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Debian Etch will be released quando paratus est.

IMO, this is a bad article. It's full of misinformation and factual errors, and it paints a very inaccurate picture of the current state of Debian.

From the article:

Debian has a long history of being late, ever since its first version in 1997. This is one of the reasons why entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth launched alternative Linux distribution Ubuntu two years ago.

The date of Debian's first release given in this article is only one of the many factual errors that it contains. The Wikipedia article on Debian ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian ) tells that "The Debian distribution was first announced on August 16, 1993 by Ian Murdock" and "The Debian Project grew slowly at first and released its first 0.9x versions in 1994 and 1995." Debian version 1.1 was released in June 1996, version 1.2 in December 1996, and version 1.3 in June 1997.

Of course, the article also fails to mention that the Ubuntu distribution is based on Debian and Ubuntu's each new release relies heavily on the work that is constantly being done in Debian, and the article also fails to tell that Ubuntu takes most of the code it releases from Debian's development branch.

http://mako.cc/writing/to_fork_or_not_to_fork.html

From the article:

The upcoming release of Debian is being delayed because of a slowdown by key developers.

Actually, there's no factual evidence at all that the delay in Debian's release schedule is caused by developers doing their work slower than usual. It is not easy to grasp how large and complex the Debian project has grown and many journalists also obviously fail to understand the not-for-profit and volunteer nature of the work that is done in Debian. The huge size of the project and the volunteer nature of its work are sufficient reasons alone to explain why the release has been delayed for a month or two. Such delays can happen for purely organizational reasons even if every developer is working as hard as they can.

Debian is a non-profit volunteer organization where all the important decisions are made democratically. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy ) This means that all important issues in the project management are openly discussed over a period of time and every developer has a chance to get their voice heard. From time to time there are disagreements among the developers and these disagreements are settled by voting where the opinion of the majority wins.

There was recently some disagreement among the Debian Developers about the experimental idea to fund two release managers' full-time work for a short period of time just before the upcoming Debian release. The Debian Developers voted about this issue and the majority of them decided to support the experiment. ( http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006 /10/msg00019.html ) Most of the developers accepted this result but 17 of them have been protesting even after the results of the voting were published. It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Debian has over one thousand officially accepted developers and many more who contribute to the project without having the official developer status. 17 developers out of 1000 is a small minority but they can still make a lot of noise. Those other developers concentrate on coding instead of public arguing, so it is only too easy for the scandal-hungry journalists to ignore all these hard-working silent developers and concentrate on the loud complainers.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006 /10/msg00026.html

IMO, this is a bad article. It's full of misinformation and factual errors, and it paints a very inaccurate picture of the current state of Debian.

From the article:

Debian has a long history of being late, ever since its first version in 1997. This is one of the reasons why entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth launched alternative Linux distribution Ubuntu two years ago.

The date of Debian's first release given in this article is only one of the many factual errors that it contains. The Wikipedia article on Debian ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian ) tells that "The Debian distribution was first announced on August 16, 1993 by Ian Murdock" and "The Debian Project grew slowly at first and released its first 0.9x versions in 1994 and 1995." Debian version 1.1 was released in June 1996, version 1.2 in December 1996, and version 1.3 in June 1997.

Of course, the article also fails to mention that the Ubuntu distribution is based on Debian and Ubuntu's each new release relies heavily on the work that is constantly being done in Debian, and the article also fails to tell that Ubuntu takes most of the code it releases from Debian's development branch.

http://mako.cc/writing/to_fork_or_not_to_fork.html

From the article:

The upcoming release of Debian is being delayed because of a slowdown by key developers.

Actually, there's no factual evidence at all that the delay in Debian's release schedule is caused by developers doing their work slower than usual. It is not easy to grasp how large and complex the Debian project has grown and many journalists also obviously fail to understand the not-for-profit and volunteer nature of the work that is done in Debian. The huge size of the project and the volunteer nature of its work are sufficient reasons alone to explain why the release has been delayed for a month or two. Such delays can happen for purely organizational reasons even if every developer is working as hard as they can.

Debian is a non-profit volunteer organization where all the important decisions are made democratically. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy ) This means that all important issues in the project management are openly discussed over a period of time and every developer has a chance to get their voice heard. From time to time there are disagreements among the developers and these disagreements are settled by voting where the opinion of the majority wins.

There was recently some disagreement among the Debian Developers about the experimental idea to fund two release managers' full-time work for a short period of time just before the upcoming Debian release. The Debian Developers voted about this issue and the majority of them decided to support the experiment. ( http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006 /10/msg00019.html ) Most of the developers accepted this result but 17 of them have been protesting even after the results of the voting were published. It is perhaps worth mentioning here that Debian has over one thousand officially accepted developers and many more who contribute to the project without having the official developer status. 17 developers out of 1000 is a small minority but they can still make a lot of noise. Those other developers concentrate on coding instead of public arguing, so it is only too easy for the scandal-hungry journalists to ignore all these hard-working silent developers and concentrate on the loud complainers.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006 /10/msg00026.html

In fact, if you'd note, the DWN is run by a pretty strong critic of dunc-tanc (hence it not being weekly anymore).

So you're a bit off there.

http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/41/

Mandriva 2007, with 13328 packages is pretty much the same as Debian (15490 packages) in raw number of packages.

And as Debian, you can use Mandriva a a desktop environment, server system, terminal server or waht not.

In the end, they are all Linux.

Peace!

Debian ships When It's Ready.

But for those of us who are holding our breath for release time, a good and rough indicator of when it will ship is the number of release critical bugs. When the number hits zero, Debian is (almost?) ready. Since the etch freeze was announced about a week ago, the number of release bugs has wavered around 130, with a slight downward trend. This is the stock market of the free software world. :-) The etch freeze means that no packages can move down from unstable (sid) to the current testing (etch) automatically anymore (normally, packages in unstable are automatically moved down to testing by a script if no bugs are filed against them for some time, several days, iirc). Packages can still be moved from unstable to testing, but only manually if it's clear that they are stable enough for the next release.

The dunk-tank drama in the Debian mailing lists is old news. Yes, some developers expressed concerns about the dunc-tank project, but I would hardly call this "frozen development". Developers are working hard to get the Debian release. I estimate January or February at the latest will be beer and pizza party time for all the Debian developers that have produced the largest binary free GNU/Linux distribution amongst which so many other distros depend.

Personally, I'm very excited. I'm not sure how much truth there is in this, but Ubuntu has probably put pressure in Debian to more timely releases, and this release will be much more in time than the previous sarge release was. I've been given permission to install Debian in 20 workstations of our local network, and I'm waiting for the stable release and the renowned Debian quality and security to do so. I'll probably be tracking the next testing release after I install them, though, since testing works well for desktop use and workstations.

Debian ships When It's Ready.

But for those of us who are holding our breath for release time, a good and rough indicator of when it will ship is the number of release critical bugs. When the number hits zero, Debian is (almost?) ready. Since the etch freeze was announced about a week ago, the number of release bugs has wavered around 130, with a slight downward trend. This is the stock market of the free software world. :-) The etch freeze means that no packages can move down from unstable (sid) to the current testing (etch) automatically anymore (normally, packages in unstable are automatically moved down to testing by a script if no bugs are filed against them for some time, several days, iirc). Packages can still be moved from unstable to testing, but only manually if it's clear that they are stable enough for the next release.

The dunk-tank drama in the Debian mailing lists is old news. Yes, some developers expressed concerns about the dunc-tank project, but I would hardly call this "frozen development". Developers are working hard to get the Debian release. I estimate January or February at the latest will be beer and pizza party time for all the Debian developers that have produced the largest binary free GNU/Linux distribution amongst which so many other distros depend.

Personally, I'm very excited. I'm not sure how much truth there is in this, but Ubuntu has probably put pressure in Debian to more timely releases, and this release will be much more in time than the previous sarge release was. I've been given permission to install Debian in 20 workstations of our local network, and I'm waiting for the stable release and the renowned Debian quality and security to do so. I'll probably be tracking the next testing release after I install them, though, since testing works well for desktop use and workstations.

Debian ships When It's Ready.

But for those of us who are holding our breath for release time, a good and rough indicator of when it will ship is the number of release critical bugs. When the number hits zero, Debian is (almost?) ready. Since the etch freeze was announced about a week ago, the number of release bugs has wavered around 130, with a slight downward trend. This is the stock market of the free software world. :-) The etch freeze means that no packages can move down from unstable (sid) to the current testing (etch) automatically anymore (normally, packages in unstable are automatically moved down to testing by a script if no bugs are filed against them for some time, several days, iirc). Packages can still be moved from unstable to testing, but only manually if it's clear that they are stable enough for the next release.

The dunk-tank drama in the Debian mailing lists is old news. Yes, some developers expressed concerns about the dunc-tank project, but I would hardly call this "frozen development". Developers are working hard to get the Debian release. I estimate January or February at the latest will be beer and pizza party time for all the Debian developers that have produced the largest binary free GNU/Linux distribution amongst which so many other distros depend.

Personally, I'm very excited. I'm not sure how much truth there is in this, but Ubuntu has probably put pressure in Debian to more timely releases, and this release will be much more in time than the previous sarge release was. I've been given permission to install Debian in 20 workstations of our local network, and I'm waiting for the stable release and the renowned Debian quality and security to do so. I'll probably be tracking the next testing release after I install them, though, since testing works well for desktop use and workstations.

Please, please /.ers just go straight to http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/ and get the news. I certainly wish the editors at /. would.

This email from October 26 is pretty darn informative when it comes to dunc-tank. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/10/msg 00260.html

This email from November 16 will pretty much bring everyone up to date on Etch status: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006 /11/msg00004.html
Since its publication, Etch has gone into bug-fixing only.

Nice little bonus for debian users on the end if you read it all the way through.

Please, please /.ers just go straight to http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/ and get the news. I certainly wish the editors at /. would.

This email from October 26 is pretty darn informative when it comes to dunc-tank. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/10/msg 00260.html

This email from November 16 will pretty much bring everyone up to date on Etch status: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006 /11/msg00004.html
Since its publication, Etch has gone into bug-fixing only.

Nice little bonus for debian users on the end if you read it all the way through.

Please, please /.ers just go straight to http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/ and get the news. I certainly wish the editors at /. would.

This email from October 26 is pretty darn informative when it comes to dunc-tank. http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/10/msg 00260.html

This email from November 16 will pretty much bring everyone up to date on Etch status: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2006 /11/msg00004.html
Since its publication, Etch has gone into bug-fixing only.

Nice little bonus for debian users on the end if you read it all the way through.

Please, please /.ers just go straight to http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/ and get the news. I certainly wish the editors at /. would.

Having read that list, I don't think any of them are likely to happen to me.

1. Unlikely. If my computer ever crashes, it does so for a reason. The software I am using has been independently audited. I've read the Source Code of some of it myself.

2. Unlikely. I know how to use locate.

3. Unlimited traffic. Static IP. Anything less is not a proper internet connection.

4. Bloody unlikely. I use a web browser, not a virus magnet. That's on top of an Operating System which is immune to viruses, spyware and adware -- by design.

5. I know how to turn off Bluetooth. So does anyone who has to pay for their electricity by the joule.

6. It's right there in the Terms and Conditions of my bank account: We will never ask you for personal information via the Internet. And it means what it says.

7. See 6. Anyway, there are only two ways my bank could add an "internet-enabled" service I'd actually use: let me take a photo of a pile of pound notes and coins, upload it and pay it into my account; or let me print pound notes on my own printer.

8. I don't buy software, I download it using apt-get. What is a CD key?

9. Bit far-fetched. Anyway, if anybody's going to be selling off the toner cartridges, it's me!

10. Unlikely. I don't travel by air anyway.

Having read that list, I don't think any of them are likely to happen to me.

1. Unlikely. If my computer ever crashes, it does so for a reason. The software I am using has been independently audited. I've read the Source Code of some of it myself.

2. Unlikely. I know how to use locate.

3. Unlimited traffic. Static IP. Anything less is not a proper internet connection.

4. Bloody unlikely. I use a web browser, not a virus magnet. That's on top of an Operating System which is immune to viruses, spyware and adware -- by design.

5. I know how to turn off Bluetooth. So does anyone who has to pay for their electricity by the joule.

6. It's right there in the Terms and Conditions of my bank account: We will never ask you for personal information via the Internet. And it means what it says.

7. See 6. Anyway, there are only two ways my bank could add an "internet-enabled" service I'd actually use: let me take a photo of a pile of pound notes and coins, upload it and pay it into my account; or let me print pound notes on my own printer.

8. I don't buy software, I download it using apt-get. What is a CD key?

9. Bit far-fetched. Anyway, if anybody's going to be selling off the toner cartridges, it's me!

10. Unlikely. I don't travel by air anyway.

At the end of the day, Linux is just a kernel.

The Debian platform has such a universal packaging system (dpkg) and a set of standards that developers use to correctly integrate their software into the Debian System.

Other distributions (one would hope) have their own standards. The problem is that everyone wants "Linux" to be a platform when it is only a component. And everyone wants "Linux" to be a platform/operating system when really the platforms are Debian, Fedora, etc.

In Debian, they call this "stable". See - packages.debian.org/stable/misc/postgresql

oh, wait...nevermind.

What are you waiting for?

It exists. It works.

The driver support and performance arn't super, but it is a real working system.

http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/

Wengo is advertising itself as a Skype replacement. The free WengoPhone is Open Source and SIP (telephone standards) compatible.

Does anyone have experience with Wengo? Skype is excellent, of course, but not open source and not compatible with standards.

Wengo Links:

Wengo French
Wengo English

WengoPhone

OpenWengo

Wengo consulting. Sell your technical knowledge over the phone.

"Who is Wengo? People like you all over the world
and the team: 35 people in France keeping you in touch."
Wengo started in 2005. "Wengo is a subsidiary of the group neufcegetel."

Confusion: It is difficult to find their telephone service rates pages. The one linked is for the countries beginning with B.

Debian Wengo: Package: wengophone (2.0.0~rc5-svn8108-2) "SIP-based software telephone with video and chat features."

Observations: Their web site is confused. The site is incorrectly translated to English in some places.

See http://packages.debian.org/testing/net/wengophone for a link to the source package.

http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net/tutorials/apt-get -intro/info.html.en

                  snippet here

3.1. Finding packages -- apt-cache search

Whether you're online or not--

How do you find the package that's got the feature you're looking for?
First, do

# apt-get update

so your package list is up-to-date, and then try something like

% apt-cache search tunnel
% apt-cache search 'php.*sql'
% apt-cache search apache.\*perl
% apt-cache search elvis\|vim

      That is how you tell apt to search the packages you've downloaded,
      using REGEX (regular expression, a pattern-matching 'language') -- if
      your pattern uses any keystrokes that mean something to your command
      shell (e.g. [|?*] ) you'll need to quote them so that apt-cache will
      be able to see them, instead of having the shell expand the term to a
      list of file names that mean something else entirely.

      " NOTE -- apt-cache only knows about the package descriptions you've
      already downloaded. To search among ALL known Debian packages just
      browse to http://packages.debian.org/PACKAGESUBSTRING to see what's
      available. For example: [6]http://packages.debian.org/vnc That would
      get you a listing of packages that contain the term "vnc" somewhere in
      the title."

and so on.

right, because libpng2-3 really happened in 1999 instead of say, 2002-2003
http://people.debian.org/~mmagallo/png/png-transit ion.txt

http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome/2002/01/m sg00015.html

i love this part in the first link though,

"First and foremost, because some development libraries depend on
libpng2-dev and others depend on libpng3-dev; since these two packages
can *not* be installed at the same time, this means you have to install
and deinstall not only libpng2-dev and libpng3-dev but also a bunch of
other -dev packages which depend on those.
"

Though it may sound familiar because the package management has barely improved since then

right, because libpng2-3 really happened in 1999 instead of say, 2002-2003
http://people.debian.org/~mmagallo/png/png-transit ion.txt

http://lists.debian.org/debian-gtk-gnome/2002/01/m sg00015.html

i love this part in the first link though,

"First and foremost, because some development libraries depend on
libpng2-dev and others depend on libpng3-dev; since these two packages
can *not* be installed at the same time, this means you have to install
and deinstall not only libpng2-dev and libpng3-dev but also a bunch of
other -dev packages which depend on those.
"

Though it may sound familiar because the package management has barely improved since then

we can talk about it all you want. when the numbers change, it will actually matter. I'm all for progress, but badmouthing such tried and proven things like C/C++ in favor of fancy-scripting-du-jour, just ain't cool my friend. and all that because some people cant't handle the complexity. tough shit. IT ain't easy.

Well I moved from C# to Java a couple of years ago when a client wanted to be able to deploy to AIX. I found the transition dead easy. If you fancy taking a look at Java and want a good starter IDE you could do worse than look at Sun's Java Studio Creator which has a lot of the same look and feel as Visual Studio and is free and open source. If you want something that rocks and don't mind paying for it IDEA is easily the best IDE I've ever used for anything. Ruby on Rails is where all the hype is at the mo, of course, but I'm not much of a fan myself mainly because Ruby is so damn slow.

Can you name me an open source spreadsheet-like program that is not an Excel clone?

slsc, an updated version of the classic sc program.
SIAG, part of Pathetic Office, which won't win any points for marketing, but who cares?

I've often wondered if there is a "Unix way" to do spreadsheets--that is, a way to put data in a plain text file and then do analysis on it.

As someone else mentioned, awk.

Grails is used. It is faster that RoR

Any proof backing your claim? I hardly believe that something based on a language that is approx. 5x slower and 7x more memory hungry than Ruby will be "faster". See http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4sandbox/bench mark.php?test=all&lang=groovy&lang2=ruby

I never understood why I couldn't get a fast terminal prompt and have the remainder of the daemons start up in the background, all reniced to low priority during the initialization process, or maybe slowly started up to avoid disk contention. I personally amortize the bootup time by buying a bunch of ram, and dd'ing all the files in /usr/bin, /usr/lib/*.so, /lib/*.so, /etc and maybe /usr/share/apps, depending on how much ram I have. This pulls everything into the buffer cache and improves KDE startup significantly.

I'm sure I could optimize this by running some kind of kernel auditor that tracked every file that was run (executable) or loaded (.so), wrote out a list at shutdown, and reused that list to precache on reboot.

A few interesting links: http://kerneltrap.org/node/2157 , http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0609 .2/2180/boot_linux_faster.pdf , http://initscripts-ng.alioth.debian.org/soc2006-bo otsystem/deliverable3.html , http://preload.sf.net/ , http://packages.ubuntu.com/dapper-backports/admin/ readahead .

Indeed good luck putting into Debian something that is already there. Logically of course its in the non free repository: http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages .pl?keywords=nvidia&searchon=names&subword=1&versi on=unstable&release=all

Unfortunately, Erlang is SLOW when doing anything EXCEPT concurrency. (At least when rated by http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/ ).

Actually, the Erlang FAQ specifically mentions that most larger projects use other languages for the computationally expensive sections.

My current idea for a hack is connection via TCP connections and pickled data.

You might want to look at this before you start. I'm not sure how well it'd work with Python, but it's something to consider.

Unfortunately, Erlang is SLOW when doing anything EXCEPT concurrency. (At least when rated by http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/ ).

Another problem that I have with it is the lack of any object model, or any decent tutorial.

It does do concurrency well, but that, by itself, isn't sufficient. (I just checked it out for a couple of days recently. Not long enough to really know the language, but long enough to get a high-level feel of it.)

One nice thing about Erlang is it's good connection to a database. (Well, not just ANY database, but a particular one, Mnestra or something close. It's FOSS.) Unfortunately, this doesn't suffice. (The database probably does, but database + concurrency doesn't suffice to make Erlang a viable choice for me.)

My current idea for a hack is connection via TCP connections and pickled data. I'll need to nail down the details when I get closer to implementation, but for now it looks like Python is the high level language I'll choose, with either pyrex + C or pyd + D for low level modules. (D has LOTS of advantages over C, but C has the libraries...OTOH, so does Python.)

Just as a random aside: Debian has been working on shifting off of the Linux kernel for some time because it isn't "free" or "secure" enough.

http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/hurd-install

Well, one good reason to accept the possibility of segfaults is speed.

Well, one good reason to accept the possibility of segfaults is speed.

Well, one good reason to accept the possibility of segfaults is speed.

Well, one good reason to accept the possibility of segfaults is speed.

Well, one good reason to accept the possibility of segfaults is speed.

C++ is like a sharp scalpel. Yes you can hurt yourself if you're unskilled, inexperienced or sloppy.
Java and C# are like those scissors with rounded ends for kids. Totally inefficent but safe for beginners.

C++ is like a sharp scalpel. Yes you can hurt yourself if you're unskilled, inexperienced or sloppy.
Java and C# are like those scissors with rounded ends for kids. Totally inefficent but safe for beginners.

C++ is like a sharp scalpel. Yes you can hurt yourself if you're unskilled, inexperienced or sloppy.
Java and C# are like those scissors with rounded ends for kids. Totally inefficent but safe for beginners.

C++ is like a sharp scalpel. Yes you can hurt yourself if you're unskilled, inexperienced or sloppy.
Java and C# are like those scissors with rounded ends for kids. Totally inefficent but safe for beginners.

Solution/s: Fedora, Debian, et al. Take your pick.

In Windows, this model breaks down simply because there are far too many developers to access one central repository -- among other problems, the infrastructure just won't support it.

Although debian has removed non-free since the crypto export ban was lifted some DD's are planning to resurrect it for the sake of software patents http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2006/10/msg 00022.html is the begining of the thread.

I think he probably means DFSG which stands for Debian Free Software Guidelines. This is essentially the debian project's definition of what counts as Free Software (and can therefore be included in the debian distribution, though there's also the non-free section)

See http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

HTH
Cheers & God bless
        Sam "SammyTheSnake" Penny

That's not really trolling - Linux doesn't seem set up to save power. While there are packages like hibernate, it's not well advertised, and didn't get installed by default for me.

If it bothers you so much, why not try an alternative?

Fedora Core
Ubuntu
Debian
SUSE
Mandriva
Slackware
Gentoo

or any of these?

Or Mac, or BSD, or even Solaris? There's no shortage of options

Debian GNU/OpenSolaris. (cf. Nexenta at http://www.gnusolaris.org/gswiki and Debian's non-Linux ports at http://www.debian.org/ports/#nonlinux)

Here is the debian trademark policy you seek. Also, debian specifically has an "official" image, which is only used on their website and has a community image, which is "free".

No, aptitude install java. ;-)