Apt-get :: Best way to upgrade DSL



Hi all,
Our church had a donation of some older PIII systems with 256 ram and 4 gig HD. I'm using these for free training of out of work folks.  I just did a harddrive install and it went flawlessly. I've been using MEPIS for 3 years and setting up servers with straight Debian via net install.   So I have some understanding of packages and APT, etc.

I notice DSL isn't truly Debian so how should I do upgrades on these machines.  apt-get update / upgrade,  updated 3 packages.

I notice the repository in sources.list   is  old stable. Is this the same as Woddy or Stable?  If not, would it break DSL if I change the repo to  Stable?

Thanks, and how can I join in to help DSL? I have plent of Samba / Cups / Network experience.

Jim A.
All I will say, and it has been stated many times before...
A traditional hard install is not the focus of DSL.

Personally, I would recommend that you read up and learn about our frugal type install. With these machines, you have plenty of power. You gain easy updates, as DSL continues to improve. You also gain a near bulletproof base system, especially when the target is a new user.

Again, this is my personal opinion. This is the area that I have an interest in and develop and support.
Roberts,
Thanks for the quick reply. Since I'm new to DSL, you're saying that the frugal install is best? If it's not too much trouble can give a quick response why? If that's the best, that's what I'll do. My experience as been with only HD installs, Gentoo, Debian, and some BSD.
TIA,
Jim A.
I don't think he's saying frugal is necessarily best, but he prefers it.  Frugal is not really best if you want to run DSL on a very limted amount of ram (less than 32mb, for example) and install additional software at the same time.  There are a couple of threads discussing the pros and cons of frugal vs debian style installation, such as:
http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....83;st=0
mikshaw,
Thanks for the thread url. It seems most of the folks there choose frugal, but I'm not sure why from reading the posts. I may frugal one machine and keep this machine I've hd installed on today and see if I can make up my own mind. These machines aren't ancient, PII 333 with 128-256 meg ram. The HD install is working great so far, but I'll wait and pass judgment after I've tried both.
Thanks,
Jim >A
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