Time to change Raspbian distro version?

Wheezy was only released earlier this year, the Debian release cycle tends to be slow (2-3 years) so that's not the reason for lack of updates.

OK, thanks for the confirmation.

As a matter of interest, how is the end of a release cycle announced and does Debian typically expect you to do a clean install of the next version or is there some way to point simply apt-get at it and do a mega- upgrade?

Most users of Debian will have their sources.list pointing at "stable" instead of a code-name like "wheezy". When the next release is ready it will replace the current stable and the user will suddenly see a huge number of updates.

Some users prefer to track a specific release, either for ultimate stability at the expense of not having the latest version (that would be whatever the current "stable" is called - "wheezy" at the moment), or for a more recent and fairly reliable system with occasion glitches ("testing", currently "jessie" which is available for Rasbian, but needs some volunteers to check it works), or for real bleeding-edge with lots of risk ("unstable", always called "sid").

I usually use the current "testing", but I wait a few weeks or more when a release-cycle happens before moving to the new "testing", hence I'm using wheezy for all my computers, except one Pi which is "jessie".

The Pi has been using Wheezy in "testing" stage for almost a year now. I imagine that in about a year the next version of Debian will move into "testing" and so the cycle continues.

Typically right after a new Debian release there is a flurry of activity as various patches & bug-fixes are applied that can only be found by mass testing and adoption but it settles down very quickly and upgrades being few and far between. It's not called stable for nothing :)

You do the "mega upgrade". I've boxes that have been upgraded since version 3. Occasionally things do break, but there is usually documentation for that.

Also the last distribution (not applicable to the Pi as it started with Wheezy) hangs around for up to a year before being moved to the archives.

Gordon

For Debian proper: mailing lists, on their website, etc.

You can upgrade in place.

If you?re running sid (unstable), it changes most days, so upgrading by reinstalling would be rather impractical...

You'll see it on their website, or read about it on usenet etc.

it's pretty much the mega-update thing.

if your souces-list says 'wheezy' it won't auto-update until that bit is changed to 'jessie' which is the name for the next version. If it says 'stable' instead, when 'jessie' is declared stable the update will proceed semi-automatically.

Thanks. Is there any indication of how Raspbian intends to handle this, i.e. is there some mailing list we should be subscribed to?

Excellent.

I'm not planning to do that. Wheezy suits me just fine.

Noted. Thanks. Would Raspbian understand if I substituted 'stable' for 'wheezy'? I didn't find much guidance about this sort of info on their site, but maybe I messed it.

No idea. I wasn?t planning to care about the question until the next stable release of Debian happens...

A quick poke around on the Raspbian site shows that they seem to equate "wheezy" with "stable" and "jessie" with "testing". I haven't looked too deep into this yet.

I've just manually edited /etc/apt/sources.list, replacing 'wheezy' with 'stable' and checked it by running

apt-get check

which looked OK, followed by

apt-get update apt-get upgrade

which look good, i.e. no errors reported and showing 'wheezy' in place of 'stable' on the 'hit' lines, so I should now be future-proofed against version upgrades.

Many thanks.

Dom, Having just switched from wheezy to jessie myself, I wonder if you have experienced a side-effect in the desktop. On a Pi I use LXDE/openbox, and the same on a x86. Since the upgrade moving a window is a frustrating experience - instead of moving with the mouse, the window drifts along afte r it and seems to take ages to settle in the "moved" position. Have been t hrough various config front-ends and /etc files, but not sure if this is an isolated problem on my set-up or a general "enhancement"!

If you also use LXDE/openbox, could you let me know if you have the same ex perience with jessie?

Thanks, Andrew

I'm afraid I don't use a desktop on my Raspis anymore, they're more useful to me running headless or with just video output.