Don't rely too much on apt-listbugs. As someone said, its often mentionned "package uninstallable" or "machine unbootable"
But it works a lot of time.

I'm wondering if its not harder to maintain etch than sid? Due to changing dependencies..

If it says uninstallable in sid I always give it a try anyway 99% of the time it installs and runs just fine. I have Kaffeine install BTW. Worst thing that can happen is it wont run. In which case you just uninstall it.

Im an app junkie, that's part of the reason I love Debian. With over 20k packages to choose from; I usually end up installing 10-20 a day. If they dont work or I just don't like them I uninstall them. Plus if there is something I want to install and it's not in the "official" repositories chances are I can find it in apt-get.org or the website for the app will have a .deb package.

If there is not .deb package compiling from source is easy enough, and all the Debian installs I have done came with the necessary tools unlike some other distros.

i know i can pull kafeign from unstable and it works fine but its just a little annoying that I cant pull it from testing repos. Simerally I know I can pull down vlc from unstable but I really dotn want to do that because of the lib files it needs are only in unstable apparently, i dotn mine using actual front ends or a single program from unstable,i just download the individual deb file install it and then have apt fix the dependency problems, but I dont want to introduce library fies from unstable on testing due to the nature of unstable.

Reading the Etch installation guide is See, it's the "almost" part that makes me nervous. Look at this excerpt:
I've chosen the Monitor as an example because Kubuntu's installer, unlike all others I've used, was unable to work out the appropriate settings for the Monitor.

They're kidding, right? It's just Debian's little joke.

You guys bring up a good point about someone who uses another distro loading up the stable.

Any idea when they may re-package it all to be stable-updated. My reasoning is that I have an old laptop that does not have a lot of memory, mhz, etc. I can only imaging what kind of processing it will take to do all the updating, and really don't know if I have the extra hard drive space.

I'm leary now to install the testing, as I tried a few other distro's of testing slackware for one, and had a nightmare.

Any idea when they may re-package it all to be stable-updated as one download? Or just have a new version?

fixed typo's.

Supposedly Etch will become stable by the end of the year, but you shouldn't be having that many problems. Etch should go on your laptop with a minimum of hassle unless it's really old and heavily proprietary. The base install only takes about 100 megs, then you add whatever you think it can handle. The base install shouldn't take over a half hour on a really slow machine assuming you have a good internet connection. You do, of course need an ethernet connection. I've never seen wireless work for an install.

My advice: Get the Etch netinstal .iso, about 100 MB download and install up to where it asks you whether you want a desktop, normal system or what. By then, the base system is done, including Apt. Reboot to a login prompt, then go back and re-read Dead Parrot's instructions in Post #32 above.

Make sure you're getting the NetInstal disk, not Disk #1 of the complete images.

Somehow I've missed the reasoning behind this advice:
What's wrong with downloading and installing the whole kit and kaboodle?

I've been thinking of using two bittorrent files which I believe get me a bootable DVD/s, subject to clarifying whether the developers intend to proceed with the AMD64 version.

Am I on the wrong track with that?

The netinstall is just another Debian innovation that all other distros will soon adopt. There is no reason to download a complete system unless it's the Stable one, and you want to use it to install identical systems on many PCs over the life of the release. Your complete DVD sets (from Testing) will be obsolete before you get them written to hard media. You can write the netinstall to a cd-rw, and get a new one with the latest revisions every time you want to do a fresh install.

The advice you quoted is related to building a "lean and mean" custom system, as opposed to Debian's standard architecture.

not to mention doing a netinstall allows the system to download the latest versions of software as it's installing them so you don't have to apt-get update && apt-get upgrade as soon as the install is finished.. The CD and DVD installs put stale software on that needs an immediate update as soon as the install is finished.. why bother if you have a broadband connection. Netinstall rules.

The Etch netinstall took about 20 minutes to get a working desktop on my Dell latitude C600 with a PIII 750mhz and 256mb ram . I think the new OpenSuse has a netinstall disk as well.

You can always take the net-install thing one step further and install from 2-3 floppys. Did this the other day, installed sid straight off, no apt-get dist-upgrading and everything worked perfectly.

I just started this process and was disconcerted to be asked about configuring the system without first being asked to create partitions. I vaguely remember some mention being made that a net install should be used only if you intend to use the whole hard disk. Is that correct or does the installer in fact give you the chance to confine the installation to a partition?

No. That's not true. Go to this slideshow, also linked above, and see what to expect. Your question, as asked is too vague for specific help. Once you know whether or not you have a problem ... Start a new thread to address it.

Thanks. The slide show helped. After all the trouble I had getting my existing installation in working order, I did not want to destroy it.

Edit. Since I was here anyway, I thought I'd mention a slideshow which is more extensive than the other one mentioned.

At some point in time, i have tried all 3 versions of Debian. When Sarge went to Stable, i didn't bother anymore, everything works perfectly, i do an update/dist-upgrade once a week, and that's it.

I must be getting old!