Running a Less-Than-Stable Debian OS.

There are actually four separate branches to the Debian GNU/Linux tree.

Stable (currently codenamed 'Lenny') is the version of Debian that is rock solid. Package versions are not updated, but it does receive bug fixes and is the primary focus of security updates. This is the best version for beginners, servers and people who want an extremely stable system in general as well.

The testing branch is the stuff that is in development and that will be released as the next stable version when the developers see fit. The common answer to the frequently asked question "when will the next release of Debian be" is "When it's ready!". Running the testing branch can be a good way of getting up to date packages and software, but can be prone to breakage if one of the crucial packages comes in with a show-stopping bug.

Sid is the permanently unstable version of Debian. It would do well to point out that in this context 'unstable' does not equate to susceptibility to breakage, but rather that software packages are being constantly updated and are likely to change in as little as a week, hence software versions are unstable in sid, not necessarily the software itself, altho this can happen as well. The upside is, that when buggy software gets fixed, it is released in sid first so sid can sometimes be more stable than testing. Such was the case with a recent grub2 problem which persisted in the testing branch for some time even though it was fixed in sid within a week.

This is exactly what the name implies. No one in their right mind would run a completely experimental system as it would be broken in short order. The idea with experimental is to add selected packages (such as recent kernels) from experimental to a testing or sid system to see how they go.

 

http://liquorix.net . A high performance kernel which includes some optimisations from outside the main kernel tree and is tailor-made for desktops running testing and sid. Will not install on Lenny at all as some of the packages in Lenny are too out of date for this kernel to work. I recommend this kernel if you are running testing or sid and using it as your primary desktop.
 

To install testing grab a testing CDROM iso file from http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/i386/iso-cd. Personally I recommend the lxde + xfce version as this comes with a few more utilities than the others (e.g. wpasupplicant) although this may no longer be the case. My sid install hasn't broken in over 2 months so I haven't needed to get an iso for a while and things can change quite a bit in the  testing branch in that time. Anyways, just install the testing version and change all the entries in your /etc/apt/sources.list file that say 'squeeze' to either 'testing' or 'sid' depending on which branch you wish to run. Next, log in as root and type 'apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade', without the quotes of course and your systems packages will all be updated to the version specified in your /etc/apt/sources.list file.