Chris Frost writes
"The Debian Project began the freeze of its next distribution release, 2.2, today." Hit the "Read More..." link to read the full press release. This has been a long time coming, and it's good to see another stable release in the future. I've been running potato for some time now, and I'm eagerly anticipating woody, the next unstable release.
------------------------------
The Debian Project
press@debian.org
http://www.debian.org
Martin Schulze
January 16, 2000
------------------------------
The Code Freeze for Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 has begun
"The code freeze for the next Debian release, code named "potato", has
begun", says Richard Braakman, current Debian Release Manager. He
expects the freeze process to take about two months.
Until the new version is released, there will be three distributions
available on our servers: `stable', `frozen', and the new `unstable'.
"The new `unstable' distribution, code named woody[1], was created
today", continues Richard. The `frozen' and `unstable' distributions
start out with the same set of packages. While `unstable' will be
updated rapidly, `frozen' will have only bugfixes applied in
preparation for its release.
[1] Debian releases are code-named after characters from the movie Toy
Story. Woody is the main character, the cowboy action figure.
>> About Debian
The Debian project is an organization of many users who volunteer
their time and effort. Its tasks include maintaining and updating Debian
GNU/Linux which is a free distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system,
and the development of the Debian GNU/Hurd operating system.
>> Contact Information
For further information, please send email to the Debian Press Team,
press@debian.org, or visit the Debian homepage at
http://www.debian.org/"
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I don't like them.
Do you?
How can I avoid dealing with them completely? There are so many of them when I go out into the world. I go to a resteraunt, and ask the waitress if she used Debian, and she doesn't even know what it is........ ARGGHH... where can I get some service in this town.
Yes, you are correct and Ian Jackson, the dselect/dpkg designer and coder has said as much. This is why Debian now has console-apt as replacement for dselect and why DPKGv2 is being developed as we speak.
You forgot the best way to please your girlfriend:
Upgrade from NT to Linux to replace your Microsoft with a Woody!
Linux has to lose the elitism and make an idiot proof installer if it ever hopes to displace Microsoft.
We're here to make a good system which is powerful, configurable, flexible, and, above all, usable. This mentality that we must somehow "beat Microsoft" is misguided.
If we make what amounts to an OSS version of Windows, then what was the point? We've "beat Microsoft" at that point, but in so doing have become just like them, albeit a much poorer version.
What in God's name is so difficult about dselect? There is one problem with dselect which I can think of, and it isn't because of dselect: it's because of maintainers who screw up their dependencies, and that's going to be a problem regardless of what package manager front-end is used.
Make good software because it's good software, not to "beat Microsoft." When you make something idiot proof, you attract idiots, which isn't very beneficial.
I'm not trying to be "31337" here, either. I'm just sick of people saying that "if it isn't idiot proof and/or like Windows, then it's worthless and the users and developers are just trying to be elitists."
Elitism is a good thing, just as descrimination is a good thing. It just has to be appropriately applied. Not hiring someone because he's black is probably very stupid; I can think of very few situations where that's appropriate (e.g. acting). On the other hand, I can think of very few situations where it is appropriate to hire someone because he's put five million piercings on his body, has tatoos all over himself, dresses like he lives in a dumpster, has orange hair, and has marbles surgically implanted under each eyebrow. Unless the guy will never have contact with clients and is really good, I don't want him in my business.
If Linux hopes to ever displace Microsoft, it needs to be a good system, with good users, with good functionality, security, and flexibility. Making a OSS version of Windows is a waste of effort.
I've been running one computer on unstable and one on stable. You *do* notice the difference, but almost anything that breaks is fixed the next day. Its usually little things like innd an inewsinn both having a conf file that clashes.
I have to say, I like console-apt, only a couple of gripes which I can ignore.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I got that too. I assumed my mirror wasnt updated.
Just use 'potato' as the name.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Its probably not going to make it as the default installer for Potato, but its pretty good. IMO it just needs a "tell me what packages depend on this" function, and to be a bit more robust with poor connections (it freezes if downloading stops)
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
"Debian is rock solid while Mandrake isnt. Mandrake people make linux look bad"
Use what you like, and stop moaning. Just becase Debian only increase the minor version for each minor release is no reason to bash them.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
This more or less means downloading the OS from scratch. Trivial on a T1, non-trivial on a modem.
There is some truth to this, but it's quite possible to do Debian on a modem (I did), or with something less than a T1.
In my case, I used a 2.1 install disk essentially as a base-system installer, and built up the rest of my system over the course of a week or so. If this is your first Debian box, this is a good way to fly. It's better to assemble a system slowly and see how things click into place than to try to load everything at once. My download sessions would run 8-10 hours. I've got dual phone service, (one of which is never in use, one of which is <g>). So it works. As stated, apt-get update and apt-get download -d can be scheduled for automatic execution (remember to echo a 'y' or linefeed to the latter for cron jobs).
Other alternatives:
Other points to recognize: with Debian, more debs => more bandwidth required. Because each package has a probability of being updated, you are essentially required to provide more bandwidth to keep your system up to date. More arguments for keeping lean selection on board. If you're not using a package, lose it. Your updates will go faster.
You also don't have to upgrade your system. "If it ain't broke...". You should stay current on security alerts, but otherwise, if what you've got works, stick with it. Under unstable, there is a rather alarming frequency with which things break (does anyone out there have a successfully installed emacs19 or emacs20 from the past four months?), though usually this just means that the upgrade doesn't install. A --force usually works, though you're taking a risk.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Corel's Linux distro is built around Debian. It's one of the most slickified distros out there -- if you believe MSNBC's writeup. If you want Debian package management without the krufty interfaces, give it a whirl.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
First, do you mean "why do distros come with one installer" or "why do they come with one package manager". There's a difference.
The installer is somewhat insignificant -- you want a piece of software which can boot the system, partition disks, set up some reasonable base defaults, and connect you to a package management system. Ideally you only need do this once. To date I've heard of bootstrap installs (you've got a running system and build a second under it), RH, Debian, YAST, etc., Windows-based installation programs, etc. There are several flavors of installer built around RPM, dpkg, and whatever it is that Slack uses. Reasonably moot issue. Why does everyone seem to have their own? Probably a combination of NIH and support (we support our installer...).
The package management system is a different horse. This is what you're relying on to maintain, upgrade, and verify your system over time. In large part it consists of a package database, some method for identifying dependencies and/or relationships, and possibly some way of resolving them. This isn't a task which is easily split among several systems on a single box.
There are tools for managing packages from one system under another. 'alien' is one such tool, and it permits RPMs to be installed under Debian, and vice versa. But AFIAK, you lose many of the benefits of integrated package management. Ultimately with today's package management architectures, someone's got to rule the roost, and peered administration isn't supported.
Got any better ideas?
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
rpmfind (see rpmfind.net) is a database/service that will find the files in the packages for you. It's quite snazzy.
You can use it via the web interface (above) or via the CLI tool.
...j
I believe you're referring to the Utwig..
-- Does Rain Man use the Autistic License for his software?
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
This is why I use redhat: no frozen potatoes.
Maybe if I had a microwave card for my computer, I wouldn't care, but I find it's too much trouble to constantly be heating and stirring those frozen potatoes. They take forever to heat up, and even after that, they don't always have that even consistency.
So I use RedHat 6.0, even though I don't know if I have to microwave a "Hedwig" or not. (Hedwig? Is that an alien from Star Control 2?) However, I guess if I used Debian, I could just try to Slink around the whole issue...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
However I *do* think that having the latest kernel permits certain conveniences as far as default packages and installation set-up goes.
Agreed. Perhaps some sort of Potato and 1/2 would be in order? There are some really nice features in the new kernel. It's not too hard grab and install those but it would be nice to have it integrated into apt without having to configure for unstable. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how ;-) Perhaps if it were split off like non-us is done now and somehow, supplimental CDROM handling is added? The biggest problem I have now is that the fast install over fat pipes at work doesn't work so well over 56K at home (not that that's Debian's fault).
WRT to firewalling, the new way is iptables. There is an ipchains compatability module that allows the tables to be handled through ipchains. I'm using that on several boxes now with good results.
There's nothing wrong with an installer that has an expert mode, a normal mode, and install wizard. Again, to deliberately exclude those not already deep in the fold is the very definition of elitism.
I just don't see it. There are several different distros that all give you a good Linux system. Some are targeted at professionals, some to business, and others to novice home users. There IS a need to make the home versions more friendly, and it appears that the work is being done. Perhaps you should write the perfect install wizard for novices?
One thing I DO know for certain is that all of them are easier than SLS was when the kernel was in the 0.9x versions. Of course having to download off of a BBS at 9600bps didn't help either.
If you want only potato, use "potato" instead of frozen or unstable.
and aptitude (just a few minutes ago, in fact), and i like dselect better that either. I miss the info displays; the sorting by availability, priority, and name; the hold feature; the ability to undo mark-for-(un)install without resetting everything; indication of obsolete packages.
:). But I believe that I have info screens (latest version, press Enter); I have grouping but not by priority yet (I consider that a dselect misfeatures, but the grouping order will become configurable, hopefully within two versions) -- so that's a legitimate complaint; hold definitely works (you can hit '-' on a package that's being upgraded or just hit '=' anywhere); undo is another thing I really want, and obsolete packages should actually be fairly easy to check for with the right APT magic. In fact, I think I'll go add that now. Expect it today or tomorrow in the 0.0.5 release.
Aptitude author speaking.
Part of the reason that you don't see some of the features you mention is that I'm working on things in approximate inverse order of difficulty. Most of what you mentioned (except for the undo feature) is almost trivial to add, so I haven't yet
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I think the current plan is to try to get this working while woody is unstable.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Potato will also come with several alternative package management frontends including gnome-apt, console-apt, and aptitude.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
You didn't read the first sentence of my assertion that it's not as much of a problem, did you? I said that it wasn't that much of a problem *if* (or iff if you want to be precise :) ) you aren't being charged for bandwidth or connection time.
Obviously, you are.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Don't worry, i noticed aptitude is still in 0.0.x releases, so it's nowhere near finished!
:) )
;) )
:-) I'm running out of other features that I want to add, though, so this may go in sometime in the next few weeks..
e , then second within those groupings sort by status/priority/availability/section/whatever/none , third yet again, and last by name/download size/installed size/whatever
:)
:) ) If you're willing to edit and recompile the code, line 372 of testscr.cc defines the grouping order. (be warned: it has more parentheses than you'll see anywhere else outside a Lisp program, partly because I was thinking in somewhat Lispy terms when I wrote that code..)
No problem. Sorry if I gave the impression I was jumping on you, but you're the first person who's provided detailed feedback (aside from "looks cool"..
My complaints were more directed towards capt, which is much more developed
Actually, depending on your point of view, I may be extremely close to having a superset of capt's features. OTOH, I haven't explored that program deeply; it looked like maybe it had more in it than met the eye immediately..
The "undo" i was referring to is how in dselect if you push +, then decide you don't want to install it after all, you can hit _ and it'll be in the state it was before the +.
Hmm. You're referring, I believe, to being able to purge packages? I'd think console-apt could do that..aptitude can (in fact, the default binding is '_') -- you just won't be able to tell what you did till the next release (I just added an indicator for it a few minutes ago
Just checked and you're right, console-apt doesn't have a purge mechanism. It's about two lines of code, so I have no idea why it's not there. (well, actually I do have one idea: purge facilities may not have been in libapt when console-apt was started)
i would've thought that to be as trivial to add as anything else.
What you're talking about is. If you look at the TODO for aptitude (don't take it too seriously, some of that stuff is just random ideas I came up with when I was planning the program), one of the top items is multilevel undo support. The main reason this is tricky is that selecting a single package can potentially cause a cascade of modifications to package states, so code to save the old state, track the new one, and find the differences is needed. Not too hard, but in the spirit of Aptitude I'm going to make it ridiculously general and solve several other annoyances in the same fell swoop. Unfortunately, this complicates the problem significantly and I've been too intimidated so far to do it
What would be really nice would be to pick first sort by status/priority/availability/section/whatever/non
I assume you mean 'group' here instead of 'sort' -- for me 'group' implies that the packages are placed in a separate, collapsable subtree, whereas 'sort' just implies that they get sorted within the subtree.
This is *definitely* on the Aptitude TODO. I estimate that it'll get into 0.0.6 but I'm trying to avoid promising anything about release schedules
The internal infrastructure to do most of that is actually already present; I just haven't written the configuration code yet (which is going to be hairy, since C++ doesn't make classes into first-class objects so to build association tables you need factory routines and..argh, my head is hurting already
As for sorting..I was originally going to provide more of this, but grouping worked out so well that I may just stick with the alphabetical sorting I'm doing now.
All in all, it's good that so many package selection programs are available, so people who hate one can use another.
Absolutely correct.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
(Disclaimer: I'm not a Debian developer; I just hang out on the mailing lists and in the new-maintainer queue..)
There are two things to note:
First, this isn't an official "Debian strategy", although many users end up doing it; in fact, it's a periodic occurance on debian-devel for someone to start a huge thread predicting the End Of The World As We Know It[tm] due to the slow release schedule, and for just about everyone else to agree that things need to speed up. There are several proposals to restructure the archives and make it easier to cut new releases more often; it looks like (I believe) they'll be in place before Woody.
Second, this isn't as much of a problem as you think, as long as you aren't being charged for modem time and/or bandwidth. I've tracked unstable for long periods of time over a modem. The trick is to set up a cronjob to download stuff in the middle of the night. Also, if you want to use less bandwidth, you can download less frequently than once a day (say, once every week or two) or upgrade individual packages that you want a newer version of.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
A startup company named RedHat has announced that it is shipping a new distribution of the Linux operating system. For unknown reasons, it has chosen to number this version 6.0.
:)
Sun Microsystems, a new contender from Palo Alto, California, has released a hitherto unseen operating system, Solaris.
And finally, a dark horse company named Microsoft in the city of Redmond, California, has announced that it will soon be releasing an operating system known as "Windows", with versions starting at 2000.
Daniel
PS - apologies if you didn't mean what I thought you meant
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Wait for the official potato release -- the boot-floppies are still in progress (do they even work right now?) I think 'base via http' is going to be in the final version if it's humanly possible, from what I've heard on the list :)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
A Redhat release is just as stable as a Debian release. The reason that Debian takes so much longer to release is that they include many more packages. That is good because you can find the packages you need on the CD, without the need to retrieve them via rpmfind. But I think that most people would give that diversity up to have more up to date packages.
It's also not true that you can just grab an updated package if you need it. Any current Slink user can tell you that. Package maintainers tend to make updated packages just for unstable, since that's what they run.
I'd assume those facilities are significantly changed from 2.2 to 2.4, and thus you will have to get new packages for those with a new kernel package as well. Given the way that Debian works, that could be an automatic upgrade: select the kernel and the other stuff comes in too.
Thanks
Bruce
* ISDN
* Anything NAT-related (the ipchains -> netfilter transition)
* PCMCIA-CS stuff
* All the IP routing stuff
Bruce Perens.
It appears they are making changes that will let them admit new maintainers again. A lot of previously manual processes for managing maintainers seem to have been automated recently.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
You touched on the point without seeing it. In a world where we're used to nothing lasting forever, wouldn't it be nice to have control over how long things last?
Free software gives you that. As long as there are a few people interested in running it, there is sufficient force for it to be maintained. You don't have to put up with some marketing department discontinuing your favorite product.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I'd like to see more work on gnome-apt. A panel full of check-boxes is all you'd really need to set all the flags that dselect manipulates. The calls are there in libapt.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
There will doubtless be some humor around the code-name of the next unstable version. You can refer to downloading it as "getting a woody" :-)
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
In the interests of collecting all the flood of "look, beavis, he's anticipating wood" jokes in one place, and simultaneously preventing the uninterested from having to read all of them, I request that all such jokes be submitted as replies to this.
Thank you for your consideration.
Given the pedigree of Debian, I'm a bit bemused at my own experience with it around the time of the hamm/slink transition. After many years of running various RedHats and a couple of years of Slackware prior to that, I didn't expect many surprises. In fact, I expected even greater stability, if that were possible, because of that super pedigree thing (not really possible, since I never had any instability nor any other trouble with RH, but I expected good things anyway).
Alas, I persevered for 4 weeks during which I had to update numerous libraries (some repeatedly) in order to get Netscape and other quite normal stuff to work, always following the appropriate installation procedures for the item in question. Towards the end of this period, things got so bad that not only would Netscape no longer work properly, but the GIMP wouldn't come up at all. In utter frustration, I dumped the whole lot and went back to RedHat.
I have no idea what went wrong but it did, badly. This doesn't concern me too much personally (I'll try again when potato is released), but I can't help wondering how Linux newbies are coping with Debian, as opposed to Debian newbies that are fully-fledged Unix old-timers. If I managed to screw it so thoroughly then there must be quite a bit of rope available for hanging oneself in the distro.
[Yes, of course it was all my fault. I'm merely wondering how it was possible for it to happen at all, against a backdrop of more than just a little experience and a total lack of such problems with other systems, spanning Linux, many Unixes, and BSD. Very bemused.]
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
In fact, I've been using the 2.2.x kernels with Debian 2.1 (Slink) since May. (Which is when I first installed Slink). Works fine.
;-)
Note that kernel 2.2 was a huge change compared to 2.0. On the other hand, 2.4 is more like an incremental release (don't forget that 2.2 was released only a year ago). So Potato and the Penguin should live happily together
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Can somebody please explain what's involved in the ftp install? I downloaded the rescue and root disks, hoping that will work but it didn't. I got to the point where it asks where to install the system from. I select netfetch but it fails. It didn't even ask me for the NIC driver yet! What am I missing?
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I use dselect almost exclusively now, especially when doing updates (so that I can hold packages which I don't really need to be upgraded, rather than having to do a 100MB download once a week).
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
It's a cool idea to say "grab the CDs of the (heavily dated but rock stable) release version, and tell apt to download the upgrades" but when most of the packages have gone through several releases, this more or less means downloading the OS from scratch. Trivial on a T1, non-trivial on a modem.
I've been running potato for some time now, and I'm eagerly anticipating woody, the next unstable release.
Erm, why exactly? I find it interesting that people rush to install the latest release of a distribution. Surely you can keep your packages up to date in the mean time? Why exactly does installing the latest release improve your system?
I don't actually use a distribution, having compiled everything on my system myself. But if I did, I certainly wouldn't want to install something over my carefully crafted system. What would be the point?
"Sir, I'd stake my reputation on it."
"Kryten, you haven't got a reputation."
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
The one thing that I've thought that separated Debian from the rest was not how SLOW the releases come, but how quickly they come.
.x releases.
.x release to .x reelase, maybe they should just use whole numbers for release versions?
A "stable" release is thoughly tested, sometimes TOO thoughly tested =) But when you have something that's critial on being rock stable, these are they way to go to start. And if there is a program that you need a later version because of mroe functionality, you can do that too.
Tou can just as easily update packages buy pointing to "unstable", or now "woody". I can get updates to programs AS THEY ARE RELEASED. I don't have to wait for the distro to update everything themselves every couple months. Or if I really need something, hunt down a package, or get teh source and compile myself. I can just type "apt-get dist-upgrade" and my system is the latest it can be.
And with the large number of packages, I can be sure that whatever piece of free software(speach and beer), that they will ALL update with that one command. And I can rest assured that although I didn't compile that myself, it's not only a safe program to run, but it's configured to correctly work on my system. How can you go wrong? The more packages the better.
So, waiting for a release for the most part is a moot point. You can install Debian whenever you want, and have the lastest of everything, or have something that's thoughly tested(MUCH more then other distros). And, "unstable" for the most part, as alot of people will tell you, is alot better then other distros
Just one thing though, Debian "stable" releases change so much from
Slackware is, IMNSHO, one of the easiest distributions to install - simply because it's very, very hard to get yourself into a situation that you can't get out of.
I've had RH and TurboLinux (bletch!) stop in mid-install more times than I can remember. Debian took me forever to figure out (this was, admittedly, the 1.3 release, I believe). The graphical installers of the latest distros just annoy me. But Slackware works every time - and there's always some way to shoehorn it onto whatever hardware you have.
I'm running Slink with a 2.2 kernel right now. Had to replace a very small number of tools that were kernel specific (xosview, for example).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
As a long-time Debian user myself, I think that it's great that potato has finally gone into release after so many delays, but it looks to me like the exact same thing as last year is happening: slink (debian version 2.1) was released in early march, with the 2.0 kernel, even though the 2.2 kernel had been available for some time.
Considering that the 2.4 kernel should be out in the near future (another month and a half or so) and the freeze is quite likely to last at least that long before a release is made, how long before debian catches up to the newer kernel series?
Will there be an updated potato using 2.4 after the new stable kernel is released, or will we have to wait another year to catch up again?
--Cycon
(Incidentally, I have been using potato as the OS on my primary without any problems for months now, but it's the servers that I have to manage that I'd rather see kept up to date...)
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
You don't actually run a system with the vendor-provided kernel, do you? I have 2.2.13 running on slink and potato systems just fine -- in fact, the potato system is using 2.2.13 with the ext3 patch.
Of course compiling and replacing the distribution kernel is non-issue, but the problem with having an entire distribution released with an older kernel is that you lose the ability to add in and use certain features that are only available with the new kernel.
For instance, a linux firewall is controlled by ipfwadm for the 2.0.x series kernels, ipchains for the 2.2.x series kernels, and there will be a new system (whose named elludes me for the moment) for the 2.4.x series of kernels. In order to administrate a newer kernel you need different tools, and therefore different packages.
A better example perhaps would be USB support in the 2.4 kernel. With a release based on the 2.2.x series of kernels you lack USB support for items which may be of use during an install -- such as the keyboard, or mouse (for setting up X graphically). I may be wrong, there may be a patch for USB kerboards under 2.2.x, but I think you get the idea of where I'm going by now.
Simply put, I by no means wish to critisize the debian project for any issues that have aroze in getting potato out the door, I think everyone there is doing an outstanding job, considering the volunteer-based nature of the distro (as opposed to the corporate-funded efforts of Redhat, SuSE, Caldera, etc.) -- However I *do* think that having the latest kernel permits certain conveniences as far as default packages and installation set-up goes.
--Cycon
Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
It's not a contender for proprietary distributions such as Red Hat
What, exactly, is proprietary about Red Hat? Everything they do is GPL'd back into the community. Do you mean more *comercial* distributions?
Thats why there are a bunch of distros. If you want an easy installer, use one of the distros that comes with one. Me, i like dselect.
my reply is always the same: i should not have to "learn to install software" or "learn a package manager" -- in my opinion, these are things that should be essentially transparent to the enduser.
ITYM "end-luser".
Well said those colleagues of yours! Plain and simple: if you are unwilling to learn how to use something, and properly at that, there's nothing we can (or should) do for you, so don't waste our time and go back to pestering M$loth Support.
Seriously, there's nothing that gets to me more than unwillingness. Inability, need a helping hand, those are FINE by me, and will get all due sympathy. Unfortunately, unwillingness also gets due sympathy too - nil!
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Anyone notice? Potato is not only release 2.2 of Debian GNU/Linux, it's also the long-expected version 0.3 of GNU/Hurd (the first of Debian GNU/Hurd). Check the binary-hurd-i38 6 directory. Admittedly, many (if not most) Hurd deb packages are actually binary-all packages (and some are plain useless under the Hurd) — one Hurd developper jokingly said the Hurd would take its revenge by committing a lot of Hurd-specific binary-all packages.
True, the Hurd is still far from stable now (and moving this tree from frozen to stable will sound something like a joke), but this is an important landmark nonetheless.
One of Debian's primary goals is system *stability*. This is boring for the technically competent home user, but utterly critical in the enterprise.
Potato will lose little by not providing the new kernel by default - it is easy to upgrade your system later. However it keeps a kernel with a year's worth of field testing on it. Bugs undoubtably still remain, but it will be many months before 2.4 is as stable as 2.2 today.
The same thing applies to XFree86 4. By staying with the current XFree86 3.3 version Debian will lose some new features, but it will have a well tested X subsystem. If things go well people can upgrade later, while corporate users aren't affected by 4.0 (relative) flakiness.
Finally, an analogy I often use is to hiking gear. The whole purpose of hiking gear isn't to "look cool" (although that's always nice), it's to get me into the remote backcountry *and back.* That's why I might test out new gear on local trails, but I use ratty old gear when I'm going to be many hours away from help. The cost of a shoe falling apart isn't $100, it's a bloody foot torn to shreds by hiking barefoot in the Rockies for miles, so I stick with things I know are reliable even if they're slightly outdated.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I truly commend Debian for keeping with a good versioning system. They've kept with a good system while others such as SuSE, Red Hat, Mandrake, Slackware, etc. have crept up to such high obscene numbers as 7.0. It disgusts me ;)
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
I've been using debian since bo (1.3), and found it even then, having never sat at a linux console before (though i'd had shell accounts on slack for some time), it was still relatively easy to install. At the time I was doing it with a friend, as I was advised and advise myself, never install linux alone the first time. apt was introduced in hamm or retroactively in slink, i can't remember. (i went straight from bo->potato after being lazy for a while, with apt.)
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I find dselect/dpkg and now apt to be a very easy, self-explanatory set of programmes. But linux itself isn't yet for the clueless. You need to have some understanding of computers before you install it and that won't change for probably another year.
RedHat attempts towards it, but its too difficult in redhat to upgrade and install packages and dependencies for new users who've never heard of freshmeat.
#include <signal.h> \ #include <stdlib.h> \ int main(void){signal(ABRT,SIGIGN);while(1){abort(-1)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I've been wanting to play with Debian for some time (I usually run RedHat because it stays fairly recent and usually works) but running slink was like being stuck in the stone age. I hope the Debian fellows have some kind of plan for more frequent updates, or at least more in line with the rest of "the Linux world." (i.e. not having your stable distro using Kernel 2.0 with glibc 2.0 when 2.2 and 2.1 have been out and stable for almost as long as your distro.)
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
Since it's unstable you may have to play with your woody before it works.
What'll they do when their woody freezes?
Is that enough?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I remember them saying in a slashdot interview that they were going to implement a new system of keeping packages in stable release up to date with the release of potato (question #5 in that interview). Does anyone know what the status on that project is?
The problem I see with the debian version numbers though is that they can get mixed up with the kernel version. Or atlest that happened to me. But I like low version numbers much better than the big ones.
Here's what I've been doing, and it's worked great for me on every machine so far.
:)
:) I then apt-get a few very important packages: less, compiler, assembler, and console-apt. Console-apt is invoked by using "capt" at the command line, and it's a million times better than dselect. Hit "?" if you need to know the key commands.
I install the base system as slink, usually from floppies (many machines don't have CD-ROMs, because they really don't need them). I go through the whole config. process as usual, except that I switch to a virtual terminal to use fdisk instead of cfdisk.
At the point where it first puts me into dselect, I immediatly quit. I hate dselect, and have only tried to use it once...never again!
The first thing that I do is to edit my apt sources file to use the FTP links, and also to include non-us and KDE. Of course, I also change it to use "potato" instead of "stable".
Then:
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
This will take a while
This system has made Debian installations very easy and fun for me. Every now and again, I do an "update" followed by "upgrade", to get all the latest packages.
I hope that it works for you.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
It's not really a matter of "installing a new system". RedHat gives you this feeling by having you shutdown your computer, boot from the new distro floppy, and do an "upgrade install". And it's certainly a lot better than, say, installing Win98 as an "upgrade" to Win95.
/etc/apt/sources to point to the new FTP directory. Now, whenever you update your packages, you'll get them from the new directory. It's a much smoother process than anything else I've ever used. This is a testament to its great package management system.
:), it asks you:
With Debian, the difference in which version you use is in which FTP (or HTTP) directory you choose for your package source. To "upgrade", you simply change your
When Debian upgrades a package, if it notices that you've changed any files (such as edited configuration files, which is to be expected
1. Keep your version of this file? (default)
2. Install the version from the new package?
3. Show the difference between the 2?
This is only a small example; it's really quite nice. Debian is also nice to use in the same manner as you (eg, install the base 28M system, and compile everything else yourself).
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.