Should I upgrade to Testing?

[evilmrhenry]

Right now, I have a working Knoppix system, with no major upgrades from 3.3.

My problem is that installing new software is a pain. I believe this is related to the mix-n-match attitude of Knoppix towards Debian stable/testing/unstable. For example, to install kmidi, I need to install timidity, which depends on libvorbis0. Synaptic says installing libvorbis0 would uninstall half the software on this computer. This is a common problem, and in most cases, I either give up, or spend a few hours unravelling the web of programs.

So, would upgrading to Debian testing elliminate these problems? Would there be any potential problems making the upgrade?

[Stephen]

Right now, I have a working Knoppix system, with no major upgrades from 3.3.

My problem is that installing new software is a pain. I believe this is related to the mix-n-match attitude of Knoppix towards Debian stable/testing/unstable. For example, to install kmidi, I need to install timidity, which depends on libvorbis0. Synaptic says installing libvorbis0 would uninstall half the software on this computer. This is a common problem, and in most cases, I either give up, or spend a few hours unravelling the web of programs.

So, would upgrading to Debian testing elliminate these problems? Would there be any potential problems making the upgrade?

Even easier solution put a # character in front of the stable lines in the /etc/apt/sources.list or since you are using synaptic just edit the sources with the option there, then (apt-get) update and you will only get packages from the testing/unstable branches so this will eliminate those conflicts with packages from stable getting pulled in and trying to uninstall half the system.

HappyTux:/home/stephen# apt-cache policy libvorbis0
libvorbis0:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1.0rc3-1
  Version Table:
     1.0rc3-1 0
        500 http://ftp2.de.debian.org stable/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status