Debian Releases
Debian always has at least three releases in active maintenance: “stable”, “testing” and “unstable”.
stable
The “stable” distribution contains the latest officially released distribution of Debian.
This is the production release of Debian, the one which we primarily recommend using.
The current “stable” distribution of Debian GNU/Linux is version 4.0r0, codenamed etch. It was released on April 8th, 2007.
testing
The “testing” distribution contains packages that haven't been accepted into a “stable” release yet, but they are in the queue for that. The main advantage of using this distribution is that it has more recent versions of software.
See the Debian FAQ for more information on what is “testing” and how it becomes “stable”.
The current “testing” distribution is lenny.
unstable
The “unstable” distribution is where active development of Debian occurs. Generally, this distribution is run by developers and those who like to live on the edge.
The “unstable” distribution is called sid.
Source: Debian -- Debian Releases
Debian “etch” Release Information
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (a.k.a. etch) was released April 8th, 2007. The release included many major changes, described in our press release and the Release Notes.
To obtain and install Debian GNU/Linux 4.0, see the installation information page and the Installation Guide. To upgrade from an older Debian release, see the instructions in the Release Notes.
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 released
有關升級的部份 Upgrades to Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 from the previous release, Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 codenamed sarge
, are automatically handled by the aptitude package management tool for most configurations, and to a certain degree also by the apt-get package management tool. As always, Debian GNU/Linux systems can be upgraded quite painlessly, in place, without any forced downtime, but it is strongly recommended to read the release notes for possible issues. For detailed instructions about installing and upgrading Debian GNU/Linux, please see the release notes. Please note that the release notes will be further improved and translated to additional languages in the coming weeks.
Appendix for my own system upgrading notices:Read
Issues to be aware of for etch, Chapter 5 看看有哪些改變，下列是一些與我有關的節錄，並非全部。 因為我不用 X Window 所以，沒有列出與 X 相關的東西。
man udev
epoll() support (HTTP proxy squid)
some devices will be renamed (as described in Device enumeration reordering, Section 4.6.4)
Since 2.6.17, Linux aggressively uses TCP window scaling which is specified in RFC 1323
On some older systems, shutdown -h may not power off the system anymore (but just stop it). This happens because apm needs to be used there. Adding acpi=off apm=power_off to the kernel's command line
to disable the feature that downloads only different index files when using apt update by adding Acquire::Pdiffs "false"; to the /etc/apt/apt.conf configuration file.
Some HP laptops,including nx6125, nx6120, nx6325, nc6120 and nc6000 models, known to be affected by the incompatibility of ACPI BIOS.
A possible solution for mounting vfat, ntfs or iso9660 file systems with files that include non-ASCII characters in their filename is to use defaults,utf8 as mount options.
For the 2.6 kernel series the ALSA sound drivers are recommended over the older OSS sound drivers. If you have OSS modules listed in /etc/modules, you should remove them.
You'll want to back up are the contents of /etc, /var/lib/dpkg and the output of dpkg --get-selections "*" (the quotes are important).
Before the upgrade, all files in /usr/X11R6/bin need to be removed. You can then use dpkg -S to find out which Debian package installed that file (if any).
After the upgrade to the Xorg and the latest libraries, X terminals which can only represent colors 8 bits depth will not work. This is because the Cairo 2D vector graphics library (libcairo2) doesn't have 8-bit pseudocolor support. This library is used by the GNOME and Xfce desktops as well as by many desktop applications compiled with the Gtk2+ toolkit, such as abiword. Known systems that are affected by this include some Sun machines and X terminals from Tektronix, NCD, IBM and SGI, as well as some other remote X windowing systems. You should configure these terminals to use 16-bit colour, if possible.
Upgrading from exim3 to exim4. Configuration is possible using the command dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config.
Apache has been upgraded to the new version 2.2. Although this shouldn't impact the average user, there are some potential issues to be aware of. http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/upgrading.html contains the upstream changes. Please read this page, and remember that especially:
# update-alternatives --config editor
Debian worldwide mirror sitesAddress : <
http://www.debian.org/mirror/list>
我加入了這些
# new sources for 4.0r0
deb http://ftp.tw.debian.org/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://debian.csie.ntu.edu.tw/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://linux.cdpa.nsysu.edu.tw/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://opensource.nchc.org.tw/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://debian.nctu.edu.tw/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
deb http://mirror.nttu.edu.tw/debian/ stable main non-free contrib
中文版 Release Notes
http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/i386/release-notes/
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