[Tfug] [Fwd: Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 released]

[Claude Rubinson]

On Sun, Apr 08, 2007 at 06:12:50PM -0700, Jim March wrote:
> OK...so what's people's opinions of this?

<snip>

> For personal desktop use, what are the pros and cons here?

There's actually a fair amount of buzz around Etch being released as
stable.  A number of people (myself included) think that Etch may be
the first stable release that could meet the needs of desktop users.
By that I mean, for example, that I use my desktop for work and I'm
not particularly concerned with eye-candy, games, etc.  Frankly, I'd
prefer not to update my desktop except for security patches and
functionality upgrades that I really need.

The testing branch was created, in part, to meet the needs of users
who needed more current versions of certain applications and were
taking to compiling from source.  But it's had some problems in that,
on pretty rare occasions, a buggy application has slipped through.
(The PAM breakage from a few years back was probably the most
significant one.)  And security support has been spotty.

I'm not sure if I'll move to Etch for my laptop or stick with
testing.  But I think that running stable is a real possibility for me
now and I really like that.

Claude