advantage of the fact that you can resize / clone disk images. I resized my disk down to < 1/2 of my available storage, cloned it, and did the upgrade. That way, if something went horribly wrong, I was a reboot away from having Etch back (nothing did, btw).
Specifically regarding lenny, I think it's a safe update, but waiting a few weeks for the release notes wouldn't hurt, as previously noted.