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Debian Testing Tree Goes Online
A few people noted that Debian has
brought the 'Testing' Tree on-line. So now we have Stable (currently potato) for production boxes, Testing (woody) for settling things down before an eventual release, and a new unstable tree for those of us who'd just rather things randomly break. Here's a bit
more info if you're
curious.
Unstable is unstable, and sometimes (but not too often) it breaks. In general I find it to be more stable than the so-called "mainstream" distro's stable versions.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
Apache is the only real innovation that's happened with open source/free software.
How is Apache innovative? Is it not a recreation of NCSA httpd? nuf said.
cpeterso
I just found that out 2 days ago. I tried to reconfigure it but it wasn't able to write the file to: :P
etc/X11/Xwrapper.conf
because I wasn't in the root directory. (It should have tried to write the file to
/etc/X11/Xwrapper.conf
instead I think. I took me 15-20 mins to figure it out.
You mean there's another way?
Besides, I might want to try a BSD car rather than a GPL car--there's less engine knocking, I hear, and I'm not concerned with the possibility of people reselling my spark plugs. And... oh, wait, the analogy just broke. Never mind.
Although if you like things to just randomly break, why aren't you using Windows?
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I think its great what they're doing. But, Isn't debian mostly alpha stuff. I mean it's always in the testing phases so what's the real point here?
...
Try running potato - the stable distro.
Woody is unstable. If you apt-get upgrade your woody regularly you will occasionally have some fun manual work to do. Like that upgrade last week that broke perl and thus debconf.
But the debian releases are in general more stable and MUCH MUCH easier to maintain than any RPM based distro. The packaging is just clean.
The reason the packaging is clean is simple. There are 644 Debian packagers, most of them system administrators running Debian for a living. It is human nature to be lazy, so these administrators each do their job on Debian so that their day jobs are easy and they can play quake while RedHat, Mandrake, and SuSE admins are resolving package dependencies and compiling unsupported packages from tarballs.
Now where is that Dubya patch for Quake again
In order to understand the problem, you have to understand how Debian does (or at least "did") user-specific stuff. For anything where multiple versions were available, and for which end users might want to select which one to actually use, they set up links in /etc/alternatives and then another link in whichever directory is appropriate, usually /usr/bin or /usr/sbin for binaries.
Since there are multiple versions of perl interpreter out there, and since users might want to select between them, perl was done in this way so you might have /usr/bin/perl linked to /etc/alternatives/perl which would then be linked to /usr/bin/perl-5.005 or some such.
Well, the perl5.6 package deleted the link /usr/bin/perl and didn't replace it with anything. Since many of the install scripts use perl, this started breaking stuff during the upgrade that first included perl5.6. It took me a while, but once I noticed that install scripts were failing with "file not found" errors, I took a quick look and was able to verify both that the broken programs were perl scripts and that /usr/bin/perl was nowhere to be found.
So, I immediately created the symbolic link between /usr/bin/perl and /etc/alternatives/perl and re-ran apt, which fixed everything whose install was broken. Problem solved, and no reinstalling.
Since then, it appears that more recent versions of the perl5.6 package copy the actual perl binary into /usr/bin/perl (at least on the computer I use most, /usr/bin/perl and /usr/bin/perl5.6.0 have the same size and MD5 hash) so the problem does appear to have been fixed. However, I'm seeing some wierdness in woody that may be associated with the recent switch to package pools. (From what I understand, package pools allow files to move from "unstable" into "testing" without massive quantities of copying any time someone makes a change. This is a more significant development than a "testing" release, in my opinion.)
WHereas for the last few releases, runining debian unstable will give your random brekaings, as well as sudden, erratic, changes inpolicy that change the way your machine works.
I'd be hard pressed to expalain why, but I pointed this new installation to unstable yesterday. . After letting it run two entire nights, I now find the explanation for behavior and inconsistencies that are beyond what you usually see with unstable . . .
Now how in the world do I back it down from unstable to testing?
Stuff like this is a significant factor in my shift from debian to FreeBSD (no, not the only one; I like the way bsd utilities work better than GNU in most of the cases where I perceive a difference; object to the code-hoarding of the GPL, prefer the ports and makeworld, etc.). But this installlation is supposed to go in the kids computer, and stay pretty much stuck once it stabilizes (and once I get my replacement hard disk for this machine--until then, I keep the drive). FOr what the kids need, running a fairly standard Linux has more advantages than running bsd--ironically, it's binary compatibility with pre-packaged binariess. OH, that's why I went to unstable--I wanted the newere kde for them (and yes, I *am* deliberately ducking the license issues here--you can find plenty elsewhere that I've written aabout that issue)
hawk
It's not that unstable is generally unstable, but that occasionally it will bite you--bad. I found this to be about twice a year. But losing my system for most of a day while I repaired it, or used another machine to keep up on mailing lists to figure out *how* to repair it, got to be too much. I used stable through about 1.1 (bo? it's been a while). After that, the bites got to be too much.
THis new "testing" branch would have solved, I believe, all of the "gotchas" I faced (but probably wouldn't have caught the change in how fvwm functioned; I was apparently the first to file the bug/change, and I think I fought it for more than two week).
hawk
I think this is one more step to debian being a more accepted distro. It technically has many merits - but one of the common complaints is that its out of date.
SSL Certificate
Interesting that now redhat and slackware fall in line with their own conjurings of APT. Debian's been doing it all along and only now do other distro's understand why people love debian. You spend more time using the applications and less time screwing with setups and configuration.
Well, there's a half solution. Switch "testing" for "woody" in your /etc/apt/sources.list and update. This won't downgrade packages to the testing versions but eventually the testing versions will "catch up with" and overtake the woody ones and you'll be getting only testing updates from then on.
As to what to do with the woody packages you have that are later then the testing versions... well, after you do the above change you could try manually doing "apt-get install " and see what happens. It might do what you want, or it might just say "already have a later version". Never had an instance to try it but it's worth a shot.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Call me crazy, but when something breaks on my system, I try to fix it rather than switching distros.
.rpm so I switched to mandrake/debian/otherdistro"
How many times do you read on slashdot "oh yeah I couldn't install the matrix windomaker theme
HUH?????
When you get a smudge on your windshield do you trade your car in for a new one?
Help is available!
Next time something breaks, look for a mailing list for that app and search the archives, try jumping on irc.debian.org #debian, do a web search... nine times out of ten there are other people experiencing the same problem who are more than willing to help.
Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
- Toby
It's good to see Debian got the tree up in time for Christmas. Soon we'll be decking the halls with boughs of Woody.
Read the rest of this comment...
Basically, the testing distribution is "maintained" by an automatic script, which contains all packages which have been in the unstable (i.e. development) distribution for two weeks without a release critical bug being filed, subject to satisfying package dependencies. The idea is that testing might be buggy, but should be up-to-date and not completely broken. See here for more detail and precision.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Well, I have the same card (it's the Elsa Gladiac). Basically, X 3.3.6 doesn't have support for the GF2. You need to use either unstable (or woody, as soon as X 4.0.1 gets back in there), or use the aptable packagees from "deb http://people.debian.org/%7Ebranden/ potato/$(ARCH)/" - just put that in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. Xfree4 works nicely with the GF2; however, if you want the full 3d acceleration you're going to have to muck around with the nvidia drivers at ftp://ftp1.detonator.nvidia.com/pub/drivers/englis h/XFree86_40/
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
Actually, don't you also have to have the three driver disks to install your network driver, assuming that you want a network install (versus a CD install, which presumably wouldn't need additional drivers)?
He said CD or network, so your answer was correct if you treat his question as a boolean expression. :)
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
devil-make-care-I'm-surprised-it-even-compiles-I'm -not-wearing-any-pants development.
Just promise me you never put up a web-cam.
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