Debian Lenny and release dates

[John Moniz]

I have a fairly old Debian stable release on my home file server (either 
Woody or the one before). Can I still do a dist-upgrade? And what would 
that get me, the next release up from the one I have or would I end up 
with the latest stable release?

Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 02:20:23AM -0400, JoeHill wrote:
>   
>> Saw this article just now:
>>
>> http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=3312
>>
>> Not really concerned that 'Debian is in trouble', but I am curious about how
>> the releases work.
>>     
>
> Once in a while, debian manages to get the critical bug count very low,
> and any remaining packages with bugs that are not that important are
> kicked out of the release.  Then the release is declared stable, and the
> previous stable release is named old-stable.  A new testing release (The
> next one I believe is to be named Squeeze or something like that) is
> then named based on the new stable release.  Lots of tested packages
> without known bugs in unstable are then let in to testing, and
> development continues for a few more years until once again a stable
> release happens.  In the past there was no testing, and the elimination
> of bugs had to happen in unstable until it was in a state that could be
> released.  That was hard and painful and held up new development.  I
> think testing started after the release of 2.2.
>
>   
>> If I am running Lenny, and want to maintain a system that always has relatively
>> up to date software (not necessarily bleeding edge), what is the process to
>> follow when Lenny finally is finally released? Is that a 'dist-upgrade', or is
>> that only for going, say, from Lenny to Sid?
>>     
>
> dist-upgrade is the only proper way to ever upgrade.  The upgrade option
> is pretty much useless as it refuses to install anything new or remove
> anything old, which during development is often necesary.  The only
> place plain upgrade tends to work is getting security updates on a
> stable release.
>
> Oh and going to Sid should only be done by those that know what they are
> doing, since Sid is the unstable development branch.  Sid is never going
> to be a stable release.  After all Sid was the kid in Toy Story that
> tortured and broke all the toys.
>
>   
>> Sorry if I sound thick, but I've been doing clean installs of Mandriva releases
>> every year or so for a long time, having trouble wrapping my head around this
>> new scheme.
>>     
>
> New scheme?  It's been going on this way for well over a decade.
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