Keep current with Debian’s releases

The current stable release of Debian—at the time of writing—is version 4.0r3, or ‘Etch’. Keeping current with the release cycle requires some work by default. It is not much, but some may prefer having it fully automated. This can easily be achieved by fine tuning the repository source list.

Debian only includes static releases as repository sources by default. But when running Linux on a desktop, you will probably want to update as soon as new stable release is available.

Changing # /etc/apt/sources.list to refer to stable instead of etch will keep the system up‐to‐date with the current stable release; instead of holding it back at one specific static stable release.

# Current stable release’s repositories deb ftp://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free deb-src ftp://ftp.no.debian.org/debian/ stable main contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free deb-src http://security.debian.org/ stable/updates main contrib non-free

Run # aptitude update afterward to make the system aware of the changed paths (or possibly even update it if needed). Note that you still have to make a #aptitude dist-upgrade when new stable releases are made available. Chaging the repository will only make you aware of when the stable releases changes, and not change anything by it self.

« Starting over | Home | Less feed? »

2 comments

Is there a reason why this is not the default setup? It seams to be a nice tip!

Comment by Fred H. at 2008-04-15 @874.

Some users —think buisness users and servers —may prefer to have one system. It is easier to maintain when it stays the same all the time.

Personal users, like the folks reading this blog, will probably prefer having the latest and greatest stable software as it is made available.

Hope that answers your question, Fred.

Comment by Daniel Aleksandersen at 2008-04-15 @877.

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