~86 vrs stable

[carpenterguy]

I dual boot with sabayon and gentoo. Been using sabayon for about 3 years. Have been using gentoo for less time.
I have 2 computers running, 1 is with a stable gentoo with a stable sabayon The other is with a testing ~86 gentoo and testing sabayon.
Not sure if it is my bad luck or what, I have more problems with stable gentoo then ~86.
A friend suggested that testing may be more (lack of better term) better. The gentoo dev may pay closer attention to the ~86 then stable.
I am not sure I will believe this.
I do have very few problems with my ~86 while the stable system always wants attention (latest is update to old xorg-server)
Am I alone with this? I do use my system as a desktop.

[Jazz-KP]

[NeddySeagoon]

carpenterguy,

~arch does provide a few nasty surprises from time to time that get sorted out before they hit stable.

However, pure stable (with an empty /etc/portage) should be err, stable. It can get messy when you mix branches as you get slot conflicts with dependancies.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[carpenterguy]

It may be my noobnes showing...I tend to run a bloated system. I have the room and horse power, why not.
I have kde, gnome, xfce, fluxbox...like a lot of the latest goodies...I use xbmc on my ~86 etc...
I think I am starting to create my own opinion that a stable system is great for a headless server or a box built for specific use.
For a willy nilly desktop application like mine, ~86 seems to have less problems in a situation like this.
I did have an issue with the new .33 kernel and nouveau drivers when they were new. neddy suggested that I drop back to the older kernel and I did. I do now have it on the 33...which is old at this time, that system runs perfect I luv it.
I am on the second install with the stable system and is always a pain to update it,

As you all know, getting mad and switching it to ~86 is not as easy as it sounds, for a noob. 3 days later and am still working on it.
revdep-rebuld, python-updater, perl-cleaner all have been my friends, getting past kde 4.3 to 4.4 is proving difficult but, update is still running with lots of intervention, Would I suggest others do this? NO!

Think what I really meant in original question is, Is there a line drawn in the sand, where one should stop using stable and use ~86?
stable sounds like the ticket, my luck has been with ~86

[Shining Arcanine]

~x86 is better if you need up to date software and you do not want to do dependency resolution when an update of a package you unkeyworded depends on a package that portage will not install because it is keyworded in the stable tree. This is a gross simplification of things. When you run a desktop environment, you usually never get a single package that breaks things because it is keyworded, instead you get several packages that break things because they are keyworded.

Anyway, all of the software in ~x86 is considered stable by upstream and usually in stable software more bugs are fixed than are introduced, so that tends to balance out the risk of enduring mistakes by Gentoo's package maintainers. At the same time, ~x86 is not for people who need enterprise level reliability. If you are the sort of person that likes to run RHEL, you should stick with software from the stable tree.

By the way, the transition from x86 to ~x86 was relatively painless for me. Perhaps you are not following the migration guide:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/openrc-migration.xml

[phajdan.jr]