[Digikam-users] Generic Linux question

[Photonoxx]

The most of officials repositories (of not rolling release distribution)  
don't upgrade software version. They take in charge minor/security  
updates, but they don't change to a new version until a new release of the  
distrib is out, and this time, upgrades are only available on the new  
release official repository, so you need to upgrade your distrib and wait  
generally 6 months between each new distrib's version. In a way it's a  
good thing for stability and bug fix, but it's not for using last  
softwares versions.

Hopefully, alternative repositories exists that offer to you to find  
binary package of new version of a lot of softwares, permitting to keep  
your distrib with upgraded softwares. For Mint and Ubuntu based distribs  
these repositories are mainly the Launchpad's PPAs (but basically, it's a  
webspace with appropriates files presents which give infos and packages  
related to repository content). An inconvenient is you find very good  
thing (like Philip Johnson's PPA) but also very bad things in PPAs... So  
it's to use with care and advice.

Personally, I'm testing OpenSuse for now, after some years with Ubuntu. At  
the beginning, it was for Tumbleweed which is a rolling release repository  
for Opensuse, but for now, Digikam still is in 1.9 version in Tumbleweed  
(mainly due to will of stability I guess), so for now I use a repository  
with the latest stable KDE release, and digikam 2.0 which works fine for  
now on my computer.

Rolling release could be an alternative, the principle is these distribs  
don't works with periodic release, they're continuously updated, but  
they're some time more complex to install and set, and you don't always  
have access to the new software's versions instantly (see the tumbleweed  
example above), but with some it seems to be pretty fast like with  
ArchLinux, but I guess it's need some knowledges and may have some  
stability issue some time (since the principle here is not to extensively  
test new packages before put them in repo).

Le Sun, 28 Aug 2011 05:34:24 +0200, Paul Verizzo <paulv at paulv.net> a écrit:

> Why is it that the Linux repositories are still at dk 1.9? I don't  
> understand
> how this works.
>
> Thank you Giles for compiling dk into Windows regardless of flaws.
>
> I have spent the last several weeks trying out about ten Linux distros in
> Virtual Box. Fun, but no game changer. In terms of ease of setup and  
> use, coming
> from Windows, I found Linux Mint 11 the best. Linux Mint Debian lagging  
> and more
> difficult to set up the "disk." PC Linux OS medium good. Could not  
> believe how
> bad Kubuntu was, how clunky! Still no luck with the new method of  
> installing
> Guest Additions to work well.
>
> Closing, the question is about how Linux apps are updated......
>
> Paul
>
>


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Nicolas Boulesteix
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http://www.photonoxx.fr