Re: Debian on Supermicro H8SSL-i

Andrew Gideon wrote:
On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 10:42:25 +0100, Thomas Richter wrote:

sarge might be too old to include the drivers for the SATA chipset, so it
cannot see the disks. Try "etch".

I've not completed the installation yet, but it does look like this
version sees the disks.

Is this lag common to all Debian derivatives (ie. Ubuntu, which appears to
be growing in popularity)? Or do at least some of these derivatives
include newer drivers? If so, which?

Remember that there are 3 versions of Debian: stable (currently Sarge), testing (currently Etch) and unstable (Sid).

The "stable" version is stable in the sense that once it's released packages don't change except for security updates. So it can get quite out of date---like it is currently---before the next stable release comes along. (Sarge was released almost 2 years ago.)

Sooner or later, Etch will be released as "stable" and so there will be an up-to-date stable version...for a while, until its packages become outdated.

Sid is always the most up-to-date, and at least some of the Debian derivatives are based on it. If you really want bleeding edge, use Sid or one of its derivatives.

In the end, it is up to you to decide how up-to-date you want/need to be and choose either the stable, testing, or unstable version of Debian depending on your own needs.
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