raspbian stable is not stable / device tree, etc.
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raspbian |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
Recently I learned (as a long time Ubuntu user, not that much into Debian) that there are three flavours of debian: the current stable (Wheezy, old software, but stable), the bleeding edge (newest but possibly unstable, Sid), and an in-between 'next stable version' (Jessie).
Because my raspberry is at the heart of my coffee machine since somewhere around december and I like to be quite sure of being able to drink coffee. On my laptop I use Ubuntu - if it where Debian I'd probably be using Jessie. The machine can play music using MPD, it has python and does serve some web pages, but my first priority is stability. So, the obvious choice for me is Wheezy. At least that's what I think.
However, since I'm using this setup, it happened twice that after a regular apt-get update, I was unable to make coffee for some time. First time because a newly added obscure i2c audio card driver was causing kernel panics, second time because this Device Tree thing.
While I fully understand both the architectural beauty and the benefits of this change, I think that I'm not the only one with stability as my primary concern. 'update' now is beginning to mean 'trouble', while it should mean 'bug fixing and better security' in a stable release.
I consider it a bug that there are changes made in Debian Stable (Wheezy) that make it far from Stable.
| description: | updated |
| Diederik (didi-debian) wrote | #1 |
| summary: |
- debian stable is not stable / device tree, etc. + raspbian stable is not stable / device tree, etc. |
| tags: | added: wheezy |
You have a point.
While most packages from raspbian.org stable (now Jessie) are fixed, that does not apply to the kernel/firmware or the packages from raspberrypi.org.
While I don't think that policy is going to change anytime soon, you can guard yourself against to kernel/firmware upgrades by putting the responsible package(s) on hold.
You can do that in the following 2 ways (afaik), but you only need one:
aptitude hold <package>
apt-mark hold <package>
Do make sure you DO NOT use `rpi-update`!
It is both deprecated and does not integrate with raspbian/Debian's package management and would thus not honor those aforementioned hold commands.
HTH.
PS: Debian Stable wouldn't do that, this is a raspbian specific 'thing'.