Re: Need newer software that included with stable (that isn't at backports.org)

Tim Hull wrote:
I understand the point of Debian stable - and I understand why most other
distros (beside RHEL and the other "enterprise" distros) use a 4-6 month
cycle. However, I don't see why this much be mutually exclusionary with
pulling selected updates down on an "as-needed" basis. On Windows and OS X,
one can easily update, say, OpenOffice.org or Firefox without updating the
whole system.

Which, of course, are applications, and not part of the operating
system. There's no real problem in compiling a different Firefox or
OOo than a version of Debian currently contains. And the only reason
you need to compile at all, rather than use a precompiled binary, is
that Windows is one particular proprietary product, and GNU-Linux
isn't. The different Debian distributions are no more alike than Vista
and XP, and there's no reason why system components from one should
'just work' in the other. Would you expect to drop the Vista scheduler
into the XP kernel and have it work? Would you expect Microsoft to
produce a specifically compiled version of the Vista scheduler which
*would* work in XP?

On Linux distributions, however, you either have to wait for the next distro
release (whether that be 4 months or 12 months) or use hackish solutions
only a Gentoo user could love. Of course, I could just use OS X (or
Windows) but that's not the point - I like the tweakability/freedom of
Linux, but I just want to be able to update, for instance, my kernel or ACPI
packages separate from my glibc and Xorg without leaving the realm of the
package system.

So just how many packages would that be, to accommodate every possible
combination of compilers, libraries and operating system components?
Just to save you the inconvenience of the odd compilation if you want
something that doesn't currently exist as a package?


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