Debian versions

From LinuxNewbie

<CyzarX> what is sarge, sid, unstable, testing, stable, potato, woody??

Lets start by seperating them in to two groups, names and stability:
Names: potato, woody, sarge, sid
Stability: stable, testing, unstable, experimental

Each Debian distribution package has a name, such as Woody. I listed them in chronilogical order above, so you can be at least partially aware of the order. Packages are tested individually as they progress through the stabilities.

A package will be added to unstable and tested. After it is known that it works and doesn't break things in general it will be moved to testing. Packages that add new features will be added to testing, such as a new KDE version or such.

After they are tested well and known not to break anything, they will be moved to stable. New features aren't added to stable typically, rather only security fixes, etc. Stable doesn't see a whole lot of new packages and the life cycle is 2-3 years. This is why stable is chosen for servers often times.

Now, lets talk about life cycle. The current stable distribution as of this writing is woody. It is close to the end of its life cycle. Sarge has entered the Release Candidate (RC) process, so no new major changes are being made to Sarge. Once the final bugs are worked out of Sarge, it will move from testing to stable. This will introduce new features to stable. At that time Woody will become like potato since it is an "old" distro.

There is discussion of moving to x.org once Sarge goes stable. That means Sarge will not have x.org, but that the next testing would (Sid).