Linux Format forums

Re: Possible move to Debian Squeeze

Debian Acolyte — Wed Jun 27, 2012 9:57 am

Author: Debian Acolyte

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2012 9:57 am

After another week you will probably be in love with your new system. Of course, my opinion is highly biased.

One thing you will like is the stability. I have yet to have any problems with Stable.

Re: Possible move to Debian Squeeze

JohnA1954 — Mon Jun 25, 2012 11:38 am

Author: JohnA1954

Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 11:38 am

update. A weekend spent getting to know Squeeze has resulted in a working system that has surpassed my expectations. I now have all of the software I use on a day to day basis and more. I also have newer versions of Gimp (2.7 - 2.8 looked as if it was going to remove a lot of stuff and I did not feel brave enough to try at this time), Firefox & Thunderbird (13), plus Libre Office, MythTV frontend, Darktable (This I was unable to get working on SL6) all, where available in 64bit. I am happy. Now just have to take the plunge and replicate on my main system (6 core, 8Gb ram, 1Tb raid10) with the full MythTV backend.

Re: Possible move to Debian Squeeze

JohnA1954 — Sat Jun 23, 2012 1:22 pm

Author: JohnA1954

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 1:22 pm

Many thanks for your replies. I have set up a spare machine and propose to experiment following all your comments and when I have everything installed that I need and running smoothly will set up my main machine in a similar manner. I would like to have up to date versions of software where possible but will be content if they are slightly older.
Roseway I will certainly look at the Testing repos
I am not a fan of Gnome 3 either far to fussy for my liking
Thanks again

Re: Possible move to Debian Squeeze

roseway — Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:48 am

Author: roseway

Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2012 8:48 am

guy wrote:

You can point the software manager at more up-to-date repositories if you want to. Mostly I don't - if I wanted all that goes with them I'd have gone for Debian Testing instead.

It's quite risky to mix Debian Stable with more up-to-date repos, unless you really know what you're doing. With the big programs I mentioned (gimp and digikam) it would result in a major upgrade of large parts of the system to meet dependency requirements (assuming that it's possible at all).

I'm not saying that Debian Stable is a bad choice generally, but simply that photography was mentioned as an important aspect of the choice, and some major photographic applications lag behind in the Stable repos.

Re: Possible move to Debian Squeeze

guy — Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:49 pm

Author: guy

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 10:49 pm

roseway wrote:

The one downside you need to consider is that Debian Stable won't have up-to-date versions of programs you'll be using. I'm a photographer too, and two programs I use every day are gimp and digikam, and Stable has rather old versions of these two, which will probably never be upgraded. The backports repository has more recent versions of some programs, but not these two.

You can point the software manager at more up-to-date repositories if you want to. Mostly I don't - if I wanted all that goes with them I'd have gone for Debian Testing instead.
You can also point it at non-free packages if the free ones are too restricted by patent issues.

I am on my third version of debian stable and am pretty content. A bit dreading gnome 3 in due course though.

Re: Possible move to Debian Squeeze

roseway — Fri Jun 22, 2012 8:26 am

Author: roseway

Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 8:26 am

The one downside you need to consider is that Debian Stable won't have up-to-date versions of programs you'll be using. I'm a photographer too, and two programs I use every day are gimp and digikam, and Stable has rather old versions of these two, which will probably never be upgraded. The backports repository has more recent versions of some programs, but not these two.

Re: Possible move to Debian Squeeze

Dutch_Master — Thu Jun 21, 2012 11:40 pm

Author: Dutch_Master

Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 11:40 pm

I've been running Debian Stable since (late) 2005. 'Nuf said, I s'pose

Possible move to Debian Squeeze

JohnA1954 — Thu Jun 21, 2012 9:23 pm

Author: JohnA1954

Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 9:23 pm

I would appreciate your thoughts and advice on the following:
For the past year I have been using Scientific Linux 6 as my desktop with MythTV being one of the main programs I use. I chose this O/S for its stability and have been used to Fedora/CentOS in the past.
I am now expanding my interests into Photography and in particular using a colour managed workflow. I had a lot of trouble configuring SL6 and a few unresolvable (by me and various forums) problems with dependencies.
From checking Internet Debian Squeeze does seem to answer most of my questions from the packages I require along with stability, a Gnome 2 desktop and I think a less frequent major release cycle.
Many thanks in advance for looking at this post.
John