at least a couple of years. Much will be learned by going through a cycle of Debian freezes
which turns everything in sid on it's head, though it is more stable just nothing new coming in.
When the freeze lifts then the floodgates open and several months worth of updates, bug fixes,
and improvements beginning hitting sid. Sharp curves ahead.
sidux is a fairly stable system if you install every new release,
add the testing source and in apt.conf add: Release="testing";
Then it is no longer sidux and you won't be given much assistance if you mention "testing".
They have some fairly strict rules to which they want users to adhere:
1. only use apt-get at init level 3 with no X running for dist-upgrade, never upgrade.
2. do not use synaptic nor aptitude
3. only use sidux tools, no outsider scripts, like smxi, http://smxi.org/
You are always free to do what you want, just solve your problems elsewhere.
I find that sidux is a good path for me to testing.
But I tend to reinstall since I keep all data on other partitions,
including thunderbird.default, firefox.default and documents.
/home is in / and only contains config stuff. Easily replaced at install.
Reinstalling also cleans up leftovers from lots of changes.
But I enjoy the LinuxMint method as well and am learning from it.
Also the Remastersys LXDE distro and remaster tool.
The AVlinux based on Debian testing and Remastersys LXDE.
It is for creating audio and video but is also a rolling "testing" distro.
I try to keep at least 1 stable partition and a couple of others in trials.
Lots of toys; so little time.
The stable allows reinitializing to get work done.
Mainly my HP1020 printer is 100% linux compatible but not very stable.
Changes tend to cause it not to print. Sometimes just turning it off causes it not to print.
Though it is more stable in sidux once installed than in Mint or any of the new 'buntus.
Honestly, I believe that starting from Debian testing will yield a much more stable rolling distro.
The main aspects of "testing" are as follows, from http://www.us.debian.org/devel/testing.en.html:
<<< "The "testing" distribution is an automatically generated distribution. It is generated from the "unstable" distribution by a set of scripts which attempt to move over packages which are reasonably likely to lack release-critical bugs. They do so in a way that ensures that dependencies of other packages in testing are always satisfiable.
A particular version of a package will move into testing when it satisfies all of the following criteria:
1. It must have been in unstable for 10, 5 or 2 days, depending on the urgency of the upload;
2. It must be compiled and up to date on all architectures it has previously been compiled for in unstable;
3. It must have fewer release-critical bugs than, or the same number as, the version currently in "testing";
4. All of its dependencies must either be satisfiable by packages already in "testing", or be satisfiable by the group of packages which are going to be installed at the same time;
5. The operation of installing the package into "testing" must not break any packages currently in "testing". >>>
So, by definition, testing should only contain packages proven to compile and not break existing packages in "testing".
Of course, a newly entered package could contain new bugs which due to the more complicated process of entering testing, sometimes take longer to be available. Which leads many to run a mixed "testing/sid" system in order to get fixes quicker.
Generally, testing is very stable compared to sid and much less likely to break and almost as up-to-date as sid. Much more up-to-date than stable which is a true software release that only receives bug-fixes and security updates. Stable still has OOo2.4.1 while most everyone else has OOo3.0 or 3.1, etcetera. Until the freeze, at which time, testing slowly becomes stable and is finally released. And the cycle starts all over again.
