Hey, I have been running Mepis for a while and although I love the ease-of-use (especially for NVidia drivers, dual-output video cards, and network setup) i have been getting raked over the coals lately with the Debian Unstable updates.

I am wondering if, because Ubuntu uses their own binaries that are compiled especially for Ubuntu and they're frozen a few weeks before the Ubuntu release and yada yada...

Are the Ubuntu packages more stable, keeping out newer changes to packages until Ubuntu has a chance to tweek/test them?

Can I expect to do a apt-get dist-upgrade with little to no problems every time?

Or is it to be expected that these bleeding-edge packages are still going to have a number of growing pains like Debian Unstable always does?


I know that Ubuntu is number 1 on distrowatch.com and I am wondering if this is a big reason for that, or if there are other factors and the Unstable isn't too different from Debian proper.

thanks in advance

I used Ubuntu Hoary and now Breezy, I'll just share my limited experience with it.

In Ubuntu, to enable dual head display, I don't think the system can autodetect it, you have to meddle with /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get it working.

As for nVidia drivers I think it just worked, I'm not that sure though. Setting up ATI card that I am using which is considered harder that nVidia is still pretty easy by following the "how to" in the Ubuntu Wiki.

In Hoary, things are pretty stable, I don't remember having any seriously broken package. However in Breezy which is just released today, there seems to be more stuffs that is broken, especially in Kubuntu (KDE version of Ubuntu).

You can do a apt-get dist-upgrade to get the latest version of everything. As mentioned for Hoary this is virtually problem free (after it is released officially). However, during the preview release phase of Breezy there was a couple of updates that leaves me unable to start X, but things are fixed within the day usually. Sometimes you see some stuffs that doesn't work (even now after it is released officially).

I am also curious about the unstable Debian, how does it compares to the present Breezy.

there was a bug in the code that caused that it has been fixed as of right now with all the updates ive done (been using breezy since first colony) everything i have tried to use works in gnome, kde, enlightenment, xfce. but nothing has really "broke" for me everyone had the x session error that im aware of btw. i find ubuntu more stable than sarge but thats from what ive seen from both on my pcs.

Ubuntu is built upon Debian unstable.

http://news.com.com/Ubuntu+carves+ni...3-5886194.html

please define unstable cause to me unstable means it has better chances of crashing so on and so forth. and noone in that site you posted did it say anything about it nor did it have the word unstable in it anywhere.

Quoted from http://www.debian.org/releases/ :

unstable
The “unstable” distribution is where active development of Debian occurs. Generally, this distribution is run by developers and those who like to live on the edge.

The “unstable” distribution is called sid.

(Unquote)

thank you. see i thought since sids been out that it wasnt unstable anymore. i am thinking sid came out just before sarge and that etch was the only unstable debian project.

Hi,
Sid does not 'come out', it is forever Sid.
If you run Sid, you run unstable, period.
That's the reason why it never changes names.
Woody, Sarge, soon Etch (in 2 or 3 years) are names for
stable. Sid is just Sid.

Means Still In Development.

cheers

ohhhhhhhhh ok sorry didnt know that i thought sid was a version like sarge i didnt know it stood for still in development sorry

To add to the above sentence,

Sid = S till In D evelopment.