Distro comparison

[dsr at tao.merseine.nu (dsr at tao.merseine.nu)]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2003 at 08:10:02AM -0400, David Kramer wrote:
> On Tuesday 21 October 2003 02:37, Derek Martin wrote:
> > This happens all the time, unfortunately, due to dependency issues.
> > But the point there is that 7.3 is vastly out of date.  You should not
> > expect to be able to run new software on such old systems, at least
> 
> Well, I don't know that a year and a half is "vastly out of date", but I 
> _am_ installing a newer OS, so I've admitted defeat there.

This is *precisely* the reason I love Debian so much.

As of 2.0 (it may have "after 1.3"), Debian committed to never leaving
machines without a smooth, free upgrade path unless the entire
architecture was no longer being supported.

As a result, I can give away an old book "Installing Debian 2.1" with
the accompanying CD, and say to the recipient: "After you finish
installing, make sure your sources.conf lists the 'stable' servers,
do an apt-get update and an apt-get dist-upgrade, and you'll be modern."

Changing kernels still requires a reboot. That's about it. 

-dsr-